Thunderbird 6 (1968)

Great Film overall

An unexpected masterpiece

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

if you watched this movie you're hopelessly shameless. if you even bother to remember this stuff you're probably kind of shameless too. my mother never heard of this and didn't even remember or know my brother and i were avid watchers and fans of this Saturday morning brain mush. i've even met other baby boomers who barely took note of this show and others who were embarrassed by it to the point of denial. so it's not retro nostalgia for everyone. this kind of thing is not always for everyone's taste.do i like this? well, yeah, i guess. but i'm not sure that my opinion isn't a little warped or damaged about movies like this. i was a brain washed kiddie consumer like most of my generation and i was always partial to cartoons and fantasy shows and TV shows with puppets.i think the main question to be asked of any cinema buff or student, is whether 'Supermarionation' is a pure cinema process that makes any real contribution to the techniques and art form of cinema. i mean nobody even uses marionettes in movies these days except in farce or to purposely freak people out. i don't even know how much i actually warm up to the technique here. when i was a child i was both strongly drawn and simultaneously repelled by the whole thing. the marionettes kind of scared me and i even remember having nightmares about this show. i guess i also equated the show a little with the whole 'Curse of the Doll People' thing.whether or not you find 'Supermarionation' disturbing or scary or just plain kitschy, this is the place it started and pretty much perfected it. the 'Marination' here is equally as good as the 'Team America' spoof decades later, but the plot and concept here are much simpler and corny. you do have to be somewhat "hardcore" to even like this.

Having just completed on working as an expert contractor on the production of "Airship One" – a revolutionary new airship – with a private airline company, Brains is tasked with performing his day job. Despite the thunderbirds generally able to cope with the problems facing them, and no other siblings to drive the bloody thing, Jeff Tracy decides he needs a new ship – Thunderbird 6. While Brains tries to design something without Tracy giving him even a hint of a spec to work from, Lady Penelope, Alan, Tin Tin and Parker are guests of honour on the maiden voyage of Airship One.I could criticise it on the basis of plot but that would be akin to clubbing a baby seal because, despite howlers in logic and such the story pretty much does what it is required to do in setting up various adventures for the Thunderbirds to get into. It has elements of bigger themes but seems happy just to stick to the basics and doesn't do anything that interesting and lacks any real excitement or tension. Of course this has something to do with the delivery which is, obviously, quite wooden. To fans though this is all part of the appeal and those that enjoy the series will find more of the same here and will enjoy it as such. Casual viewers will be distracted by it for its novelty value but (like me) may struggle to care enough to stick with it.The puppets are just what you expect and the models are good for their period – we're not talking Star Wars here but it has an unique feel that is unmistakably Gerry Anderson. Again it is not really fair to criticise it simply for being what I knew it would be so it did look good for what it was. The voice cast are solid enough but Finn (Tin-Tin) is the weakest of the lot, making her young woman sounds like some old woman in the post office.Overall though, you know what you are getting when you start this. It is a solid and dated affair which won't win over too many children nowadays but fans will enjoy it because it does just what the series did – if you liked that then you should like this.

The second Thunderbirds movie.The only way to watch this movie is with the commentary! Sylvia Anderson gives Gerry Anderson fans so many trivia bits about the puppet shows and live action shows of later years. But more importantly, she gives the thumbs up about a visit she made to Australia some time in the 1980s or 1990s.We get these showbiz types appearing around the world and I often suspect that they are just here for the money. End of story. Wrong. In the DVD Sylvia explains how she enjoyed Sydney and Perth and meeting the fans. She explains that she went on TV and radio in Oz (where was I? I missed it?) and she even remembers that Thunderbirds was in constant re-run in Oz at 6am. And she mentions Oz voice artists.As for the movie itself...just okay.

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."