ThomasNATION Reviews - A Wonderful World
September 30, 2023
For as long as anyone can remember, the Island of Sodor has been the home of the North Western Railway with engines of all shapes and sizes working hard to deliver goods and passengers to their destinations. Sodor truly is a wonderful world and if you ever need a definitive example of how, I would highly recommend the opening titles sequence to the 2015 full-length special 'The Adventure Begins'. Considering that this was the movie that pretty much started everything for people who have never seen Thomas before, they took what could've likely started out with the narrator introducing Sodor talking about how it's coated in railway lines and the engines that work on it but instead went in a completely different direction and they just showed it. The splendor of this intro is just so amazing to many longtime fans, and some would argue it's one of their favorite parts of the whole movie, if not their favorite. It truly captured what makes Sodor so iconic.
But speaking of seeing what makes Sodor such a wonderful world, that makes a perfect segue into today's episode which has Nia showing both Thomas and Diesel how much unique beauty exists on Sodor when they need plants to beautify a plaza in Vicarstown and as much as I didn't want to invoke his name, I think my main problem with 'A Wonderful World' as well as the All Engines Go reboot's version of Sodor which you can argue could also sum up just about the entirety of the 'Big World, Big Adventures' rebrand can be summed up in this quote by the Nostalgia Critic from his 'Thomas and the Magic Railroad' review: "what's so weird about it is that there's nothing really magical about Sodor except for the fact that the trains talk, wouldn't it make more sense just to have it all take place in one world? Why not just have a world where trains talk and that's it, why have the real world in it at all?" Really think about it - if you were to remove the 'talking trains' element about Thomas the Tank Engine completely from the franchise, is there really anything of note that makes Sodor any different from the real world? What only adds to this is how compared to the original Thomas & Friends series which had mostly British culture, Sodor is far more diverse in All Engines Go such as the inclusion of High Desert and the presence of architecture from various different countries like McColl Farm's barn being loosely based off an American barn.
So yeeeah, if you couldn't already tell, I'm not the biggest fan of 'A Wonderful World'. It may have an interesting concept, don't get me wrong but did it have to come at the cost of realizing that the Island of Sodor would be a lot less magical without the talking trains that make it so special? I don't think so, and for that unfortunately earns 'A Wonderful World' a less than wonderful rating of a 2.5/5.
Final Rating: 2.5/5
About the Author: True Blue
0 comments