Thunderbirds (2004 film)

''Thunderbirds'' is a 2004 science fiction action-adventure film directed by Jonathan Frakes, based on the 1960s TV series '' Thunderbirds'' created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. The film, written by William Osborne and Michael McCullers, was released on 20 July 2004 in the United Kingdom and 30 July 2004 in the United States.

The film's plot concerns the Hood, who traps International Rescue (IR) leader Jeff Tracy and four of his sons on board the damaged '' Thunderbird 5'' to steal the other ''Thunderbirds'' vehicles and commit heists that IR will be blamed for, prompting Jeff's youngest son Alan and his friends Tin-Tin and Fermat to stop him. In contrast with the original TV series, which used a combination of puppetry and scale-model special effects dubbed " Supermarionation", this film was made in live action with CGI effects.

The film received negative reviews from critics, who disparaged its wooden characters and thin plot, and was a box office bomb. Gerry Anderson was also negative about the film, describing it as "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life", although Sylvia Anderson praised it as a "great tribute" to the series. The film's soundtrack includes the song " Thunderbirds Are Go" by pop-rock band Busted, which peaked at number one in the UK charts and later won the 2004 UK Record of the Year award.

Plot

The Tracy family, led by former astronaut Jeff Tracy, operate International Rescue (IR), a secret organization that aids those in need during disasters using technologically advanced machines called Thunderbirds, operating out of Tracy Island in the South Pacific. Youngest son Alan lives at a boarding school in Massachusetts and dreams of being a Thunderbird pilot. He and his best friend Fermat Hackenbacker, son of the Thunderbirds’ engineer Brains, are extracted by Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, an IR agent, and her butler Aloysius Parker, using her limo FAB 1, as the Thunderbirds return from an oil rig fire off the Russian coast. Unbeknownst to them, the Hood, a psychic criminal mastermind who has a vendetta against Jeff for abandoning him in a collapsing illegal diamond mine when his brother Kyrano was rescued, has planted a tracking beacon on the hull of '' Thunderbird 1''.

The Hood's submarine locates Tracy Island and fires a missile at the orbiting '' Thunderbird 5'', sending Jeff and older sons Scott, Virgil and Gordon in ''Thunderbird 3'' to rescue John Tracy. The Hood and his minions, led by Mullion and Transom, take over the island's command centre, imprisoning the Tracys in ''Thunderbird 5'' as their oxygen runs out. The Hood reveals that he plans to use the ''Thunderbirds'' to rob ten of the major banks of the world, thus plunging the world's monetary system into chaos. The IR organization will be blamed and disgraced for it. Alan, Fermat and their friend Tin-Tin, Kyrano's daughter and Alan's crush, use a ventilation shaft to reach the Thunderbird silos. Fermat removes '' Thunderbird 2''s guidance chip, delaying the Hood's plan, and the teenagers flee into the island's jungle.

While traversing the jungle to find the island's remote transmitter, Tin-Tin displays psychic powers like her uncle. Alan insists on confronting the villains, but Jeff tells them to wait for Lady Penelope's arrival. The trio flees from Mullion and his men, but Fermat and Tin-Tin are captured when Alan tries to tow them to safety on hovercraft, after their riding compartment falls off. Lady Penelope and Parker arrive, engaging the Hood's minions in combat, but the Hood defeats them with his powers. When Alan appears, the Hood forces him to give up the guidance chip and locks him and the others in the compound's walk-in freezer. The Hood, Mullion, and Transom pilot ''Thunderbird 2'' to London and use the Mole to sink a monorail line into the Thames and drill into the Bank of England’s vaults. Alan and company escape and contact Jeff and his older sons, who regain control ''Thunderbird 5''. While the adults set out to stop the Hood, the teenagers and Lady Penelope fly to London in ''Thunderbird 1''.

