Post by RedKing on Oct 5, 2006 9:03:09 GMT -8
I just watched both Thunderbirds movies and enjoyed them immensely. Thunderbirds Are Go is almost all action while Thunderbird 6 is more character driven and oddly, Thunderbird 4, the underwater vehicle, doesn’t get to be used in either film! Thunderbirds Are Go’s real showcase is the Zero X Mars exploration ship, and it’s a real triumph for Gerry’s design and effects team. Dwarfing even the huge Thunderbird 2 Zero X and it’s crew probably could have carried their own series. They did in fact have their own strip in the Gerry Anderson oriented 60s weekly comic book TV 21. TV 21, to get off subject for a moment, was a neat book as each week it presented not only very well drawn comic strips based on Anderson shows like FIREBALL XL%,STINGRAY,THUNDERBIRDS and CAPTAIN SCARLET, but it linked each series together into a cohesive universe where all these shows and characters existed at the same time. They also had spin-off strips for Lady Penelope, Zero X and Captain Scarlet’s all female jet fighter squad the Angels. However, this comic is also the start of the erroneous time placement of THUNDERBIRDS. All of Anderson’s other shows took place roughly 100 years from when they were made-the 2060s, but THUNDERBIRDS takes place in the 2020s as a newspaper in the last episode-GIVE OR TAKE A MILLION has a date of December 2026. The TV21 writers just jumped the T-Birds ahead 40 years so they could take place along with the other show’s strips. They also ended up with continuity problems about Mars as they had their own original strip based on Anderson ideas about a secret agent operating from a Martian colony in the 2040s(this guy was the supposed person that answered fan letters in the letters page and his strip was supposed to be his memoirs) but then with THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO’s Zero-X mission and CAPTAIN SCARLET’s exploration mission discovering the Mysterons base on a supposed deserted planet, they had to backpedal to explain how a Martian colony existed for at least 20 years prior to the incidents in the Thunderbirds movie and Captain Scarlet. Anyways, back to the actual movies! THUNDERBIRD 6 also features a new vehicle-the futuristic airship Skyship 1 which instead of running on lighter than air gasses like old airships, uses an antigravity system. Of course the entire ship was designed by Brains. The movie also introduces a new Thunderbird-Thunderbird 6 of the title. After designing several models for proposed vehicles, the new Thunderbird is finally revealed as an old Tigermoth biplane that was used to safely get everyone of the doomed SkyShip 1! The marionettes in both movies were newly created and not the ones from the series as the series had actually stopped production by the time the first movie was filmed. Also in between the films, they also made the last 6 episodes of the series, constituting the very short second season. I never ceased to be amazed at just how life-like and believable the Anderson marionettes are. They come across as real people both from the excellent puppet work and the great voice acting for each character. It’s always funny to see them drinking smoking or, as in THUNDERBIRD 6, seeing puppets being shot and killed! The other big component to the films, the hardware and special effects are just superb! I love the designs of the Thunderbirds and all the other vehicles and Derek Meddings miniature work is great-definitely on par with the similar work being done at Toho and Tsuburaya at the same time. Each movie also has some great pyrotechnic scenes of huge explosions that are simply mind boggling. Sylvia even says on the commentary track she’s surprised they never blew the whole studio sky-high! The discs for these movies also have some great extras-both original trailers, featurettes on the making of them and feature commentaries from Sylvia Anderson and director David Lane as well as magnificent widescreen prints!
