Thomas & Friends: Journey Beyond Sodor - Film Review

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

For those of you that are unaware, I am apart of a very niche fandom who follow the fabled tales of a sentient steam locomotive and his pals.
Sure, the age demographic probably leans more down the other end of the scale, but the tangible thing about a series like this is that everything has sense and purpose.
If you admire trains like me, all of the characters are based off real-life prototypes and it is rendered to feel like a real world.
The model series executed this greatly.
In 2009, the show moved to CGI, and while I had my reservations, it eventually grew on me.
Come Season 17 and King of the Railway, the show found itself a new creative team and head-writer.
This made the show directly more interesting for a twenty-something fan like me, since the team decided, "Hey, we have an older fan-base, let's cater for them too."
Since then, we have had a plethora of throwbacks, character returns and great stories, but one of the best things have been originality, the elephant in the room which all fans still try to tackle, the things that they aren't used to.

Journey Beyond Sodor is a beast of it's own and has originality written all over it.
It takes Thomas the Tank Engine out of his comfort zone and into a place that he knows next to nothing about.
In last year's special, the idea of the engines leaving the Island of Sodor, their home, became a central focus of the story, and gave some hints to what the following special might entail, as each special before itself tends to do.


The synopsis follows:
Thomas leaves the Island of Sodor for the first time ever to travel to the mainland where he sees and experiences things that are beyond his wildest dreams. On his epic journey Thomas befriends the Experimental Engines, Lexi, Theo and Merlin, who look like no engines he has seen before. Merlin even has a special power - all he has to do is say 'invisibility on!' and shut his eyes and he is convinced that nobody can see him! After spotting a magical-looking place on the horizon, Thomas stumbles into the Steelworks, where he meets two engines, Frankie and Hurricane, who aren't quite what they seem and soon put Thomas to work.
It's not quite the story you would anticipate when you hear the title. 
The film opens up really neatly, giving an overview of the railway operations on the North Western Railway, the kind of opening every hardcore fan drools at, showcasing many classic characters in the spurt of a minute. We then feature an epic crash sequence between Henry and Hiro, which sets up the plot of our story. Who will pull the goods train to the English mainland?
The thing that did let me down about last year's special however that I hoped that would arise again this year is the new characters and their background. 
The characters here did not let me down. 
At first, I was sincerely hoping that the first visit Thomas made to the Experimental Engines wouldn't be the last one, but I sort of feared it might've been.
When we met Hurricane and Frankie for the first time however, this kind of felt interesting.



It's quite contradictory that Thomas and James don't go to London, or America, or any other well-known region, but that this in fact is the route that they're taking for a portion of Season 21, with Journey Beyond Sodor acting as a precursor to get viewers used to the idea of a context where everything is unfamiliar to our main character. I kind of dig this motive.

  
One thing I really give kudos to in the continuity of both Journey Beyond Sodor and The Great Race is that they follow on from the previous season's continuity very neatly and subtly in terms of character development.
In last year's film, we saw the characterisation of Phillip that keyed in with his dynamics with the likes of Thomas, Gordon and Vinnie. 
This special followed on nicely from All in Vain and Pouty James, two episodes that explored James the red engine's vanity issues and how that reflects the others around him. 
James goes back to his old ways and seems to be the breadwinner over Thomas by receiving all the cool jobs while Thomas is getting the ones that feel pointless. 
This is where the humour is at it's peak, and I had a lot of laugh out loud moments. 
I do hope that this is a teaser of the kind of stuff we will get in Season 21, and if that is the case, I'm sold already.
On a side note, I think this has been one of the great merits of the last three years of content over the abundance of character returns and old story tropes. 

The Great Race featured some pretty stellar characters, but it felt like most of them apart from Scotty, Vinnie and Ashima had next to no depth. 
I understand that the creative team are probably trying to take the Disney Pixar Cars angle here by the idea of world-building and have just characters that are purely made for background fodder, but I do hope that they are expanded upon in future, as it's a style that the franchise hasn't necessarily found its feet in. 

From Beresford the batty crane (and the troublesome trucks as the chorus) to Hurricane the GER "Decapod" tank engine, there was a lot of variety and different levels of depth here.


From the get-go, I knew that these two would be a villainous duo in some capacity, but there are so many levels to the two of them that make them feel like very sincere characters, but that soon lets loose.
I really warmed to Frankie as a character throughout the duration and really was heavily intrigued by her attitude to those around her.
She is in total control. Hurricane does not hesitate at all with any of her orders because he knows what wrath will break loose if he says differently. There are distinct moments of this throughout the run time. Out of all the cast, Sophie Colquhuon probably had the best singing voice in the songs that were composed, and this made it more satisfying to here, thus making "The Hottest Place in Town" probably my favourite song of the film.

The story really gets interesting when Thomas pushes the boundaries and doesn't follow all the guidelines Frankie has discretely given. And when he breaks them, he gets what is coming for him.

We see a tremendous nighttime chase sequence (it certainly doesn't trump the likes of Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, but it's certainly up there) and are introduced to the elusive Merlin, "the experimental prototype King Arthur class stealth engine", who guides Thomas to safety.

We then thankfully return to Theo and Lexi's yard where they reunite with a deflated Thomas who give a lot of great banter, and we begin to see this duo shine.
Not long after, Merlin arrives and we learn about his fixation of being invisible, which is a great visual gag, and nods to those autistic characteristics that every news site seems to be over-talking.
I'm glad that none of these three are necessarily singled out for their individuality in the more traditional humanised sense and that Theo and Merlin's autism and Lexi's gender fluidity is merely alluded to.
Too much talk would have been too obvious, and I like that Andrew Brenner's writing style comes across as subtle at the best of it's times.

Back on Sodor, Emily soon persuades James that saving Thomas could redeem him of his bad attitudes, and he soon gets stuck in confinement at the Steelworks under Frankie's control.

Thomas and Merlin persuade Theo and Lexi to come with them to save James, and the team do so in a very incongruous fashion, Theo seeing straight through things as they are and Merlin using his invisibility through the closing of his eyes.

In an epic chase around the Steelworks, James is rescued and everyone is brought to safety, except for Hurricane, who has damaged wheels from the molten slag resulting in Frankie having a tizz.

Two dots are joined together when Thomas and James soon learn that Frankie just needed more assistance at the Steelworks, so they suggest the Experimental Engines could embark their new career with her.

As they head back to Sodor, satisfied with their work, Thomas and James repent to each other on their mistakes and redeem their friendship, closing the film in one more musical number.

Overall, I really liked this film.
I have enjoyed all of the films written by Brenner, but this one did it just that little bit more for me.
It does make me excited for the kind of direction the series will go in as I've really warmed to this kind of structure, and from what I've heard about Season 21 so far, I hope it continues to thrive on it's obscurity and charm.