Arriving in London, Alan and Tin-Tin rescue a submerged monorail car using the aquatic '' Thunderbird 4'' before pursuing the Hood. Together, Fermat, Tin-Tin, and Parker defeat the Hood's henchmen. The Hood locks Jeff and Lady Penelope in a vault and challenges Alan to defeat him. Alan dangles from a catwalk over the Mole, but Tin-Tin appears, using her own powers to defeat the Hood. The Hood taunts Alan to let him die as his father did, but Alan, knowing that his father had in fact tried unsuccessfully to save the Hood, rescues him despite what he had done to them. The Hood and his minions are arrested, and International Rescue return to their island. Alan, Fermat, and Tin-Tin are inducted as official members of IR, and depart for their first mission.

Cast

* Brady Corbet as Alan Tracy, the 14-year-old main protagonist
* Bill Paxton as Jeff Tracy, the widowed father of Alan and his brothers
* Ben Kingsley as the Hood, Kyrano's half-brother, Tin-Tin's uncle, the movie's main antagonist
* Vanessa Hudgens as Tin-Tin, Alan's crush
* Soren Fulton as Fermat Hackenbacker, Alan's best friend
* Sophia Myles as Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, International Rescue's London agent
* Ron Cook as Aloysius Parker, Lady Penelope's butler/chauffeur
* Anthony Edwards as Ray "Brains" Hackenbacker, the engineer who created the Thunderbirds, Fermat's father
* Philip Winchester as Scott Tracy, Alan's oldest brother, aged 24, pilot of Thunderbird 1
* Lex Shrapnel as John Tracy, Alan's kind-hearted second oldest brother, aged 22, space monitor of Thunderbird 5
* Dominic Colenso as Virgil Tracy, Alan's third oldest brother, aged 20, pilot of Thunderbird 2
* Ben Torgersen as Gordon Tracy, Alan's fourth oldest brother, aged 18, astronaut of Thunderbird 3
* Bhasker Patel as Kyrano, Jeff's retainer and Tin-Tin's father
* Harvey Virdi as Onaha, Tin-Tin's mother
* Deobia Oparei as Mullion, one of the Hood's goons, a martial arts expert
* Rose Keegan as Transom, one of the Hood's goons, who has a crush on Brains

Production

Development

''Thunderbirds'' was the third theatrical release based upon the series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It was preceded by '' Thunderbirds Are Go'' in 1966 and '' Thunderbird 6'' in 1968, both films using the Supermarionation production techniques of the series.

Production of the film started in the mid-1990s when PolyGram Filmed Entertainment purchased the rights to the entire ITC Entertainment library, which included the original Thunderbirds series. Seeing the big-screen potential of the series, Peter Hewitt was signed on to direct, while Karey Kirkpatrick was signed on to write. While Hewitt was a lifelong fan of the series, Kirkpatrick was not, but watched all 32 episodes of the original series to immerse himself within the lore of the series. Hewitt and Kirkpatrick wrote a draft of the screenplay which was faithful to the series, but which they hoped would not alienate audiences who were unfamiliar with the franchise. Their script featured The Hood trying to steal Tracy Island's power core to power a device controlled by arch villain Thaddeus Stone, which would transfer all of Earth's gravity to the moon. After four drafts, Kirkpatrick left the project due to Working Title's concerns that the film would not play well in the US market. (Working Title was the unit of PolyGram, and later Universal Studios when that company in 1999 bought out PolyGram's assets, that produced films in Britain.) Hewitt also left the production shortly afterwards due to his dislike for the new direction the film was taking.

Hewitt was replaced by Jonathan Frakes, who was a big fan of the original series. whose credentials included another film in the science fiction family film genres, '' Clockstoppers''.

Mike Trim, who had worked on the original Thunderbirds show, was hired as a concept artist. Ultimately, his work, which included a design for an original pod vehicle named the "Telehandler", went unused.

Casting

The film was the first family film of Brady Corbet, who played protagonist Alan Tracy.

