n the midst of summer's typical spate of adult-oriented action blockbusters, there finally comes an entry that can actually be enjoyed by the entire family: Thunderbirds. Starring Bill Paxton (Frailty), Brady Corbet (Thirteen), Anthony Edwards (TV's ER), Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast) and a host of rambunctious pre-teens, the film brings to flesh-and-blood life the world of Gerry Anderson's superlative "Supermarionation" characters, while offering an all-new story that is sure to win their universe a whole new host of devotees.
Director Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek: Insurrection), along with Corbet and fellow kid actors Soren Fulton (Van Wilder) and Vanessa Anne Hudgens (Thirteen), recently spoke to Science Fiction Weekly (all at the same time, no less) about the experience of bringing Anderson's world to life, trafficking between kid-oriented and exclusively adult fare and creating a new action franchise that's suitable for all ages.
Jonathan, this is your second family movie in a row (after Clockstoppers). Does this kind of material appeal more to you now?
Frakes: There are worse fates, aren't there? I don't think this is all a kids' movie, it just happens to star three great young adults. I think the idea of hiring somebody who had done visual-effects movies and had worked with kids was not lost on Universal. I have a lot of kid in me, and I have kids of my own, and I like the energy. So it's not a bad lot.
What challenges were there for the young actors in terms of interacting with CGI?
Frakes: These guys learned the technique easily.
Fulton: I love green screen. It wasn't too hard for me, because I've got a really big imagination. I read a lot of books. It's just like a little bubble inside of my head, like those thought bubbles when you're picturing everything. That's what I do.
Frakes: We're also lucky because we developed a lot of what the movie was going to look like in preproduction, so I was able to share with these guys what would be in the FAB 1, what would be out the window of the spaceship, out of the cockpits, what the silos would look like. The visual-effects team would come to our rehearsals and then come when we were preparing to shoot, and there were visual stimulants that would help us. It was more of a tone of what's going on; the movement. That you have to pretend to be moving when you're not is always a challenge.
What were your experiences with Ben Kingsley, who play the villainous Hood, like on the set?
Fulton: I was a little afraid of him at first. I remember one time we were shooting in the Thunder One silo and he's like, "If this shot's going to work, it all depends on you." I was like, "OK" [nervously]. But I guess I made it work, because it's in the film.
Hudgens: No, I remember when you were intimidated to go down and get his signature.
Fulton: I got my script all signed with all sorts of people. I wanted all the actors, and after awhile Vanessa's like, "Go ask him."
Hudgens: And he wouldn't go, so I had to grab him and pull him down the stairs because he wasn't doing anything. I really didn't get to know [Ben] that much. He seems like a great guy, and the times that I talked to him he was just amazing.
Frakes: He's fabulous. He came in to meet me, we offered him the part, and we're thrilled that he took it. He came in with the timing of having just done Sexy Beast and House of Sand and Fog and it was the gift that we got, because he was ready to drop some of that emotional, exhausting, suicidal, painful acting that he'd been doing and embrace a family film. His kids also helped us, because they encouraged him, because they were Thunderbirds fans and they encouraged him to play The Hood. He also does a great Patrick Stewart impersonation, which wasn't lost on me.
He's from that wonderful school of actors who have come up from the theater and when they show up in the morning, they're in costume, they're in makeup, they come to the set and they're ready to go and game for anything. He was a treat to have in the film, he was a treat to work with, and he's a genius, so I just had to point the camera in the right direction. And he played the Hood in this wonderful, mad way. As we were rehearsing, he was discovering, as we all discovered together, that the character was a few bricks short of a load. He began to physicalize some of that, sort of; the revenge is there, the sinister anger of the character is there, but there was also a madness in the performance that is just delicious.
Corbet: I was always on completely cordial terms, but I didn't get to know him particularly well outside of the working environment. But he was always really lovely. I've seen him a lot since, and it was just incredible to be working with such a legend. I've been a film junkie my whole life, I've grown up watching him, and so it was—I don't know, it was particularly incredible for me.
Frakes: He loves the craft, and he's one of those guys that reminds you why you're doing it, because he really still loves what he does, and I think that shows.
Were all of the members of the cast and crew familiar with Thunderbirds culture before signing on to the film?
Frakes: I wasn't.
Corbet: I was. I'm a bit of an insomniac, so I don't sleep very much, and it comes on at like 3 a.m. on Tech TV now. But it was always on my periphery, that kind of thing.
Frakes: Did you see it when you were a kid in Europe?
Corbet: No, I didn't see it when I was a really little kid. I've probably seen it in the past three years, but I've always known what it was, and people always kind of made jokes about all of it, but I don't think I'd ever seen an entire episode. Maybe one entire episode, or two.
Fulton: I thought it was a car.
Frakes: It's a nice car. Marionettes and "supermarionation" wasn't on my radar when I was a kid.
Is there any concern that the film's target audience isn't familiar with the source material?
Frakes: No, not at all. One of the things about making a film like this is that for an audience who knows the Thunderbirds, all of their precious icons are in the film, and for an audience who doesn't know the Thunderbirds, they get to go on this adventure with this international rescue organization. It was very much like the Star Trek movies. If you didn't know anything about Star Trek and you went to see First Contact, for instance, you needn't know anything about any of these people, and you get introduced to them. So you make a great family adventure fantasy film that just happens to be about the Thunderbirds, in much the same way as the Star Trek films. I don't think there is any need to know about them. Plus, to be perfectly frank with you, the memory of the original Thunderbirds is better than going back and sitting through an hour of them.
So that's why you decided against a lot of expository dialogue at the beginning of the film?
Frakes: Just dove right in, yeah, exactly.
Brady, do you agree that the memory of them is better than the actual experience?
Corbet: Not entirely. It's something I appreciate, and it's something that, as a kid, it totally would have captured my imagination. I loved Jim Henson, I loved the Muppets, I grew up with Labyrinth and all that, so to me it's not massively different than that. It's not wacky and crazy, it's kind of stern. It's something that I appreciate more than enjoy, but I'm not really into sci-fi anyway.
Frakes: Oh, you will be. I was the same way. I said the same things in the '80s.
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Also in this issue:
The cast and crew of The Manchurian Candidate
