ThomasNATION Reviews - Roller Coasting
June 18, 2022
I'm sure you guys all know the story of 'All Engines Go'. Without going into too much detail, the fandom didn't react well to this new storytelling formula, and soon everywhere you went online, you'd see it: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you name it, they were ticked beyond belief. But now that the fandom's flames of hatred for this controversial reboot seem to have settled down for now and now that some time has passed since the first season wrapped up, are their views still valid? Let's find out as we dive into another episode of the confusing world of 'All Engines Go' with Roller Coasting.
ROLLER COASTING: Percy really wants to go on a rollercoaster so his friends Thomas, Kana and Nia work together to make it happen.
If you've been a fan of Thomas the Tank Engine for a long time now, you may remember the first full-length special that started an annual tradition by the name of 'Calling All Engines' which was made to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the franchise. And while it may not be the most memorable of the fourteen movies made from the original series, it did at least handle the concept of the 'steamies versus diesels' rivalry much better than it was a few years later in 'Day of the Diesels'. As if having a hurricane causing havoc on Sodor wasn't bad enough, the steam engines and diesel engines were fighting with each other so much to the point that no work was getting done and Sir Topham Hatt had to threaten them with the news that no holidaymakers would come to Sodor that year if they couldn't behave which resulted in several of the engines who were already feeling miserable to have worrying dreams about what might happen to them if they're not useful anymore from James being turned into a coconut shy at a funfair to Gordon and Edward being turned into a school playground and a scarecrow that Farmer McColl didn't even seem to care about. But among all of the engines, I think we can all agree that Percy had the worst dream of all as he dreamt that he had been turned into a roller coaster rattling up the rickety rails and all the way down again. As you can imagine, this was a really messed up sequence of the film that definitely scared the engines into proving themselves really useful again. But one can only wonder what happened to Percy when it comes to today's story, did that roller coaster ride of a nightmare from all those years ago end up scarring the little guy for life?
Well in order to give 'Roller Coasting' a proper review, I actually feel it a bit necessary to compare it to another episode from a completely different children's series that dealt with the exact same concept of 'fears of riding roller coasters' - that being the SpongeBob SquarePants fifth season episode 'Roller Cowards': I know that's probably not fair to All Engines Go but at the same time once I explain why I believe 'Roller Cowards' is one of my personal favorite post-movie episodes of SpongeBob, you'll probably understand why. So when it comes to my thoughts on 'Roller Cowards', the plot of the episode is actually really clever in that both SpongeBob and Patrick are afraid to go on the ride but neither of them knows each other is afraid so there's tension in the episode because they both wanna go on the ride to impress the other person and to support the other person. It's a really nice display of their friendship and it allows for there to be a lot of tension in this episode. That's what's really cool: you can feel it building, you can feel more and more pressure that they should go on this ride because the park is gonna be closing, because the ride just shut down, because this or that. The episode definitely has a really nice build-up and it ultimately makes you wonder 'are they actually gonna end up going on this ride'. As for my thoughts on 'Roller Cowards', the main thing that it has going for it is it playing with the concept of Percy's 'roller coaster' nightmare from 'Calling All Engines' and using it as an opportunity to not only teach their target demographic that it's okay to be afraid of things like roller coasters but also finding creative ways that you can help kids overcome those fears by turning into a fun adventure, and while it's handled very well in my opinion, I feel like it would've been a lot more impactful if this wasn't a television series based around talking trains 'cause I know that the concept of trains riding roller coasters would definitely piss off many of those longtime fans.
For a situation that literally anyone can relate to including myself turned into an episode based around my childhood heroes, 'Roller Coasting' to me feels the same way as I do about the episode 'It Isn't The Mane Thing About You' from the seventh season of My Little Pony where the production team whether in the artists or the animators had this great idea of playing with Percy's roller coaster dream from 'Calling All Engines' but yet they kept thinking about if this could really work in the context of the series if they crafted a scenario around this concept by taking a sequence that lasted less than thirty seconds and working backwards until you've written everything up until that end result. Some of those things they did to work backwards towards that end result such as Cranky swinging Percy around on his hook to give the illusion of a loop-de-loop on a roller coaster like he's playing with a yo-yo is right up there with one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen from this reboot. Sorry to disappoint you, Thomas and Percy, but SpongeBob and Patrick were the true kings of the coaster today thus I'm gonna give 'Roller Coasting' a rating of a 3.5 out of 5; while a strange concept for an episode based around talking trains, it was still quite an enjoyable thrill ride.
Final Rating: 3.5/5
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