Bill Paxton took on the role of Alan's father, billionaire ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy. He had memories of watching the show as a child in Texas; a year before he was asked to join the film, he had been watching the show with his jetlagged family as it was the only English video he'd been able to find in Amsterdam. Of the role, Paxton said that he played "a kind of teacher, this father figure who has to teach his sons, particularly his youngest son Alan, these basic lessons of ethics and integrity, about doing the right thing". One reason that he was attracted to the role because it reminded him of 1960s non-profit vocationalism, and people "choosing life professions not for monetary gain but for something that would be good for their souls".

Ben Kingsley accepted the part of the Hood because his children were ''Thunderbirds'' fans and, having just finished with '' House of Sand and Fog'', he was ready for a more lighthearted role. He described himself as feeling "totally at home" on set, but joked that he should have kept the original Hood's voice.

Sophia Myles was cast as Lady Penelope, who would recall Frakes as "lovely", and having a "great, positive energy". Much of her dialogue (and Ron Cook's as Parker) was rewritten by Richard Curtis, as it wasn't thought to be funny enough. It was because of watching the film with his son that Steven Moffat offered Myles a role in Series 2 of Doctor Who.

Anthony Edwards was cast as Brains; he joined the production imagining it was a "silly little kids' movie", but was impressed by Frakes', and production designer John Beard's, "reverence" for the original series. He also recalled the producers hoping Gerry Anderson would be a part of the production; conversely, Jamie Anderson claims that Gerry was "kept at an arm's length" from the project, and that only in the final stages of post-production was he offered a large sum of money to promote the film, which he declined.

Filming and Post-production

Filming began on March 3^rd, 2003 at North Island in the Seychelles. An initial 7-day schedule became 10 days after unexpected rain interfered with the shoot, and Fulton, who played Fermat, had to try and avoid developing a tan. Throughout production Corbet was vocal about what he saw as flaws in the script; Corbet would go on to write and direct films of his own.

Filming later moved to Pinewood Studios and on-location shooting in London. Upon arriving in London, Paxton, in order to immerse himself in the role, invited Winchester, Colenso, Torgersen, Corbet and Shrapnel for a meal. Shrapnel would later recall the experience positively, calling Paxton a "great role model and a very dear friend".

A number of scenes were excised from the final cut of the film. A different opening was filmed, with Alan partaking in some kind of motorcycle race; footage was included in trailers for the film. FAB-1 was also intended to be fired at by missiles when approaching Tracy Island for the second time, upon which a pedalo life raft would deploy; footage of this is utilised for a comedic scene at the end of the film. Versions of both scenes are present in novelizations and tie-in books.

''Thunderbirds'' is dedicated to the memory of Stephen Lowen, a rigger on the film, who died in a fall whilst dismantling one of the sets.

Differences from the original

There are numerous changes from the original series. The Thunderbirds fleet, Tracy Island, and the International Rescue uniforms have all been redesigned; Tracy Island is now referred to by name in dialogue, as is the Hood. International Rescue is also referred to as "Thunderbirds" by the general public.

Numerous promotional materials described this version of Jeff Tracy as having set up International Rescue in the year 2010. As such, a common misconception is that the film's setting was changed to this year from the original's 2065 setting. Working trailers confirm that the actual events of the film take place in March of 2020, but the mistake was proliferated enough to impact merchandise.

In the original series, Alan and Tin-Tin are much closer to the age of the rest of the Tracy brothers. Fermat Hackenbacker and Onaha are new characters conceived for the film, with the latter taking the position of Grandma Tracy, who has been omitted from the film. The Kyrano change nationality in the film; they are Malaysian in the TV series but are depicted as being from India in the film.

Although the exact identities of the Thunderbirds remain secret, International Rescue now allows itself to be filmed and photographed on missions, which was forbidden in the original series. Episode 13.

Reception

Box office

''Thunderbirds'' grossed $28,283,637 worldwide, and with an estimated $57 million budget, the film was a box office bomb. Frakes attributed the film's box office failure to a combination of stiff competition from its contemporaries ''Shrek 2'' and ''Spider-Man 2'' and its poor critical reception.

