this is stuff you like [5] and I was a big fan [4] of Thunderbirds [3] when I was [2] growing up
[1] say it with me now: Thunderbirds Are Go! Thunderbirds for the uninitiated was the
brainchild of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson
and was filmed in VIDECOLOR. AND SUPERMARIONATION!
Which is to say in colour!
with puppets!
Get hype you guys. In October 1963 there was a mining disaster in West Germany. Gerry
Anderson saw this and thought hey wouldn't it be great if there was an
organization that could help people in situations just like this one? And so the
Thunderbirds aka International Rescue were born. They rescue people
internationally also in space sometimes Thunderbirds never really *made it* across
the pond but it along with a bunch of other puppet based shows was really
popular in the 60s things like Stingray Joe 90 Captain Scarlet the series was
not so much rebooted as mildly tinkered with and shown again on television in
the 90s which is when I saw it. Come on guys I'm not that old.
and there was a live-action remake which came out in 2004. Now I know what you're
thinking and it's why and I'm also thinking it because I had to watch it
multiple times for this review but I guess they thought why not
we had CGI I had a budget kinda yeah but then there was a new series which
came out in 2016 [2015 actually] which is called Thunderbirds Are Go not to be confused
with this one and it has CGI Thunderbirds and CGI people but real
miniature sets and guys guys it's really good. I mean a lot of children's
television is just really good nowadays. so let's do a bit of a retrospective and
talk about how you make really good action-packed children's entertainment
and also how you don't. let's start at the beginning
have you suffered some kind of major disaster? has your fantastical machine of
the future gone awry? then you just might need International Rescue! Who are
secretly the Tracys: five brothers who save the world with their dad their
mother Lucille died of something. It's not that we don't have an answer to that
question it's that we have too many of them: illness accident Avalanche who knows.
nevermind the dad is Jeff former astronaut current billionaire
after the death of his wife he founds International Rescue and builds the
Thunderbirds to help people in distress. the eldest Scott pilots Thunderbird one
it goes fast he is in charge big brothery. Second or third but let's go with
second because I like this order better is John the astronaut on Thunderbird
5 basically the 911 dispatch of International Rescue. The puppet in
question was reportedly not liked very much by Jerry Anderson and so he got
stuck in the space station much more than they had originally intended. Third
or second is Virgil who pilots Thunderbird 2 the Flying Brick with the
stuff in it. Also the peacemaking middle child. Fourth is Gordon aka Aquaman pilot
of Thunderbird 4 the one with the terrible jokes and the loud shirts. Fifth
is Alan youngest most baby-faced blondest whiniest and pilot of
Thunderbird 3 AKA astronaut number two also in the crew are London agent Lady
Penelope and her chauffeur Parker: they shoot things live in a mansion in Kent
and have a pink rolls-royce with many gadgets; Brains who made the stuff and
has a stutter and glasses because nerd; grandma Tracy lovable apple-cheeked old
lady; Kyrano, manservant with foreign accent
and Tintin daughter of Kyrano, sort of fancies Alan good at engineering and
gets condescended to on plans like her success Kayo in what I can only assume
was a deliberate reference but we'll get back to that. In their 32 episodes plus
full-length feature thingy various things collapse blow up sink get off
course and generally cause the people within them some difficulty. The
Thunderbirds are loaded up with stuff and also they go to save the day in ways
which don't involve them doing a lot of physical movements because you know
puppets anyway the music was the most amazing stuff the show was really
popular back in the day and in the 90s when it came back Tracy Island was the
must-have toy and it was impossible to get Blue Peter a popular children's TV
programme stepped into the breach with Anthea Turner telling us all how to make
our own Tracy island from papier-mache
and I made one as a grown adult because I was really excited about the new
series that was coming out I even made a YouTube video about it. Thunderbirds
therefore was a cultural touchstone for British viewers both the original
fans from the sixties and the new kids who saw it for the first time in the 90s
hi. and then in 2004 yeah new movie Gerry Anderson was apparently not a fan of it
it's not hard to see why. Thunderbirds 2004 is a
somewhat dubious mishmash of not a lot of sensicalness. It removes almost all of the
elements that people liked about Thunderbirds and replaces them with a
sort of Thunderbirds flavored Spy Kids ripoff yeah. Spy Kids. Spy Kids which was
released in 2001 made all of the money and so there were many sequels and
imitators. Thunderbirds is to be fair probably a tricky thing to make a movie
about at the best of times: it's about five brothers who save people with their
fantastical machines.Now the fantastical machines that is cool but
five brothers plus supporting cast? Five distinct personalities to get across
plus Jeff Plus penny plus Parker plus whoever else they might have needed? yeah
I can see why they would have had trouble.
