Believable?
I recently watched the “movie” “Tin Man” or in Japan called “Outer Zone”. They sold it for a 1000 yen at Tower Records. I only realized later that it is a radically cut version of the Sci-Fi channel mini series “Tin Man”. I obviously haven’t seen it, and its ratings in IMDb are actually not that bad, however, I found the thing horrible. This “movie” represents the limit of what you can do with editing a story. Maybe the long version = the entire mini-series is better, but this cut to pieces something was one of the worst movie experiences I ever had.
The story felt choppy and sorry, but the leading actress seemed like the most unnatural actress they could find. Her reactions to what was happening around her were completely unbelievable. She shrugged off life-changing events with indifference. Oh, the people she thought are her parents are not her parents. So what? When she first meets the character Glitch her reaction to the fact that he has his brain removed and a zipper on top of his head is lame rather than cool, and so forth.
The wannabe steampunk look had a ridiculous feel to it rather than making things attractive because it served no purpose and was not an integral part of the story. The artificial people in the first OZ village the heroine goes to are causing the reaction – what the hell is that? What purpose does this story item serve? What does it add to the story that these people are half mechanized?
The Wizard of Oz is a great story and the movie a legend (I’ve seen it, but it’s a long time ago). I remember drama and being awfully scared of the wicked witch of the west.
In this “Tin Man” movie the characters are stumbling from one convenient event to the other: They have to find her father. The dog/creature thing immediately finds access to this city underground. There they immediately find someone who gives them a tip without motivation. Then DG, the heroine, gets abducted by no one else but her daddy. Dah!!! Maybe they need more time to get from A to B in the mini series, in the movie though clues come out of the blue and always fit and are highly convenient.
One of the worst sequences is when DG remembers her past. She walks through the woods, the dog/creature thing tells her to remember an oh, so suddenly she remembers everything.
Horrible plotting, one dimensional characters, no explanations for how the heroine and her entourage travel from a to b – and oh, suddenly they are back at the tower of her sister who is possessed by the evil witch of the west.
Why does the bad sister have followers at all? What’s in it for them? Nothing in this movie adds up and it’s a great lesson for every writer on how NOT to do it.
Your characters need motivation, more than one character trait, and they need to react naturally to what’s happening around them. Your plot needs to be logical, even in fantasy you need to explain how people get from A to B, you must make things difficult for your characters instead of presenting them with the next clue on a silver plate. Great lessons learned, thanks, you do really learn a lot as a writer from bad examples 
