Thunderbirds: the 2004 live action movie the fans didn’t want (film retrospective).

Whoosh! Here comes our damn fine Stan Fine’s look back in anger at Thunderbirds, the 2004 big-screen adaptation of the classic 1960s TV series, zooming in like a comet with all the grace of a freight train. Directed by Jonathan Frakes and featuring an ensemble cast that includes Bill Paxton (not to be confused with Bill Pullman, because that never happens), Sophia Myles, and Sir Ben Kingsley, this film took the beloved puppet series and turned it into a live-action, CGI-laden extravaganza.

The plot? Oh, it’s a doozy. We’ve got the Hood, a psychic criminal mastermind, making life difficult for the International Rescue (IR) team. He traps Jeff Tracy and four of his sons on board Thunderbird 5 and plans to use the other Thunderbirds vehicles for some nefarious heists. It’s up to Jeff’s youngest son, Alan, along with his friends Tin-Tin and Fermat, to thwart the Hood’s dastardly plan. The stakes? Only the fate of the world, or at least the Thunderbirds’ reputation.

Let’s talk about the transition from “Supermarionation” to live-action. The original series was famous for its marionette puppetry and scale-model effects, but the 2004 film decided that real humans and CGI were the way forward. The result? Well, let’s just say it was less ‘soaring through the sky’ and more ‘turbulence at 10,000 feet’.

Released in July 2004, the film was, to put it mildly, not a hit. Critics had a field day bemoaning its wooden characters (ironic, given the original series used actual wooden puppets) and a plot so thin you could use it as tracing paper. Even Gerry Anderson, the creator of the original series, described the film as “the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life”. Ouch. Sylvia Anderson, however, thought it was a “great tribute” to the series. Talk about differing family opinions!

As for the soundtrack, we’ve got “Thunderbirds Are Go” by Busted blasting to the top of the UK Singles Chart, proving that maybe the film’s music was its saving grace. Or maybe people just really like songs with “go” in the title.

Now, let’s dive into the casting pool. Bill Paxton, not Pullman (it’s important to stress this), plays Jeff Tracy, the widowed father leading the IR team. Anthony Edwards stars as the genius Brains, and Vanessa Anne Hudgens appears before her High School Musical fame. And let’s not forget Oscar winner Sir Ben Kingsley, bringing his A-game to the role of the villainous Hood.

Production of the film was like assembling a complicated Lego set without instructions. It started in the mid-1990s, and went through various script changes and director swaps. Frakes, a fan of the original series, took the helm, hoping to steer this ship to nostalgic shores. The film’s design, while ambitious, ultimately didn’t quite capture the charm of the original series’ models and puppets.

Filming was an international affair, hopping from the Seychelles to London, with a pit stop at Pinewood Studios. They even managed to shoot a few scenes before someone remembered they needed to apply sunscreen.

In the end, Thunderbirds is a fascinating study in how not to adapt a beloved series. It’s like taking your grandma’s famous cookie recipe and deciding it could use some extra pickles. Despite the film’s attempt to fly high, it ended up getting lost in the storm of adapting nostalgia to the modern screen. But hey, at least we got a catchy tune and some memorable quotes out of it. So, in the immortal words of the Thunderbirds: 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… maybe some things are better left as cherished childhood memories.