The 21st-century Thunderbirds are go.

The new movie is a risky project that turns the 1960s British TV series -- which featured marionettes and was shot in what the filmmakers playfully called "supermarionation" -- into a live-action Hollywood adventure movie for children.

The risk is hoping that the cultish adult followers of the original sci-fi series, and the children who still find it in syndication or on DVD four decades later, will show up in sufficient numbers. In addition, to make Thunderbirds into a 2004 summer success, the filmmakers need to find a new audience of people who have never heard of the mega-rich Tracy Family and their pet project, International Rescue.

"I think you've got a lovely film here aimed at a young audience," the esteemed British actor, Sir Ben Kingsley, says in a Los Angeles interview. With relish and a little hot-dogging, Kingsley co-stars in Thunderbirds as the arch villain and Tracy Family nemesis, The Hood.

"It's so polished and brand-new and there's nothing secondhand or lazy about it," Kingsley says of the new movie, which he likens to a gift being opened by a child on Christmas Day. "It shines and smells with newness."

At the helm is Jonathan Frakes, best known for spending 15 years on TV as Commander William T. Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Nemesis. He also played the role in Star Trek movies and, employing his distinctive soothing voice, on video games.

"I think he was the perfect director for this project because I think he was really committed to making a lovely film for young people," Kingsley says.

Frakes, who launched his directorial career in 1987 on Star Trek episodes, has also directed three features: Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection and Clockstoppers.

As a director, Frakes feels more vulnerable than he ever did as an actor, he tells the Toronto Sun in a Los Angeles interview. "There's a lot more at stake," Frakes allows of his state of mind as Thunderbirds blasts off.

"When you're working as an actor, you're only -- well, not only -- but you're concerned primarily about your arc in the story and your interaction with the partners that you work with. You want people to like your movie but you're concerned primarily with how they react to you.

"But, when you're working as a director, you have all the pre-production during which you hopefully have everything prepared properly so that, when you get to the set, you're ready to shoot. I think there's much more involvement. You get to tell the story but you also get to immerse yourself, in this case for a couple of years, in a project. So it's your baby!"

This baby stars Bill Paxton as the former American astronaut and billionaire head of the Tracy clan, which, in the year 2010, is devoted to international rescue operations. In their hi-tech spaceships and rocket planes, the Tracy's can buzz off their secret island resort home in the South Pacific and show up in minutes anywhere around Planet Earth or in near-space. The central theme in the new movie is that the youngest Tracy (Brady Corbett) is still a teenager in school but he yearns to fly with his father and brothers on their death-defying missions. Like the children in the Spy Kids franchise, he hooks up with his pals Fermet (Soren Fulton) and Tin-Tin (Vanessa Anne Hudgens) when The Hood's dastardly plans throw the Tracys into danger. This is a coming-of-age saga for a young man and his comrades.

"It's an interesting arena, the whole family-picture (genre)," says Frakes, who has directed nothing but in his career behind the camera. "I found myself going in to get closeups of lines that you would never cover in an adult film. So I found myself (emphasizing) dialogue so that it would be underlined -- what the theme is or what the character wanted -- as opposed to doing it with a meaningful look or in a more elegant, more obtuse way."

The target for Thunderbirds is children, especially seven-year-old boys, says Frakes.

"You've got to spell it out," he says, "and I think that's one of the things that makes intelligent, experienced moviegoers roll their eyes a little bit at a family movie, because you've got a responsibility that the seven-year-old not be confused. If the seven-year-old is confused and you lose him for part of the movie, you've lost your core audience.

"We all, as adults, get so many things, if we're awake and aware. And to overstate them and to underline them the way you need to do in a kids' movie, is sometimes a little frustrating, as you can imagine."

It helped soothe Frakes' own frustration that he got to attract Kingsley to the project, despite the movie's low-end budget. "It's interesting what he has added to us," Frakes says. "There is a certain gravitas which comes with having Sir Ben Kingsley in a picture -- period. But to have him in a family film, it is such a blast. It really raises people's eyebrows: 'Hmmmm, he's in this movie? Ben Kingsley? Gandhi's in this film?' It's heightened the expectations and I think it will let people realize that it's not just a kids' movie."

The friendly Frakes is not dissing his own picture and certainly not his kid actors but you quickly get the idea that he wants to do something more, something substantial and something adult-oriented as a filmmaker. He laments, in his own way, that he is as typecast as a director as he is as a Star Trek actor.

'CERTAIN EASE'

"I was lucky enough to learn how to direct on the show (Star Trek) and was really blessed that my first movie, First Contact, was a great script and it turned into a wonderful movie," says Frakes. "It's been a very interesting ride doing the visual-effects family pictures because it gives people -- producers or studios -- a certain ease if I'm involved, I think, because I know that area.

"Yet the idea that I would love to do a heist (picture) or a romantic comedy or a musical or a movie with no spaceships and no visual effects is a dream! But it's very hard to convince the powers that be. I'm hoping that soon, if not after this one then after the next one ...

"I have three projects that are now in different stages of development and negotiation and that sort of thing, two of which are not kid movies. So I'm thrilled at the possibilities. One of them is very much like The Sixth Sense, which I thought was brilliant.

"In the meantime, it's really not a bad gig. It's the best job in the world. I love it and I love the people you work with -- intelligent, funny, clever, interesting, interested. Ninety percent of the people in the business are lovely and the others you don't hire."

Thunderbirds movies are go on DVD

The new movie version of the Thunderbirds has to stand on its own and play to family audiences who have never even heard of the original, director Jonathan Frakes says.

"It just happens to be Thunderbirds," he says, noting that he never watched the 1960s British series growing up.

But Ben Kingsley's kids know the series, which is still in syndication almost 40 years its debut.

"Well," Kingsley says, "all my children watched it and I have a 16-year-old son who still has much of the memorabilia -- all the little badges you can pin on your baseball cap -- and he has a Thunderbird 2 alarm clock.

"So I have very fond memories of watching Thunderbirds with my children, in the same way that I have very fond memories of watching Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street."

The original Thunderbirds was created by British producer Gerry Anderson, 75. He says he was approached about working on the new movie, then told his services weren't required.

"I got a very short letter ... telling me that they had enough creative people on board and that they couldn't offer me anything," Anderson told The Belfast Telegraph. "And I thought, 'Right, that's the biggest insult I've ever had in my life.' "

Thunderbirds was a show filmed with marionettes on detailed miniature sets in what Anderson called "supermarionation." With colourful characters such as the Tracy family and pretty-in-pink superheroine Lady Penelope and her droll butler -- all of whom pop up in the live-action movie -- the show lasted for two seasons and then spun off into two widescreen movies, Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbird 6 (1968).

Both those movies, plus insights into the making of the original series and the movies, were released this week on DVD. The two-disc set is called Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds: International Rescue Edition. Both discs include enough extras to let you see first-hand how the miniatures were created and how the marionettes worked.

The two original movies are slow-moving, at least for modern audiences. It takes forever for the Mars spaceship to take off at the beginning of Thunderbirds Are Go, just so that the marionettes can be seen pushing buttons and pulling levers and the miniature spaceships can be shown off.

But, like in the 32 retro-future TV episodes, there is '60s high camp here, too, including a song by Cliff Richard and The Shadows, performed in outer space by marionettes.

Austin Powers would have loved it.


More Artists