Thomas and the Magic Railroad

Thomas and the Magic Railroad is a 2000 British-American adventure fantasy film based on the British TV series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, The Railway Series by Reverend Wilbert Awdry, and the American TV series Shining Time Station. This was the first Thomas the Tank Engine feature-length movie. When the film was released, it was panned by critics and fans alike due to the acting, special effects, absence of Thomas, the underdevelopment of the human cast, the movie's plot, and lack of fidelity to the source material. The movie's budget was $19 million and grossed $19.7 million, making it a box-office bomb.

Plot
Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends are being threatened by diesel engines like the surly Diesel 10 and his sidekicks Splatter and Dodge. Even the magical Mr. Conductor, who has always traveled between the train world and the human world of Shining Time Station, is losing his powers and sparkle. In the middle of this crisis, Lily meets up with Mr. Conductor on the way to visit her lonely grandfather Burnett Stone. Brave Thomas reminds them all that "even little engines can do big things."

Bad Qualities

 * 1) False advertising for 2 reasons:
 * 2) * The biggest problem with this movie and why it got hugely brought down is that the title is incredibly misleading. While Thomas is the title character in this movie and does contribute to the plot, he gets very little screen-time with only 11 minutes  (and also his Friends), and only 12% of the film focuses on him. In fact, the movie could be written without him and literally nothing would change after all, as the movie focuses more on the human characters, both original and from Shining Time Station, rather than Thomas and his friends, this is because the test audiences thought that the audience didn't want screen time for the main characters anymore and focus more on something else. Here's a video dissecting how little screen-time he gets compared to literally 85 minutes in the movie. He only serves as a  plot device, not a character! 
 * 3) * One of the trailers shows P.T. Boomer included in the scene where Diesel 10 falls off the viaduct as it's collapsing, but he never appears anywhere in the movie due to him being cut from the final product after the trailer premiered everywhere (see further down...).
 * 4) ** There's also a problem with Thomas, he himself also doesn't get enough character development, resulting in him coming off as underdeveloped and difficult to relate to, unlike the show.
 * 5) Mediocre writing, even for the characters, that tries to be a step up to the show but fails.
 * 6) Neither Columbia (part of Sony which was the Home Video distributor for this movie), or Anchor Bay (the then-correct home distributor of the show) distributed this film.
 * 7) The premise for this movie is very poorly-written, highly confusing, extremely bland, boring, clichéd and generic that kids, teens and even adults wouldn't understand what's going on throughout the movie, that Thomas and his friends are getting attacked by diesels and Mr. Conductor is losing magic, that it feels more like a feature half-hour episode, just expanded for the most part (except real-life humans were part of it, we're not kidding), rather than being a real premise for a theatrical film adaptation based off a television show.
 * 8) Speaking of Thomas's friends, Edward, one of Thomas's closest friends, is absent in this movie. This infuriated fans because he was the first engine to be introduced in The Railway Series. His absence was due to his model not being finished on time.
 * 9) Poorly executed, obnoxious, underdeveloped and uninteresting characters (particularly the human cast). Mr. Conductor (Alec Baldwin) and Junior (Michael E. Rodgers) are decent characters though, but the rest of the live-action cast aren't that great.
 * 10) The movie can't decide if the main character is Thomas, Mr. Conductor, Lily or Burnett Stone.
 * 11) While the acting is alright, it still has its share of issues:
 * 12) * Peter Fonda sounds and looks really depressed and unenthusiastic in almost every scene he's in throughout the movie.
 * 13) * Lily (Mara Wilson's character) is a generic, one-dimensional, weakly-executed, clichéd, uninteresting, bland, and boring character who not only takes away the spotlight for Thomas the Tank Engine, but she also painfully under acts, with her mouth appearing to never be closed. Her acting could actually be comparable to that of Freddie Highmore in mh:greatestmovies: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In fact, this was her final film role before she stepped away from acting to focus on her writing career (though she has since returned for minor roles in television and web shows).
 * 14) * Didi Conn does a fine job reprising her role as Stacey Jones from Shining Time Station, though she only appears for a few minutes. However, in the dream sequence where she's in a deserted Shining Time, Didi sounds like she's reading off a cue card dangling from the camera.
 * 15) * Eddie Glen, while he does a decent job voicing Thomas, can sound annoying and out of place at times.