unfortunately they decided that the best way to get around this was to make a
sort of prequel-esque alternate universe in which Alan is not yet a Thunderbird
Brains has a tween aged son called Fermat presumably because we can only
theorize where the kid came from an Tintin has magical powers like her uncle
the hood yeah the magical powers were in the original yeah it's kind of weird.
anyway movie did not so brilliantly so the plan for this episode is to talk
about why that is and then in the next episode talked about what made the 2016 [2015!]
version so much better. Ready? Ready. The plot of Thunderbirds 2004 goeth
thusly: Alan Tracy is a bored kid who spent his school days daydreaming about
being a Thunderbird his four older brothers who look like a boy band and
appear to have very little in the way of distinct personalities possibly due to
time constraints are already Thunderbirds and he is cross about it
BUT THEN the Hood tricks the whole of international rescue into suiting up and
going into space to rescue John for no good reason why would you all go even
Aquaman really? Really? And then traps them all on Thunderbird five waiting to
die, takes over Tracy island, steals the Thunderbirds and plans to use them in a
robbey, thus getting rich and trashing their reputations all at once
diabolical! So it's up to Alan Fermat Tintin Brains Lady Penelope and Parker
to save the day and then go carry out a rescue and then defeat the Hood and then
get badges the end. Well Lady Penelope and Brains and Parker didn't get badges but
I assume they already had some. And Alan learned about responsibility and blah
blah blah blossoming romance [ew! Did you just say blossoming?] Errrrggg...I get why they
decided to make Alan the main character I really do
Alan is a young impetuous one Alan is the baby-faced blue-eyed one the one who
appeals to the children Tintin would be the obvious companion
Fermat is invented to keep the two guys and a girl formula that is so
popular in children's media (and in adult media) and Lady Penelope is very
marketable. Also she and Parker seem to be the only ones in the movie who are
actually enjoying themselves but they know exactly what kind of movie they're
in. The thing is Thunderbirds wasn't a huge success because Alan Tracy appealed
to children Thunderbirds was a huge success because Thunderbirds appealed to
children. Alan is one of an ensemble cast and
honestly not many people's favorite. I know this scientifically I asked on Twitter
turns out the favorite character of the majority of the people on my Twitter
feed who actually know what Thunderbird is: Lady Penelope. Of course it is.
But still, Lady Penelope is part of the ensemble cast and so getting rid of the
rest of the Tracy brothers so you can focus on Complainy McWhinypants
over here is not ideal also there's a distinct lack of actual Thunderbirds
they have this whole sequence at the start where Alan is watching his
brothers on TV but I mean for a Thunderbirds movie you think they go a
little harder on the actual machines that's what we're here for,
I'm sorry! The plot of the movie manages to be both convoluted and kind of thin
it also has way too many characters I mean they took out four Tracy Brothers
and Jeff for most of the movie and decided to replace them with a bunch of
other people who aren't really terribly memorable. Then again the same can be
said of the Tracy brothers in this movie so what do you do. And the acting is
often kind of wooden even Ben Kingsley whose performance could probably best be
described as large wooden ham. but even he doesn't seem to be having
any fun so why would we? Basically they took out most of the things that the
original series fans would have been there for and the things which made the
show unique in the first place: the awesome music the actual Thunderbirds the Tracy
Brothers... and none of that would have mattered if the movie had actually been
interesting for its target audience but kind of wasn't. It was and remains an
adequate way of keeping young children entertained for an hour and a
half or so. It's a long way from being actively terrible and does have some
redeeming features like Lady Penelope and Parker but generally it's just kind
of stilted and awkward and not very interesting; "for kids" in the dismissive
sense of the term which means eh, they're too dumb to know that there are better
options out there. That being said that theme tune by Busted is amazing and I
will hear no dissenting opinions. OK not the acoustic version it's terrible.
but clearly someone learned from the mistakes of the past and so when the
thunderbirds are go series came out in 2016 [2015!] it was a revelation next time we
will talk about why so if you'd like to be pinged when that happens you should
hit the old subscribe button and then possibly that Bell thing as well. See you
next time!