Thomas and the Magic Railroad

Thomas and the Magic Railroad is a 2000 British-American-Canadian adventure fantasy film based on the British TV series Thomas and 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 received overwhelmingly negative reviews from 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."

Why This Film Caused Confusion and Delay

 * 1) False advertising:
 * 2) * The main problem with this film and why it got hugely brought down is because the title is incredibly misleading. While Thomas is the titular character, 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 nothing would change, as the movie focuses more on the human characters, both original and from Shining Time Station, rather than Thomas and his friends. Here's a video showing how little screen-time he gets compared to 85 minutes in the movie.
 * 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 is nowhere to be found in this movie, due to him being cut from the final film after the trailer aired (see BQ#5).
 * 4) ** Thomas himself also doesn't get a lot of character development, resulting in him coming off as underdeveloped and difficult to relate to. Eddie Glen's voice, while tolerable, doesn't help either.
 * 5) ** Another trailer showed Edward involved in the seen where Diesel first appears, when Edward isn’t shown at all in the film, because he was cut because they thought Keanu Reeves’ voice sounded too scary for children.
 * 6) Speaking of Thomas' friends, Edward, one of Thomas' closest friends, is absent in this movie, which upset fans because he was the first engine to appear in The Railway Series. To make matters worse, he isn’t even mentioned by the other characters and no in-universe explanation is given for his absence, thus the movie treats him likes he’s nonexistent. This absence was due to Edward's model not being finished on time, hinting that this movie was another case of being rushed.
 * 7) Poorly written, underdeveloped and uninteresting characters (mostly the human cast). While Mr. Conductor (Alec Baldwin) and Junior (Michael E. Rodgers) are fine, the rest of the live-action cast isn't that good.
 * 8) While the acting is decent, it has its share of hiccups:
 * 9) * Peter Fonda looks and sounds really depressed and unenthusiastic in almost every scene he's in.
 * 10) * Lily (Mara Wilson's character) is a generic, clichéd, uninteresting, bland, and boring character who not only steals the spotlight from Thomas the Tank Engine, but she also painfully underacts, 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).
 * 11) * 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.
 * 12) * James' voice given by Susan Roman is just awful. 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) 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.
 * 13) 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.
 * 14) * 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 instead.
 * 15) * Removal of other characters. The first being Cranky, who was going to have a small appearance in the movie. Most of his scenes would feature him knocking stuff over onto Diesel 10, Splatter, and Dodge. Second is 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. Edward was also removed from the film, which shouldn’t happen because he was one of the first characters that was created in the show. The whole reason why Edward wasn’t in the film was that the writers thought his voice by Keanu Reeves would be frightening for younger viewers.
 * 16) * Incorrect voice actor changes for Thomas and his friends (except for Lady, who is voiced by Britt Allcroft). All of them are voiced by Canadian voice actors, despite Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends being 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 he was 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 ended up sounding way too feminine for him.
 * 17) * Diesel 10's original voice actor, Keith Scott, ended up getting replaced by Neil Crone because test audiences complained that his voice sounded too scary for younger viewers.
 * 18) * Neil Crone originally gave Diesel 10 a gruff Russian accent, but test audiences complained that he sounded offensive, so he instead gave Diesel 10 more of a New Jersey accent, which at least sounds better for Diesel 10.
 * 19) * 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).
 * 20) The film is a crossover of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Shining Time Station, which is a pretty interesting concept. However, 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).
 * 21) * Not only that, but even US viewers who are familiar with Shining Time Station would find that it isn't very well-represented in this 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. The station's interior, a new set made for the movie, is similar but not quite the same as that seen in the series. 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.
 * 22) In this movie, Shining Time is a combination of areas filmed in the US, Canada, and the Isle of Man, which don't mesh together very well.
 * 23) Mediocre to subpar editing. For example, P.T Boomer, the original villain, can still be seen in some shots on top of Diesel 10 in figurine form.
 * 24) The Island of Sodor is portrayed by model dioramas, with model vehicles and scenery, just as it is in Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, which looks painfully fake and out of place when the live-action characters are present on the island.
 * 25) 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, unlike the TV series.
 * 26) * Lady, a magical engine, requires a driver to move, and that driver is Burnett Stone.
 * 27) * Bertie the Bus also has a driver inside him, but it is a model figure, which is really weird considering all the other human characters are portrayed by live actors.
 * 28) 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 random jobs. Also, despite the song being about Thomas, it's really misleading because more than half the clips are of his friends rather than him.
 * 29) There are several inconsistencies 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). HiT Entertainment, which acquired the franchise two years after the movie was released, is often criticized for these issues.
 * 30) Just like two other mediocre films, the dialogue can range from being cheesy, corny, cliché, atrocious to downright clumsy, such as "Well, my lady, the lights are all green for you now! Green for glory!".
 * 31) Poor grasp on the source material of both Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Shining Time Station, as magic is never present in both shows as they are meant to be realistic, with a few exceptions, though.
 * 32) Some important characters from both Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Shining Time Station are absent.
 * 33) * As mentioned before, Edward, one of the main characters of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends is absent in this film because it was felt that there wasn't enough screen time for him and his model wasn't finished in time.
 * 34) * 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.
 * 35) The scene where Diesel 10 tries to literally kill James by attempting to push him into a foundry vat at the Scrapyard is way too dark for a G-rated film.
 * 36) The green-screen effects are awful and clearly visible on many occasions.
 * 37) 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 filler (except Thomas and Diesel 10).
 * 38) * 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".
 * 39) * Although Shining Time Station takes up most of the screen-time, there are very few familiar elements from that show, as described in BQ#5. The movie actually has more familiar characters and elements from Thomas & Friends.
 * 40) Being a high-budget theatrical film, it would be expected to have better cinematography than the series. However, the same 35mm camera used for the model era of the series is used for this film, thus making it feel very low budget and more like a direct-to-video film than a theatrical film.
 * 41) Overall, this film didn't have any impact on the Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends franchise as a whole, as all of its events and most of its characters (except for Diesel 10 and Lady) are ignored later on. You can watch any season of the TV series, even Seasons 9-16 and 22-24 and the direct-to-video specials, skipping over this and anything important would not be missed.