 * 16) * James' voice given by Susan Roman is just dreadful and awful as well, we're not lying, hear it for yourself and you'll be disgusted, it sounds way too feminine and unfitting for him to be a male character. In fact, her voice makes James sound so feminine, it makes Veronica Taylor and Sarah Natochenny (who voiced Ash Ketchum in Pokémon), Nancy Cartwright (who voices Bart in The Simpsons), and Debi Derryberry (who voices Jimmy Neutron and Draculaura from Monster High) look bad in comparison. He was originally going to be voiced by Michael Angelis (the UK narrator for the series at the time), but test audiences said he sounded "too old", as mentioned below.
 * 17) Executive Meddling: The movie was heavily altered due to negative feedback from test audiences, with many of these alterations negatively impacting the movie's quality.
 * 18) * The removal of P.T. Boomer, the film's original main antagonist. He was cut due to test audiences finding him too scary for younger viewers, but parts of his character were handed over to Diesel 10.
 * 19) * Removal of George the Steamroller, who was originally cast as one of Diesel 10's henchmen. Most of his scenes would've featured him destroying buffers and he would've tried to destroy the ones connected to the magic railroad. At the end of the movie, he would have redeemed himself by blocking Splatter and Dodge's way with a boulder.
 * 20) * Incorrect voice actor changes for Thomas and his friends (except for Lady, who is voiced by Britt Allcroft). All of them are voiced by Canadians with quick-and-dirty British accents, which feels like a serious miscast for them because Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends is a British children's television series. While many of the final film's voice actors are suitable enough for their characters and are mostly decent, James did not get lucky on this end. He and Percy were originally going to be voiced by the show's narrator for the UK dub of Seasons 3-16, the late Michael Angelis, but got replaced by Susan Roman and Linda Ballantyne, respectively, because of complaints about Angelis' voice sounding too old for the characters. Percy's final voice by Linda Ballantyne is decent and makes some sense since he's the youngest of the Steam Team, but James' final voice by Roman ended up sounding way too feminine for him.
 * 21) * Diesel 10's original voice actor, Keith Scott, ended up getting replaced by Neil Crone because of test audiences considering his voice was too scary for the younger viewers.
 * 22) * Despite Neil Crone getting the role, he tried giving Diesel 10 a gruff Russian accent at first, but the test audiences thought he would sound offensive, so he instead gave Diesel 10 more of a New Jersey accent, which at least sounds better for Diesel 10, and it came out brilliant in the end.
 * 23) * Plot holes and unexplained details resulting from scenes being cut that were "too confusing for both critics and audiences" (see the "Trivia" section). Some of them included the reason why Diesel 10 came to Sodor, why Tidmouth Sheds looks like it's under repair and Burnett Stone (played by Peter Fonda) telling P.T. Boomer during the climactic chase scene "No you won't because the magic you refused to believe in will get the better of you!" He says this to Diesel 10 in the final version, which creates a massive plot hole since Diesel 10 does believe in magic and not Boomer since he only believes in money).
 * 24) The film is supposed to be a crossover of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Shining Time Station, but the fact that Shining Time Station is not explained well and said show never aired in the UK is confusing for UK viewers. The show never aired on ITV, or even the BBC for that matter (a 1995 documentary of The Railway Series aside).
 * 25) * Not only that, but even US viewers who are familiar with the show would find that it isn't very well-represented in the movie. The film only has three of the major Shining Time Station characters, these being Stacey Jones, Mr. Conductor, and Billy Twofeathers, of which only Stacey's actress (Didi Conn) reprises her role from the series, with Alec Baldwin succeeding George Carlin as Mr. Conductor (himself succeeding Ringo Starr in the role) and the late Russell Means replacing Tom Jackson as Billy Twofeathers. Otherwise, there are very few elements from Shining Time Station, so the movie could just as easily be considered Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends featured in a generic train station in a town story.
 * 26) Shining Time is a combination of areas filmed in the United States, Canada, and the Isle of Man, which don't mesh together very well.
 * 27) The titular station interior is a new set made for the film, and naturally, is a bit different from that of the show, which is understandable for a theatrical film, but the new interior, particularly the mural on the trackside wall, looks like a cheap imitation of the one seen in the show and lacks the character of the latter.
 * 28) Mediocre to subpar and lazy editing. For example, P.T Boomer, the original villain, can still be seen in some shots on top of Diesel 10 in figurine form.
 * 29) The Island of Sodor is portrayed by model dioramas, with model vehicles and scenery, just as it is (or was) in Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, which looks painfully fake when the live-action characters are present on the island.
 * 30) * On that topic, the movie's art direction received mixed to negetive reactions from fans since the realistic people and settings clash with Thomas and the company's more cartoony aesthetics and it's very inconsistent.
