Tin Man starring Zooey Deschanel

Tin Man is a miniseries that was shown on the Sci-Fi channel and which came out in December of 2007. It stars Zooey Deschanel (as D.G.), Neal McDonough (as Cain, the Tin Man), Alan Cumming (as Glitch, the Scarecrow) and Raoul Trujillo (as Raw, the Lion).  It is based upon the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum but adds a lot of fantasy and science fiction and takes many, many liberties.  The characters are based on Wizard of Oz characters and the land is the O.Z. (Outer Zone).

At the beginning of the series, we meet DG, a teenage waitress in Kansas that is tiring of her life there, feels that there is something that makes her different from the people that she works and lives with (even though she can't put her finger on exactly what) and is haunted by dreams of a woman with lavender eyes telling her that a storm is brewing. And a storm does come - Azkadellia (played by Kathleen Robertson), aka the Wicked Witch - sends a troop of her long coat policemen to kidnap DG and bring her back to the O.Z. DG escapes by jumping into the travel storm that brought the longcoats to Kansas and meets, in short order, Wyatt Cain, Glitch and Raw in the O.Z. The troop learns that Azkadellia is searching for an emerald with which to permanently cause the O.Z. to become dark and that D.G. inherited that knowledge when DG's mother revived her after Azkadellia killed DG using dark magic. Therefore, DG is the key to Azkadellia's success. The group then begins a search to find the Mystic Man (played by Richard Dreyfuss) in the hopes of stopping Azkadellia from ruining the Outer Zone.

I had high hopes for this movie/mini-series. The concept was very promising - an updated, edgier version of the saccharine movie and children's book that we all know. And in some ways it delivered, but in some ways it did not.  I really liked Zooey Deschanel - she totally redefined Dorothy and was just fun.   McDonough was appropriately cast as the Tin Man, as was Alan Cumming as the Scarecrow. I didn't like the Tin Man though at all, the character was just too two dimensional. He was driven too much by cynicism. The story was an interesting re-telling of the previous version and I thought it was pretty creative.

For anyone interested in the movie, I've included the Amazon link.