Reception
According to Nielsen Media Research, the first night of the miniseries averaged more than 6.3 million viewers during its timeslot, making it the most-watched telecast in the network's history and the top rated cable miniseries of 2007. The second part averaged 4.4 million viewers, and the final part had 5.1 million.
Tin Man was a Critics' Choice Award nominee. It was nominated for nine Primetime Emmy Awards in 2008 including the Outstanding Miniseries category and multiple categories related to films special effects, costuming, editing, and sound editing. Of those nominations, it won only one award, for "Outstanding Makeup For A Miniseries Or A Movie (non-prosthetic)".
Variety called it a "semi-surreal adaptation of The Wizard of Oz stitched together from bits of The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Snow White to create a brooding fantasy that—understandably given the variety of influences—proves a bit of a mess" and whose "look and action sequences don't fully deliver the goods" to the "target audience of fanboys and their imaginary girlfriends." Tom Shales of The Washington Post called Tin Man a "hopeless opus" whose "pacing is largely funereal"; he said Deschanel's portrayal of DG was "saucy and captivating", complimented the "superb, rousing and romantic musical score by Simon Boswell" and characterized the "junky, clunky look" of the special effects as "fitfully spectacular". USA Today gave the film 2½ stars out of 4, comparing its "bleak, violent, unyieldingly unpleasant revisionist outlook" to the network's reimagined Battlestar Galactica; the review concluded: "Ambitious and intriguing though it may be, Tin Man is simply too long, too grim and too determined to impose a Lord of the Rings universe-saving quest on top of a simpler, gentler story."
Associated Press writer Kinney Littlefield notes that "the title character, ex-cop Wyatt Cain (Neal McDonough), called a tin man for his tin badge, is a far more embittered type than Jack Haley's metal man was in the movie musical."
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
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—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
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—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)