ThomasNATION Movie Reviews - The Adventure Begins
November 06, 2021
When The Adventure Begins was announced, every Thomas fan was going crazy and…I won't lie, I was one of those fans going bananas right along with them because Andrew Brenner was going to be adapting the first two books of the Railway Series and turning it into a feature film to celebrate Thomas’ 70th anniversary. This alone had many fans both excited and nervous at the same time as many weren’t sure if they’d actually be able to pull this off. Did they succeed in making a faithful adaptation? Let’s take a look.
A new engine arrives on the North Western Railway to help Edward with the shunting of trucks and coaches in the yard for the bigger engines like Gordon and Henry; this engine being of course Thomas. The film follows Thomas on his quest to become a Really Useful Engine through his first few days on the island.
The story to this film is brilliant. This is the classic style of storytelling that the Rev. W. Awdry was famous for and Andrew Brenner did an outstanding job at staying true to the original stories while also making updates to improve on them-even down to word for word straight from the books. Take the story “Thomas’ Train/A Big Day for Thomas”, for example. In the original story, there was never a reason as to why Thomas left his coaches behind. However in The Adventure Begins, they actually gave us a reason; that being Thomas heard a guard’s whistle and believed it was his due to his excitement. With an awesome story like this, how could you possibly go wrong? Well…sadly they did and that was with the subplot involving Henry and his fear of the rain. Now I will give them credit for adapting Season 1’s “The Sad Story of Henry” as best as they could, but they forgot the main reason of why Henry’s afraid of the rain: it’s not because of an irrational fear like they let us believe, it’s because he’s afraid of ruining his paint and it ended up getting ruined anyway when he was bricked up in the tunnel…but at least they said the line “the rain will spoil my lovely green paint and red stripes”, so I have little to complain about there.
On top of that, the music was incredible. In fact, this is the first time that Peter Hartshorne got to compose the music and he did a phenomenal job in recreating the original themes by Mike O’Donnell and Junior Campbell as well as the classic series songs “Really Useful Engine” and “Troublesome Trucks”…and yes, I was singing along with the songs as they played - hell, I dare even say that these versions were just as good as the originals.
So, how can you top an awesome story and music? With tremendous animation, of course. Arc Productions is constantly improving with their animation for Thomas and they really outdid themselves here. Before we even see the engines, we get some beautiful aerial shots of the Island of Sodor and its locations like the fishing village and the countryside. And speaking of the engines, Arc really made them look and feel like the original models. But I know many fans aren’t happy with the fact that he wasn’t in his old shape like we were hoping he’d be. I know that we have train simulator games like Sodor Island 3D that have models of Henry in his old shape, but you guys have to remember that the animators at Arc used the models that Nitrogen Studios made from the live-action models and they don’t have a model of Henry in his old shape to work off of. So in my opinion, this can easily be forgiven.
Also, it feels so great to have the characters that we knew and loved as kids back to being their old selves again, not to mention the voice acting was really well done. Joseph May does a great job in his first outing as the famous tank engine, giving Thomas that young and cheeky voice to match his personality, so I give major kudos to him for a great performance. Also in my opinion, having Keith Wickham voice Sir Topham Hatt and Rob Rackstraw voice James instead of Kerry Shale doing them and Gordon was a seriously smart choice as…no offense to Kerry, but his voices for the three just sounded too similar to each other. But what surprised many fans is that they not only brought back the breakdown train and gave it a personality, but they also brought in a “Coffee Pot” engine and they actually took the time to explain the history of these engines. However, is there a dark side to the characters?
Sadly, yes, and that was how Gordon was portrayed. I get that Gordon is supposed to be a dignified pompous engine and I get that he’s not acquainted with Thomas being on Sodor, but here, he’s all-out...well, for a lack of a better term, racist to the little guy and does everything in his power to make sure that tank engines like Thomas stay a minority. And I thought James being a jerk in the last special was bad.
Andrew Brenner and the team at Arc Productions have far outdone themselves here as in my opinion, despite its faults, The Adventure Begins is a Thomas fan’s dream movie because watching this film was like reliving the nostalgic charm that Thomas The Tank Engine had on me as a kid in my adult body. Now before you go on saying that this special was nothing but fan pandering and that all I’ve been doing is praising it, I have good reasons to as this special in my opinion is a prime example of how much Andrew Brenner cares deeply about the Rev. W. Awdry’s legacy; his stories, his characters, and how much he really wants to bring Thomas back to his former glory because quite honestly in my opinion, this special is a perfectly written love letter to the fans, and as such, it earns a perfect 5 out of 5.
Final Rating: 5/5
About the Author: True Blue
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