Really Useful Qualities

 * 1) "Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle!"
 * 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 does show to 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 its bad (or average) parts for the acting, the acting and voice acting are decent for the most part. Thomas, Percy, and Henry’s voices are tolerable, and 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. Also, Alec Baldwin’s narration as Mr. Conductor is nice and is much better than his narration for the series in Season 6. 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.
 * 6) Burnett Stone has a very touching backstory that gives out a pretty good reason for why is he depressed for most of the movie.
 * 7) While a bit out-of-place and misleading, the movie's poster does look cool and gives out a somewhat magical vibe.
 * 8) Beautiful 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.
 * 9) There are some pretty funny moments here and there, such as:
 * 10) * The scene where Harold the Helicopter accidentally blows sneezing powder on Thomas, Splatter, and Dodge.
 * 11) * The scene where Mr. Conductor talks to a toy ball and a baseball bat.
 * 12) * Many of Diesel 10's moments, especially in one scene where he wants to show everyone "how to stop being stupid", only for him to get his comeuppance.
 * 13) * The changing facial expressions on Sir Topham Hatt's office portrait when Mr. Conductor fools around by wearing his top hat for several seconds.
 * 14) Mr. Conductor's cousin, Junior (played by Michael E. Rodgers), is a pretty funny and interesting comic relief character.
 * 15) While only the script and little footage of it exists, the original director's cut is far superior.
 * 16) * Thankfully, the lost footage scenes and shots have finally appeared in the Blu-ray version in 2020.
 * 17) Sir Topham Hatt and Lady Hatt are mentioned and we even see a picture of Lady Hatt, taken from Season 5's "Sir Topham Hatt's Holiday".
 * 18) * The reason for Sir Topham Hatt’s absence is simple: he was away on holiday and asked Mr. Conductor to look after the railway for him.
 * 19) Had Britt Allcroft and her crew been given more time to work on this movie, or at the very least rewritten the movie to refocus more on Thomas and his friends than Shining Time Station, this could've ended up on Greatest Movies Wiki (even though it still wouldn't have aged well).
 * 20) * The movie also would've been a little better if they didn't call it Thomas and the Magic Railroad, unless if elements from Shining Time Station are added. But to be fair, Shining Time Station does take up more of the screen-time more than Thomas and his friends, so it would make more sense to be called something like Shining Time Station: The Magic Railroad, which would've been a better title for this movie (because really, it focuses more on Shining Time Station rather than Thomas and his friends).
 * 21) 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.
 * 22) Just like Barney's Great Adventure, some Thomas fans might enjoy this movie.
 * 23) 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.

Videos
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Reception
As of December 2015, Thomas and the Magic Railroad had an approval rating of 21% on mh:rottenwebsites: Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 67 critics, 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". Because of the negative reception that Thomas and the Magic Railroad received, Lily, Burnett Stone, Patch, the rest of the Shining Time Station characters, and the Magic Railroad were never seen again.

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), who did appear in the trailer and was originally going to be voiced by Keanu Reeves (known for his role as Neo Andersen in The Matrix and John Wick in the beloved franchise), Cranky the Crane (who dropped an oil drum on Diesel 10) was originally going to be played by the late Christopher Plummer, and George the Steamroller (who was Diesel 10's lackey and tried to ram the Magic Railroad's buffers) was going to be played by the late Christopher Lee.
 * 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.