Thunderbirds go go go go go go!

Yes, I watched the Thunderbirds movie! Okay, so a Thunderbirds movie, but does anyone want to talk about that live action thing?

In this movie (the last puppet based movie, now I've read the trivia), Brains helps design a new airship with anti-gravity technology (pro-tip: gravity doesn't work like in this movie). Immediately, it is taken over by the bad guys in an extremely long game that seems really pointless. The airship, with some members of International Rescue on board, take a two month sight seeing tour (so the bad guys are posing as captain and stewards the entire time - I'm sure "join the bad guys and be a waiter" was an excellent recruiting strategy) while they record snippets of dialogue to fake a call to IR. Meanwhile Brains is working on designs for the new Thunderbird 6, but the fake message sees him get involved in the final climax in which the air ship is poised on top of a pole... and finally, we have the unveiling of the new Thunderbird 6!

As this is 90 minutes long, we get a chance that isn't part of the usual episodes... to have really long pointless scenes with nothing happening but a lot of padding shots of air craft flying around. This could easily have been trimmed down to a tighter paced movie, but they had shots of the models, and by damn they were going to use them!

Still, while I'm not a TB aficionado, it was nice to see them all in action, even if TB 3 and 4 only get mentioned in the opening, and 5 is a brief cameo. The action (when there is action) is well done, and these people certainly know how to get the puppets to do their things by now.

This may be 45 years old, but it still holds up, and indeed is better than, many of today's movies.

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