 * 31) The engines on Sodor do not have drivers or firemen, who are needed to run the engines in the television series (there was even an episode where Thomas thought he could do his job without a driver and ended up crashing into a house!). In fact, Sodor appears to be completely devoid of any humans.
 * 32) * Lady, a magical engine, requires a driver (Burnett Stone) in order to move.
 * 33) * Bertie the Bus has a driver inside him, but it is a model figure, which is really weird considering all the human characters that come to the island from Shining Time remain as live actors.
 * 34) While the He's a Really Useful Engine musical number by Hummie Mann is nice, it's set to a very pointless montage of Thomas and his friends doing stuff, made weird by the lack of humans (including The Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt) as described above.
 * 35) * Also, despite being a song about Thomas, it's really misleading because more than half the clips are of his friends rather than him shown in this clip.
 * 36) There are several flaws on Sodor, such as several trains without brake-vans, Thomas seemingly doing whatever he wants rather than working on his branch-line, and Henry needing Welsh coal (this issue had long been rectified in the series). Series fans have often criticized HiT Entertainment, which acquired the franchise two years after the movie was made, for these issues.
 * 37) There's a particularly confusing detail in the scene where Lily travels in a train, which involves a man using a laptop despite the fact that the Thomas & Friends TV series takes place during the mid 20th-century.
 * 38) The story is about Mr. Conductor going to Sodor to watch after Thomas and the railway while The Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt is on vacation. This is unrealistic, as the railway would have a large staff (which, as mentioned in #15, is nowhere to be seen) performing various tasks throughout, so The Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt would have plenty of people looking after things in his absence.
 * 39) *Of course, The Fat Controller/Sir Topham is only seen in portraits throughout the film!
 * 40) The dialogue can range from being rather laughable, cheesy, corny, kiddish, cliché, atrocious to downright clumsy, such as "Well, my lady, the lights are all green for you now! Green for glory!", especially with the engines.
 * 41) The film heavily deviates from both shows. Magic is never shown in Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Shining Time Station, as said shows are meant to be realistic, with a few exceptions.
 * 42) Some important characters from both Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Shining Time Station are absent.
 * 43) * Edward, one of Thomas's closest friends, is absent in this movie. This infuriated fans because he was the first engine to be introduced in The Railway Series. His absence was due to his model not being finished on time.
 * 44) * Most of the Shining Time Station characters are absent, as described above, not the least of which being Horace Schemer, the show's breakout character. This is somewhat understandable since his actor, Brian O'Connor, retired from acting in the mid-1990s.
 * 45) The green-screen effects are awful and clearly visible on many occasions.
 * 46) Poor cinematography from Paul Ryan.
 * 47) The pacing is, even for early 2000s standards, way too slow for the most part, which is very odd for a movie adaptation based off a television series.
 * 48) Because Thomas and his friends get very little screen-time in the film and the fact that Shining Time Station takes up the majority of it, there's absolutely no point to them at all other than being used for a lot of unnecessary filler (except Thomas and Diesel 10).
 * 49) * This also applies to Splatter and Dodge, who seem to do absolutely nothing to the plot, other than being used for filler, rather than being Diesel 10's "henchman".
 * 50) * Although Shining Time Station takes up most of the screen-time, there are very few familiar elements from that show, as described in BQ#10. The movie actually has more familiar characters and elements from Thomas & Friends.
 * 51) Being a high-budget theatrical film, one would expect it to be filmed with a higher quality camera than the series.  Nope, the same 35mm film camera used for the series is still used.
 * 52) Diesel 10's evil plan to kill the Mr. Conductor was considered rather dark for a G-rated movie and at the same time his death threats of killing Lady, Burnett Stone along with Thomas and the engines is very uncreative but in reality against the law to give somebody a bunch of death threats.
 * 53) During the chase scene it manages to a create a plot hole when Diesel 10 got told off by Burnett Stone that he refused to be believe in magic and decided to care less and take out his angry exploding temper tantrum on Thomas who foiled his plans by attempting to bang the claw on top of Thomas' cab roof up to the point that his face becomes redder and redder and redder to an exploding dark red by bursting out his angrily aggressive growling at Thomas so loudly that he continued attempting to get Thomas derailed.
 * 54) What makes this really frustrating is that this movie acted as if it was the real final episode of "Shining Time Station".

