Thunderbirds Review
by Shane Burridge (sburridge AT hotmail DOT com)August 10th, 2004
Thunderbirds (2004) 95m.
TV producer Gerry Anderson might not have been a household name in the US during the 60s, but to kids in other parts of the Western World he established a cult following that reached well beyond his target audience and endures to this day. From early school days through to high school and even university, it was hard to find someone who didn’t admit to watching the unconsciously surreal STINGRAY, the casually groovy JOE 90, or, if you were really cool, the more sober CAPTAIN SCARLET. But although each had its own group of supporters, it was THUNDERBIRDS which most of us agreed was the staple Anderson show. What made THUNDERBIRDS popular was undoubtedly its catchy name, hour-long running time, jaunty Barry Grey theme, and futuristic vehicles lovingly crafted and rendered by model-makers who obviously cared about what they were doing.
The models were the main reason to watch shows by Anderson, who rather bizarrely mixed sci-fi technology with simple marionettes, although this was simply a consequence of starting with puppets (I use this as a catch-all term) and sticking to what he knew as he developed each new series. As time went on the look of the puppets evolved from caricature to realism, finally giving way to real actors in the shows UFO and SPACE:1999, who, predictably enough, played second fiddle to the spacecraft and other gadgetry around them.
The concept of the THUNDERBIRDS TV series was that a wealthy philanthropist by the name of Jeff Tracy lived with his five sons on a secret island that formed the base of their global rescue organization. Each son piloted a highly technological rescue vehicle that had its own specific function (and colour) and each week two or three of these Thunderbirds would be responsible for averting some disaster. Everybody had their favourite Thunderbird (mine was always Thunderbird 4, maybe because it appeared less often than the others, or maybe because it was smaller and bright yellow) and the interpretation of the models was one of the areas where any updated version of THUNDERBIRDS was always going to miss the appeal of the original series. It was never going to be an easy task to capitalize on the success of the TV show because producers were never going to be able to duplicate the impact that the Thunderbirds made upon kids back in the 60s. Of course model-making had become somewhat passé in light of CGI, and by 2004 it was decided that the Thunderbird vehicles needed a digital makeover.
If you’re a THUNDERBIRDS enthusiast interested in the movie for its CGI depiction of the five rescue craft doing their thing and you can accept the necessity of replacing the marionettes with live actors then you might figure that the film could be enjoyable simply as a revisitation of a childhood memory. However this is not a remake of the show so much as a nod to it. I have no doubt that fans of the original like to compare checklists of every wrong decision of the movie (and chief among these will be: [1] The replacement of Lady Penelope’s memorable pink Rolls-Royce with a Ford; [2:] Brains’ fathering of a son – WHAT? – and more to the point, WITH WHO?; [3] Tin-Tin not only discovering her father is Jeff Tracy’s nemesis The Hood – again, WHAT?? – but inheriting his telekinetic powers, to boot; [4] That annoying and apparently ubiquitous field reporter constantly referring to International Rescue as ‘The Thunderbirds’; and [5] Jeff Tracy shunting Virgil out of the cockpit in Thunderbird 2 when he should be back in the control room where he belongs), but chief among THUNDERBIRDS’ sins is that the premise of the TV series has been abandoned just as effectively as the Tracy boys have been marooned in space for nearly the entire story, leaving us with a movie about three kids having an adventure on an island with a few in-jokes thrown in for all of those familiar with the TV show. Most unforgivable is that the time element and suspense that was the main thrust of each episode of the series is completely absent, and if there’s more suspense in a puppet show than a seventy million dollar movie, you know that something has got to be seriously wrong. If there was ever a mission for International Rescue, this script is it.
If you’re not a devotee of the original, and such fanboy nitpicking is irrelevant to your viewing of the film, then THUNDERBIRDS is average at best. It’s non-violent and mildly entertaining but the story is made up of the same sorts of situations over again and the banter between the pre-teen heroes is just awful. Instead of seeing the Tracy family spring into the driver’s seat we get father and son heart-to-hearts between Jeff Tracy (Bill Paxton) and his youngest boy Alan (somebody else) who only wants to have fun, fun, fun (but his daddy took his T-bird away). Amongst a cast that is either relegated to the periphery or dominated by kids, Ben Kingsley manages to strike a distinctly underplayed chord as arch-villain The Hood, and Sophia Myles and Ron Cook steal the show as International Rescue’s London-based agents Lady Penelope and Parker, even if they do end up becoming more like THE AVENGERS as the film goes on. Nearly everyone else could have been played by anyone else – Paxton has nothing to do other than act the responsible parent, while Anthony Edwards is stuck with repeating a tiresome joke about his stammer. When the five anonymous and interchangeable Tracy boys line up for their final group moment you’ll be thinking think less about Thunderbirds: The Sequel and pondering more about their secondary career as Thunderbirds: the Boy Band.
As adult criticisms these are, of course, more befitting an adult product. It’s not that THUNDERBIRDS is a bad film if you recognize its target audience as being kids (as indeed was the puppet series) and if viewed exclusively by that demographic it’s a fair enough effort. But for adults with no knowledge of the original show it plays like a bewildering promotion for toys, and for adults who used to admire it on TV as children, it’s a wasted opportunity. If anything from 60s television is crying out for big-screen treatment, it has to be THUNDERBIRDS.
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