Critical response

''Thunderbirds'' received negative reviews. Those familiar with the series tended to be more negative. Sukhdev Sandhu of ''The Daily Telegraph'' called it "a quite cretinous travesty of the original series", saying that the film lacks the TV series's romantic approach to technology (particularly mentioning its rushed version of the countdown to the Thunderbirds takeoff) and suffers from thin plotting and dialogue. He also regarded the entire trend of making films based on decades-old TV series as good-intentioned but misguided, arguing, "Those programmes can be seen on terrestrial and cable TV. They're available on DVD. They don't need reviving and updating." The ''Houston Chronicle''s Amy Biancolli similarly called the film a "rather breathtakingly misconceived attempt to revisit a vintage TV show that did not under any circumstances need to be revisited". She found the central character Alan "whiny and uninteresting", the script poor, the plot contrived and unsatisfying, and the acting wooden, though she noted that her three children enjoyed it much more than she did. She gave it a C−. Ian Freer, writing for ''Empire'', assessed that the film fails to either evoke nostalgia in the generation which watched ''Thunderbirds'' as children or provide snappy entertainment for the current generation of children. Like Sandhu, he felt the countdown sequence was so rushed that there is no sense of occasion to a Thunderbird taking to the sky. He also said that the child leads lack spirit and chemistry, and the adult characters suffer from excessive exposition and flat characterization. While he did praise Sophia Myles's performance and the vehicle designs, he considered the film an overall failure and gave it two out of five stars. On the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 19% "rotten" rating based on 106 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Live-action cartoon for kids." Critics widely described the film as a second-rate ''Spy Kids'' imitator.

During development, creator Gerry Anderson was invited to act as creative consultant, but was left out when the studio felt there were enough employees on the payroll acting as part of the creative team. The studio offered him $750,000 (£432,000) to attend the premiere but Anderson could not accept money from people he had not worked for. He eventually saw the film on DVD and was disappointed, declaring "It was disgraceful that such a huge amount of money was spent with people who had no idea what ''Thunderbirds'' was about and what made it tick." He also said that it was "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life".

Co-creator Sylvia Anderson, and the one responsible for character development, was given a private screening of the film and attended the London premiere. She expressed a far different opinion to that of her former husband, stating "I felt that I'd been on a wonderful ''Thunderbirds'' adventure. You, the fans, will I'm sure, appreciate the sensitive adaptation and I'm personally thrilled that the production team have paid us the great compliment of bringing to life our original concept for the big screen. If we had made it ourselves (and we have had over 30 years to do it!) we could not have improved on this new version. It is a great tribute to the original creative team who inspired the movie all those years ago. It was a personal thrill for me to see my characters come to life on the big screen."

Timed to coincide with the theatrical release of ''Thunderbirds'', the two prior films were released on DVD. The DVD versions of all three films include a number of extra features, including historical and production information.

Legacy

Though ''Thunderbirds'' has a negative reputation with many fans of the original franchise, cast members frequently speak about the film having devoted fans, especially those who were children when the film was released. The film is occasionally critically reassessed, and castmembers frequently praise their time working on the film; Sophia Myles has said "It was amazing ... I only have the fondest of memories of making that film, ndquite frankly I don't really care what anyone else thought ... for me it was one of the best times of my life." Dominic Colenso, who moved to a career as a communications expert, often describes himself as a "Former Thunderbird".

A 60-foot model of Thunderbird 3, based on Dominic Lavery's design for the film, was created to market it, and stood in Trafalgar Square close to the film's release. It was subsequently displayed in Blackpool (at one point being decorated with images from Pablo Picasso's ''Guernica'') until early 2008, when it was purchased by Eastern Airways; at present it remains on display at Humberside Airport.

Soundtrack

* " Thunderbirds Are Go" – performed by Busted

References

Primary sources

Secondary sources

Further reading

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Thunderbirds
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