Good Qualities

 * 1) There are a few memorable lines, such as "Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle!", "Little engines can do big things!" and "It's the old teapot! Smash him!"
 * 2) Despite Thomas's friends being used for filler, the introduction scene of him and his friends in this movie is great, and the interactions are not too bad despite being pure filler, with Diesel 10 perhaps being the best of the new engines. He, Splatter, and Dodge are entertaining villains, despite Splatter and Dodge being filler and having no purpose in the storyline. It can be a good movie for kids to get to know Thomas the Tank Engine.
 * 3) The climactic chase scene involving Thomas, Lady, Diesel 10, and Burnett Stone is epic, despite the massive plot hole of what Burnett says to Diesel 10.
 * 4) This film managed to be the very first time that the engines are given actors for the very first time, though they don't have them again until 2009 with "Hero of the Rails".
 * 5) While it has it's bad (or average) parts for the acting, the acting and voice acting are decent for the most part. While Thomas and Percy's voices are tolerable, Henry, Gordon, Splatter, Dodge, Lady, Harold, Diesel 10, Bertie, Toby, Annie, and Clarabel have the best voices in the entire movie. Even Alec Baldwin had a ball working on the film, despite his overacting. Out of all of the performances, it is safe to say that Diesel 10's voice (given by Neil Crone) is the best in the movie, despite what he said to Burnett Stone, whom the latter says about the magic he refuses to believe in.
 * 6) Burnett Stone has a very touching backstory that gives out a pretty good reason for why he is depressed for most of the movie, as well as the Director’s Cut.
 * 7) The scene where Diesel 10 holds Mr. Conductor over the viaduct to tell him where the buffers are is a pretty awesome scene.
 * 8) While a bit out-of-place and misleading, the movie's poster does look cool and gives out a somewhat magical vibe.
 * 9) Beautiful and amazing soundtrack composed by Hummie Mann. The one big highlight includes the cover of "He's a Really Useful Engine", originally composed by Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell.
 * 10) There are some pretty funny moments here and there, such as:
 * 11) * The scene where Harold the Helicopter accidentally blows sneezing powder on Thomas, Splatter, and Dodge.
 * 12) * The scene where Mr. Conductor talks to a toy ball and a baseball bat.
 * 13) * Many of Diesel 10's moments, especially in one scene where he lectures Splatter and Dodge on "how to stop being stupid", only for him to get his comeuppance by getting covered in coal while the other engines laugh at him.
 * 14) * The changing facial expressions on The Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt's office portrait when Mr. Conductor is trying on his top hat.
 * 15) Mr. Conductor's cousin, Junior (played by Michael E. Rodgers), is a pretty funny and interesting comic relief character.
 * 16) While only the script and little footage of it exists, the original director's cut is far superior.
 * 17) * Thankfully, the lost footage scenes and shots have finally appeared in the Blu-ray version in 2020.
 * 18) According to the TTTE Wiki, the movie's version of "Really Useful Engine" got translated into French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Indonesian, Arabic, Catalan, Czech, etc.
 * 19) The Japanese dub is excellent, and can be found here. What's even noticeable is that Leo Morimoto is the narrator instead of Mr. Conductor.
 * 20) Despite the major flaws, it's a decent enough movie to look at judging by the visuals, the scenery, the music, and the model work of the engines, rolling stock, and vehicles, and does not come off as a cheap and lazy cash grab at all.
 * 21) Solid directing by Britt Allcroft, and it's clear that she made the film not as a soulless cash-grab, but as a passion project.

