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By Jonathan Klotz
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Science fiction is a way for creative people to predict how problems today will look through the lens of the future. Gene Giftenberry created Star Trek: The original series In 1966 to be west in the space where humanity was united in a utopian view of the future, but a few years earlier, across the Atlantic in England, married couple Gerry and Sylvia Anderson worked the future series about making the earth a better place. While the resulting series, Thunderbirdsrelating to a family leading rescue missions worldwide using advanced technology, it is best to remember it because all character is a puppet.
Thunderbirds goes
That’s right, Thunderbirds With no human performers on screen, with everyone from the heroic family Tracy to the villain hood, played by skilled puppetors and voice actors. Each puppet had several heads to convey different facial phrases, several volatile parts, and could weigh up to 300 lbs at their full uniform and assemble. The most striking sport was how the puppets were synchronized to the voice actors by using magnetic tape and an electromagnetic switch at the end and over the sound waves into electrical stimuli, which would then move a lever in the lower jaw to emulate a speech.
As impressive as the puppetry was, and still the other part of Thunderbirds He was in agreement with a generation of their own striking birds: five advanced vehicles referred to by number, trialled by one of the sons of inventor Jeff Tracy, which includes a submarine (4), a space station monitoring system (5), Hypersonic aircraft (1), 1) a huge aircraft carrier (20), and 3). Long, chilling shots over the extremely detailed vehicles took a good piece of runtime of each episode, but not only nobody complained, he helped set up a tradition of reusing impressive launch sequences used in later shows, including Voltron. Power Rangers, and Paw patrol.
Sci-Fi show for saving lives
Thunderbirds not just technical wondersThe plots pushed the envelope by allowing international rescue, the Tracy Foundation, to live up to its name, and each chapter focused on a rescue mission. Granted, many of those rescues were the result of the bad hood’s machinations as he tried to treat markets and make himself a dirty rich, and Tracy’s family alliance, Lady Penelope, was a wealthy senior spy solving mysteries alongside his Aloysius butler, but the magnifying glass always ended on their tarany vehicle. The only modern equivalent is, of all things, Paw patrolwho also leaves violence out and most of the crime (although you know that chicken is good for nothing), to focus on using advanced technology to save lives, not take them.
Almost all sci-fi A series of the last 30 years involves violence and conflict, and that is what makes the Thunderbirds’ Success, as a primarily non -demanding show, even more impressive. Challenging expectations, the series went on to become popular in its native England and the rest of the Commonwealth, but also in the United States and amazingly, Japan, where the International Rescue Institute would influence science patrol Ultraman and the vehicles themselves helped plant the seeds of the later anime mecha boom, including Neon Genesis Evangelism and Gundam. In fact, the show is so dear that even the modern repeat became a success.
The re -making was popular
Thunderbirds goesRedoing Hybrid CGI/Live-Act 2015, the series updated for the modern age, lasting three seasons and 78 chapters that it identified with modern children and kept the spirit of the original series alive. Before he died in 2012, Gerry Anderson gave his blessing to the redo, and again, the focus was on using the Thunderbirds to perform bold, high-tech rescue, including, in the final season, a deeply elaborate space saving that pushed the machines and the Tracy boys higher, further, and faster and faster than ever before.
Between the original repeat and the modern -making, Thunderbirds Keep him alive as a pop culture direction thanks to Matt Parker and Trey Stone’s American team: World Policewhich caused the puppetry on the big screen, but the series was released on VHS, DVD, and Alter, Blu-ray, keeping it accessible for each generation. Well, that, and the forgotten live-action in 2004, directed by Jonathan Frakes and starred Bill Paxton Like Jeff Tracy, Ben Kingsley as the hood, and Vanessa Hudgens as Tin-Tin, the team’s mechanic. In an interview with the Guardian, Gerry Anderson referred to the film as “in fact, this was the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my life.”
Thunderbirds is still amazing today
The film failed to live, and well deservedly, because he left the work of the original puppetry of the original and was a generic action film, though again, with a greater focus on non-violent than even children-friendly sci-fi films. Even today, Thunderbirds Standing out because of how many miles the production team got out of a cast of pumpets and elaborate, real -world models. It is a testament to creativity and, unlike most modern sci-fi, it also dares to predict a future where technology is used to save lives, and amazingly, there are people who will do the right thing because that’s the right thing to do.
Each chapter of ThunderbirdsIncluding the iconic, award -winning theme song, streaming on Peacock.
