Thunderbirds ep 1-2

[ffutures]

Just got round to watching the recording from Saturday.

OK. Well. That was a little naff. The plot was about par for Thunderbirds, though not as complicated as it sometimes was, but the animation let it down badly. The cast are in uncanny valley territory (In particular everyone's hair looks like it's moulded and part of an action figure), and inertia seems to go bye-bye whenever it suits the animators - for example, Thunderbird 2 is supposed to be a massive machine, but the "loading a cargo pod" sequence which used to seem appropriate to something that massive is now compressed to a couple of seconds. The water effects in the first part of the story were also very poor, and looked like very small models very close to the surface, not huge machines well above it. Gerry Anderson could do considerably better many years ago.

I think kids will probably love it, but I'm just not convinced. Sorry if I raised anyone's hopes.

Comments

[uk-sef.livejournal.com]

For me, the bit they really destroyed from the original was the family element. They increased the pace and sheer quantity of the action at the expense of the down-time this-is-a-real-loving-family-with-side-interests component. Putting granny in a catsuit / tracksuit / spacesuit / uniform was a particularly poor choice for home life.

I thought they'd eliminated Tin-Tin as well as Kyrano but it seems more as though they've upgraded (and slightly merged) her character into being the new combat specialist while simultaneously pushing Alan even further back into teenager-hood in needing to have her as his baby-sitter. So it's neither a sequel (Jeff being MIA/dead) nor a prequel (like the recent film) to the original series.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It's not what I was hoping to see. I think I'll try a couple more episodes, if there isn't a big improvement I'll forget it.

Let's hope the Clangers relaunch is better!

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

I quite enjoyed it, though the pacing was off. I think sticking 2 episodes together made it uneven. Shame they could not have the longer episodes of the original, but that would have been highly unlikely today.
I did see the making of documentary, which made it clear that the look of the characters is deliberate, they were trying to emulate the look of the puppets in CGI, while allowing a bit more expression, and of course legs & feet which worked. They even worked very hard to match the skin tone finish of the puppets.
The oddest thing to me was the mix of model-work and CGI, it's jarring at first, but it worked for me. Made the look of the rescue scenes much more familiar, they even had a lemon squeezer on the wall of TB1 launch bay, just like on the original.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced, but I'll watch a couple more episodes.