Thunderbirds is a 2004 British-American-French science-fiction comedy action-adventure film based on the 1960s television series of the same name, directed by Jonathan Frakes.
The film, written by William Osborne and Michael McCullers, was released on 24 July 2004 in the United Kingdom and 30 July 2004 in the United States, with later opening dates in other countries. Whereas the original TV series used a form of puppetry termed "Supermarionation", the film's characters are portrayed by live-action actors.
Thunderbirds received mainly negative reviews, and was a box office bomb. The creator of the original series Gerry Anderson disliked the film calling it "the biggest load of crap I've seen in my entire life"
However 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[]
In 2010, the Tracy family, led by widowed former astronaut Jeff Tracy, operate International Rescue (IR), a secret organisation that aids those in need during disasters using technologically advanced machines called Thunderbirds, operating out of Tracy Island in the South Pacific. His youngest son Alan attends Wharton Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts, with his best friend Fermat Hackenbacker, son of the Thunderbirds' resident engineer Brains, and dreams of being a Thunderbird pilot like his older brothers Scott, John, Virgil, and Gordon.
IR agent Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward and her valet, Aloysius Parker, return Alan and Fermat to Tracy Island for spring break, where they are reunited with their friend Tin-Tin – the daughter of the Tracy family butler, Kyrano, but Alan is grounded shortly after arrival for trying to launch Thunderbird 1 without first activating its anti-detection shield. Unbeknownst to the inhabitants of Tracy Island, the Hood, a psychic criminal mastermind, had one of his accomplices plant a tracking beacon on the hull of Thunderbird 1 during a recent rescue on an oil rig, leading him to the base of International Rescue. Off shore from a submarine, the Hood fires a missile into space at the orbiting Thunderbird 5, cutting off all of IR's communications and leaving space monitor John in peril. Jeff, Scott, Virgil and Gordon go to rescue John in Thunderbird 3, but the Hood and his team take over the island's command centre and shut off power to Thunderbird 5, trapping them all inside.
The Hood reveals that during one of International Rescue's first operations, Jeff abandoned him in a collapsing illegal diamond mine, but rescued his half-brother, Kyrano. As revenge, he plans to use Thunderbird 2 to rob ten of the world's major banks, thus plunging the international monetary system into chaos, with International Rescue held responsible and disgraced. Fermat removes Thunderbird 2's guidance chip, delaying the Hood's plan, and Alan contacts Jeff with its remote transmitter, insisting on confronting the Hood. Lady Penelope and Parker receive a distress signal from Tracy Island and fly there in FAB 1, where they engage the Hood's minions in combat, but the Hood defeats them with his psychic powers. He then makes Alan give up the guidance chip by threatening to hurt his captured friends, Alan complies and they are all locked in the compound's walk-in freezer.
The Hood and his minions pilot the now-repaired 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 restore power to Thunderbird 5 before setting off in pursuit of the Hood in Thunderbird 1. Arriving in London, Alan and Tin-Tin rescue the submerged monorail car using Thunderbird 4 before pursuing the Hood. The rest of the Tracy family return from space in Thunderbird 3 and confront the Hood at the Bank, where he captures Jeff and Lady Penelope and challenges Alan to defeat him. While Alan fights the Hood on a catwalk over the moving drill of the Mole, the Hood is defeated by Tin-Tin, who as his niece is also able to use his powers. The Hood taunts Alan to let him die as his father did, but Alan rescues him, knowing that his father had actually tried unsuccessfully to save the Hood. The Hood and his team are arrested and International Rescue return to their island, where Alan, Fermat, and Tin-Tin are inducted as official members of the team.
Cast[]
- Brady Corbet as Alan Tracy, the 14-year-old main protagonist, but at the end of the film, he became the pilot of Thunderbird 4
- Soren Fulton as Fermat Hackenbacker, Alan's best friend
- Vanessa Hudgens as Tin-Tin Belagant, Alan's crush
- Bill Paxton as Jeff Tracy, the widowed father of Alan and his brothers and the founder/leader of International Rescue
- Anthony Edwards as Ray "Brains" Hackenbacker, the engineer who created the Thunderbirds and Fermat's father
- Sophia Myles as Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, International Rescue's London agent
- Ron Cook as Aloysius Parker, Lady Penelope's butler/chauffeur
- Ben Kingsley as the Hood (real name Trangh Belagant), Kyrano's half-brother, Tin-Tin's uncle and the movie's main villain
- 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
- Philip Winchester as Scott Tracy, Alan's 24-year-old brother and the pilot of Thunderbird 1
- Lex Shrapnel as John Tracy, Alan's kind-hearted 22-year-old brother and the space monitor of Thunderbird 5
- Dominic Colenso as Virgil Tracy, Alan's 20-year-old brother and the pilot of Thunderbird 2
- Ben Torgersen as Gordon Tracy, Alan's 18-year-old brother and the astronaut of Thunderbird 3
- Bhasker Patel as Kyrano Belagant, Jeff's retainer and Tin-Tin's father
- Harvey Virdi as Onaha Belagant, Tin-Tin's mother
- Lou Hirsch as the Headmaster of Wharton Academy, the boarding school in Massachusetts that Alan and Fermat attend
- Demetri Goritsas as Chuck, an anchorman for the IWN News Network
- Genie Francis as Lisa Lowe, a reporter for the IWN News Network
Additionally, director Jonathan Frakes has an uncredited role as a police officer during the sequence in which the Hood and his minions are arrested.
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 commercial failure to a combination of stiff competition from its contemporaries Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2 and its poor critical reception. Stuart Kemp of The Hollywood Reporter suggested that it may have been due to lack of appeal for older audiences who remembered the TV original.
Critical response[]
Thunderbirds received negative reviews. 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."
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' 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 characterisation. While he did praise Sophia Myles' performance and the vehicle designs, he considered the film an overall failure and gave it two out of five stars. Roger Ebert noted, "You know, Thunderbirds was going to go on my list of the worst movies of the year, but it just wasn't good enough." 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 had 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 cast members 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, [and] quite 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 by ZenithOptimedia to market the film, 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.
Home media and television[]
The film was released on VHS and DVD in the UK by Universal Pictures Home Video on November 15, 2004.
On television in the UK, the film premiered on ITV1 on August 11, 2007. Despite the Motorola ITV Movies sponsorship ident package being taken out of rotation in 2006, the Motorola RazrV3X ITV Movies sponsorship idents are mistakenly used instead, despite 118 118 began to sponsor ITV1 Movies from March 2007.
Soundtrack[]
- "Thunderbirds Are Go" – performed by Busted
Aspect Ratio[]
- 1.14:1 (Open Matte film scan prints)