Thomas the Tank Engine: The Movie: All Aboard the Crazy Train

Toys and board games are sweeping through Hollywood as the next big marketable properties, and the optimistically named HIT Entertainment has landed themselves a doozy. He's Thomas the Tank Engine, the cherub-faced locomotive who pulls cars around the English countryside and chats up his similarly smiley-faced (or frowny-faced) colleagues in his successful TV series and omnipresent toy line. Thomas has had model-scale movie adventures before, but we're curious how it might translate to a live-action-mixed-with-CGI adaptation, so we looked to some of the great "train" movies to see if they would have been improved with the addition of Thomas' smiling face.

Strangers on a Train
In a chance meeting on board one of Thomas's cars, two passengers make a deal: one will kill the other's father, if the other will kill the first one's wife. Thomas thinks murder is wrong.

Narrow Margin
Thomas is transporting a witness across Canada to a grand jury trial, where she'll testify against a mob boss. But there are assassins on board, as well, and Gene Hackman has to hold them off until they reach Vancouver.

Runaway Train
A pair of Alaskan convicts hijack Thomas, but when Mr. Conductor dies, they find themselves hurtling out of control with no brakes.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
After one too many of his friends gets robbed and blown up by Butch and Sundance's gang, Thomas agrees to transport a posse of top-notch lawmen from across the country to the scene of their latest heist.

Silver Streak
While riding Thomas on a cross-country trip, Gene Wilder sees a dead man thrown off the roof, and must enlist Richard Pryor's help to save the girl and recover the mysterious Rembrandt letters. At the end, Thomas crashes into Union Station in Chicago, causing millions of dollars of damage.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
When Thomas is hijacked by terrorists who control a deadly space laser, only Steven Seagal can stop them from blowing up Washington and save young Katherine Heigl in the process.

Mission: Impossible
Making his regular run between England and France, Thomas accidentally snags a helicopter and drags it into the Chunnel with him, where it is beaten, battered and ultimately blown up, killing popular French actor Jean Reno.

Midnight Meat Train
From the twisted mind of Clive Barker comes this tale of a murderer and cannibal who rides Thomas in the middle of the night, bludgeoning passengers and selling them for the meat. Thomas eats only coal. He is a train!

Polar Express
Thomas takes a trainload of not particularly lifelike kids to Santa's Workshop in the North Pole, and generally freezes his balls off. To make matters worse, he's infested with hobos.

Back to the Future III
In order to get the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour, Doc Brown and Marty McFly hire Thomas to push the car along a straight stretch of track. What they don't tell him, however, is that the tracks end in a canyon where the bridge has yet to be built, and Thomas plummets to his death.

What train movie would you watch with Thomas in it?

4 Comments

September 30, 2009 8:43 PM
Liz
Reply

HIT Entertainment has controlled/distributed the Thomas t.v. show and the toys for several years. They own HUNDREDS of kids properties, including Fraggle Rock, because they're the direct corporate descendant of Henson International. So, really, it's not like they came out of nowhere.

October 1, 2009 12:57 PM
Michelle
Reply

Ah, thank you for that.....I found it particularly amusing as I have a nephew completely obsessed with Thomas....

December 28, 2009 5:23 PM
Jacob
Reply

LOL funny. The movie I would see with thomas is actually not really a movie, but an educational film where a train crashes headfirst into the newly-made Nuclear Flask to demonstrate it's toughness. As you may have guessed, I don't like thomas very much. In fact, I have my own wiki for hating him at: www.thomastank.wikia.com
enjoy!

January 8, 2010 8:42 PM
the day the earth stood still
Reply

if every editor wrote like you believe me the world would be a better place! this was an excellent read expecting more!

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