Videos
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Reception
As of December 2015, Thomas and the Magic Railroad received mixed-to-negative reviews from audiences, but was heavily panned by critics, with an approval rating of 21% on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 67 critics, and with an average rating of 3.9/10. The site's critical consensus stated: "Kids these days demand cutting edge special effects or at least a clever plot with cute characters. This movie has neither, having lost in it's Americanization what the British originally did so right." Metacritic gave the film a score of 19 out of 100, based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Most of the film's negative reviews contain i.e. faux; the lack of charm, the humor, the lack of realism, poor dialogue and jokes, and no charisma, because of the negative reception that Thomas and the Magic Railroad received throughout the years, Lily, Burnett Stone, Patch, the rest of the Shining Time Station characters, and the Magic Railroad never existed again. Despite the negativity from critics and audiences, the movie would gain somewhat of a cult following amongst some Thomas fans through a nostalgic view, and is considered to be a guilty pleasure amongst many.

Box Office
The film grossed $19.7 million worldwide. During it's second weekend of screening in Britain, it took in £170,000.

Trivia

 * The film had two dubs in Latin America; Thomas y el Ferrocarril Mágico (which is a literal translation of the original name and was the one released in theaters and home media), and Thomas y el Tren Mágico (which means Thomas and the Magic Train and was a made-for-TV dub). There's also another title from an extremely rare American Spanish VHS called Thomas y la Via de Tren Magica, but it is unknown if it's another Latin Spanish dub or just a VHS release of the theatrical dub.
 * After the film was released in cinemas, many scenes were removed from the film for various reasons, with a couple of them even passing into urban legend-like status, before one of them finally being shown in public:
 * The original antagonist was Pete Tiberius Boomer (also known as P.T. Boomer), played by late Canadian actor Doug Lennox, who was known for his role as Albert the Bartender from the X-Men films and Dirtbag from mh:greatestmovies: Police Academy. Boomer was heavily featured in the trailers, but he was removed from the theatrical release and Diesel 10 was made the main antagonist. This was a call purely based on young test audiences getting scared by Boomer, so all of his scenes were cut and even re-dubbed without mentioning him.
 * P.T. Boomer has become so popular with the fans that, after footage was found of the original chase scene on YouTube, fans made a ton of fanart of him, even paying tribute to Lennox when he passed away on November 28, 2015.
 * Some voice actors of the engines that were featured in the trailers never appeared in the film and were replaced, like John Bellis (a fireman and part-time taxi driver) as Thomas, due to the test audiences thinking that he sounded too old, and Keith Scott as Diesel 10 (who is best known as the narrator from Disney's George of the Jungle and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle). Like Boomer, he was deemed too frightening for young children, then it was changed to another actor with a Russian accent. The audiences were worried that it sounded too offensive, so then they replaced him with another voice actor who had a New Jersey accent.
 * Some characters never appeared in the film, such as Edward the Blue Engine (one of Thomas's friends), Cranky the Crane (who dropped an oil drum on Diesel 10), and George the Steamroller (who was Diesel 10's lackey and tried to ram the Magic Railroad's buffers).
 * The original footage of the movie became so popular with the Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends fans, that they wanted to see the director's cut version of the movie. If you want to find out about the history of the film, you can check and join on the Lost Media Wiki, Sodor Island, Restore The Magic's Facebook, and the official Thomas and the Magic Railroad wiki.
 * A sequel had been planned for this film but, due to the failure of this film, it was cancelled and no other worldwide theatrical Thomas films have been released, though there are some other theatrical appearances of Thomas like the specials, some rail excursions, and the 2015 film Ant-Man featured a memorable appearance of a Bachmann model of Thomas. Diesel 10 and Lady would appear in later future direct-to-DVD films such as Calling All Engines (which was the only one that Lady appeared in), The Great Discovery, Misty Island Rescue and Day of the Diesels. Diesel 10 would also appear in one episode of the seventeenth season.
 * Paramount Pictures was originally going to release this film.