Although "Thunderbirds Are GO" was hardly a box-office bonanza, "Thunderbird 6" came along a year or so later; this didn't set the cash registers a-jingling either, and to be honest it's not hard at all to see why.
Brains has invented a new airship called Skyship One, the inaugural voyage of which a lot of the film revolves around (with Lady Penelope, Alan, Parker, Tin Tin and villains aboard). Jeff Tracy is also convinced that International Rescue needs a Thunderbird 6, and the efforts of the bespectacled stammering one to devise one provide the movie with its best moments - Brains's frustration at Jeff's rejection of all his ideas result in the movie's sole real emotional involvement.
Like the previous movie, this was written by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, and it again demonstrates why they were right to let other people write the scripts for their small-screen ventures; it demonstrates a shocking lack of fidelity to the premise (on the TV show much was made of how the machines and their personnel had to be kept a secret; in the movie not only does everyone know about them, but Lady Penelope actually gets escorted to the Skyship by Thunderbirds 1 and 2!), it's surprisingly cold-blooded - more people are killed in this movie than in the entire run of the original show (we also get to see a series of corpses get dumped from Skyship One and plummet into the ocean. Nice...), and the climax involving the newly arrived Thunderbird 6 is a textbook example of how to drag out something way past the point of endurance.
Barry Gray's music is as good as ever, but the travelogue feel of a lot of the enterprise and the ultimate pointlessness of it all dooms it; if they needed a new craft, why not make it for one of Thunderbird 2's pods instead of a major ship? In "The Rugrats Movie," Didi has a child that stays with the family on the regular show; I hate to think of what would have happened had Century 21 produced a third series of "Thunderbirds" after "Thunderbird 6."
Brains has invented a new airship called Skyship One, the inaugural voyage of which a lot of the film revolves around (with Lady Penelope, Alan, Parker, Tin Tin and villains aboard). Jeff Tracy is also convinced that International Rescue needs a Thunderbird 6, and the efforts of the bespectacled stammering one to devise one provide the movie with its best moments - Brains's frustration at Jeff's rejection of all his ideas result in the movie's sole real emotional involvement.
Like the previous movie, this was written by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, and it again demonstrates why they were right to let other people write the scripts for their small-screen ventures; it demonstrates a shocking lack of fidelity to the premise (on the TV show much was made of how the machines and their personnel had to be kept a secret; in the movie not only does everyone know about them, but Lady Penelope actually gets escorted to the Skyship by Thunderbirds 1 and 2!), it's surprisingly cold-blooded - more people are killed in this movie than in the entire run of the original show (we also get to see a series of corpses get dumped from Skyship One and plummet into the ocean. Nice...), and the climax involving the newly arrived Thunderbird 6 is a textbook example of how to drag out something way past the point of endurance.
Barry Gray's music is as good as ever, but the travelogue feel of a lot of the enterprise and the ultimate pointlessness of it all dooms it; if they needed a new craft, why not make it for one of Thunderbird 2's pods instead of a major ship? In "The Rugrats Movie," Didi has a child that stays with the family on the regular show; I hate to think of what would have happened had Century 21 produced a third series of "Thunderbirds" after "Thunderbird 6."