Even the most die-hard Thomas fan will be unhappy with this movie. The Thomas the Tank Engine series have been a great series that was great for both kids and adults. A classic franchise, almost every installment has always been composed with...
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Even the most die-hard Thomas fan will be unhappy with this movie. The Thomas the Tank Engine series have been a great series that was great for both kids and adults. A classic franchise, almost every installment has always been composed with quality. But we were getting a bit skeptical when thay decided to make a feature-lenght film based on Thomas the Tank Engine. The series has always been presented in story-book manner, with the narrator doing all the voices and explaining everything that is on-screen. It works very well, for video. But how will that go into a movie? Well, the movie is finally here, and no matter who you are, you are not going to like it. The movie is a disaster to the franchise. To be adapted to a film-format, every thing was overhauled to the worse, making very unconfrontable changes to the Thomas mythos. Instead of the Island of Sodor taking place in the golden-age of steam-engines (1940's), now the island takes place "in a magical world in a parallel dimension where trains can talk and have conversion and magic is everywere". What the heck were they thinking!?! Turning the whole franchise upside down just to make it more cliche is one of the worst things (nay, the worst!) you could do to the Thomas franchise. My as well kill of the franchise right here, right now. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, they did. The narrator has been replaced with real actors (at least Alec Baldwin reprises his role as the conductor) that are horrible. Most of the film is shot in green screen, with the live actors in front, and the background full of trains in the back. It works good enough, but it just doesn't feel right. Especially when the series has been using toy figurines as tradition. The actor are bad. The voices are bad (James sounds like a 5-year old!). The script is bad. Everything is bad. As for visuals, it's a mixed bag. A prime example is Thomas himself. They made three models of him, one a model train, one a life-size replica, and one a CGI model. When they transition the models from scene from scene, you can cleary tell the change. Sometimes, he is even a different change of blue! They reused the same songs from the TV/VHS series, which is annoying. For a somewhat healthy budget, they could had least made new songs. The live-action parts are very generic and unimpressive. With bland acting, bland colors, and bland locales,everything looks, well, bland. Just more hurt to injury. Now for the point. This movie sucks. Even if you are a fan of Thomas, don't see it. You won't like it. Parents can take their kids to it, becouse kids might not remember the movie very well, so that it won't ruin their experience for them. Hopefully the actual TV/VHS series won't take the same direction as this. Now let's just forget about this movie. Just forget it.