Watch Thunderbird 6 For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

As Good As It Gets

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

'Thunderbirds Are Go!' failed to set the box office alight in 1966 ( strange considering it was generally entertaining and afforded British fans the chance to see their favourite characters in colour ). But United Artists was convinced that there was a hit movie franchise in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's 'Supermarionation' television series, and gave the go-ahead for another colourful escapist fantasy. By this time, the show had ended, 'Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons' was in production ( with 'Joe 90' cleaning his spectacles in readiness for the 1968/69 season ). 'Thunderbird 6' is a rather different kettle of fish to its predecessor. The cod-disaster movie/sci-fi tone has been replaced by a much lighter approach, with a greater emphasis placed on 'Lady Penelope' and 'Parker'. Unlike 'T.A.G.' - which took ages to involve the Tracy family in the action - this has them on screen almost from the start. It opens with 'Brains' pitching a 'new' idea to a major aircraft corporation - an airship. The Board laughs at him, but decide to build it anyway. The result is 'Skyship One', and it takes off with Lady Penelope, Parker, and Alan Tracy aboard. Unbeknowest to them, the crew has been murdered and replaced by impostors, headed by the mysterious 'Black Phantom' ( the Hood under an alias ) who has bugged the ship, and is secretly taping Lady Penelope's every word in order to construct a fake message to lure International Rescue into a trap. Back on Tracy Island, Brains is going frantic trying to find a design for the proposed addition to the 'Thunderbird' fleet - 'Thunderbird 6'...This feels more like an episode of the series than its predecessor. No bad thing, of course. The regular characters get more to do, and there are some pleasing sequences where Lady Penelope enjoys her round-the-world trip, taking in such sights as the Pyramids of Egypt. Keith Wilson ( who sadly passed on last year ) produces some stunning sets - the games room with playing cards adorning the walls and huge chess pieces is like something out of 'The Avengers', while the gravity compensation room ( the setting for the climactic shoot-out ) is worthy of a James Bond film. The scene with the passenger-laden Tiger Moth flying over the countryside is breathtaking to watch even now. Unlike the first film - which got a big premiere in London - it sat on a shelf for several months, before creeping quietly into a cinema one Monday afternoon, where it was virtually ignored. The movies turned up on television eventually, and for a long time were the only 'Thunderbirds' available. Anderson made one more feature - the live action sci-fi drama 'Doppleganger' ( also known as 'Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun' ) starring Roy Thinnes and Ian Hendry. It fared little better. Jonathan Frakes' 2004 live-action feature 'Thunderbirds' might have stood a chance had it not committed the inexcusable error of snubbing Anderson.The final scene where 'Thunderbird 6' is revealed comes as no real surprise, but provides a nice sense of closure to the Tracy family's adventures. And has a positive message we would all do well to heed - that despite the myriad uses of modern technology, sometimes the old ways are the best. F.A.B.!

By the time this belated TV spin-off appeared, Captain Scarlet had come and gone and Thunderbirds was yesterday's news. Such was the shallow fickle values of us kids back in the 60's. I was very surprised to see this announced for production in TV TORNADO. I recall the vast amount of hype the original film received and assumed for years it had been a box-office success. However, the whole Anderson supermarionation empire was in its decline as fashions changed by the late 60's. Joe 90 was to appear to a less-than-rapturous reception and The Secret Service was virtually stillborn. At least Joe got his own comic and a Big Rat toy. All I recall of The Secret Service was a clip on Magpie and a Sweet cigarette picture card of the Rev Unwin. This might not have mattered so much if the Anderson's had learnt the lesson of the previous film. How many producers get the opportunity to make a sequel to a film that flopped? While the plot against the Tracey's by Black Phantom (is it really a suddenly vain toupeed Hood?) is a more satisfyingly personal drama as opposed to the Zero X launch, the whole plot is, again, a bog-standard TV episode dragged out with whimsical foreign interludes that exercised the model makers ingenuity but fatally kill any sense of pace. The finale of the Skyship delicately balanced on the aerial wrenches up the tension but is too little too late - and it drops onto a missile base for added pyrotechnic value. I recall some publicity being raised on national TV news by the live-action shots of the bi-plane roaring over an unfinished motorway. I suspect Anderson was more interested in these as a calling card to show he could handle live-action as opposed to puppetry so - like The Secret Service - this serves as a transitional film to the human-based melodramatics of the 70's with UFO and Space 1999. While Anderson could handle full-sized action, endowing his non-marionette figures with any breath of humanity often proved beyond him.

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.

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."