Thomas and the Magic Railroad (found deleted scenes of children's fantasy adventure film; 2000)
The Canadian poster for the film.
Status: Found
Date found: 05 May 2020 (rough cut), 29 Sep 2020 (director's cut)
Found by: TTTE Fandom (rough cut), Shout Factory (director's cut)
The 2000 movie Thomas and the Magic Railroad was a financial box office flop, with the prime reason being, among many others, the incoherent storyline that was in the final cut. In 2007, an interview with Britt Allcroft on Sodor Island Forums revealed that the movie was cut up against her wishes.[1] Her interview revealed that the cuts were due to complaints by American test audiences. The cuts were less than minor: the original cut was 110 minutes long, while the final movie was a mere 85 minutes.
Differences from Final Cut
P.T. Boomer
A major character, P.T. Boomer, portrayed by Canadian actor Doug Lennox, was deemed too frightening for the younger audiences and therefore was entirely cut out of the movie before its release. Because of P.T. Boomer's absence from the final film, the plot elements that had been driven by him went unexplained.
P.T. Boomer is described in the original cut of the script as being "a drifter through choice" and was intended to be Burnett Stone's adversary, the real culprit responsible for why Lady went too fast and crashed, rather than Diesel 10 as altered in the final version. Jealous of the relationship that Burnett had with Tasha (Lily's grandmother), Boomer bullied Burnett into allowing him to take Lady for a run and crashing her as a form of revenge. After the accident, Boomer fled Indian Valley, and Burnett spent years trying to restore her but to no success. He now returns a good forty years later, a bitter and dark character, determined to complete his revenge by finding and destroying Lady for good.[2]
When audiences complained about him being "too scary," he was cut out at the last minute, explaining the laziness of the movie's final cut. This cut was so close to the release that one of the previews even contained Boomer briefly, falling off the viaduct along with Diesel 10. Colouring books contained references to him by name as well.
Boomer was seen in the movie in the form of two cameos, part of his confrontation with Burnett is seen by a distance as Stacy and Lily arrive in their car. Audibly the scene is re-dubbed so that Burnett is giving directions to a lost biker. The biker clad in an overcoat presents a dark contrast and appears somewhat menacing. Boomer is also visible on the back of Diesel 10's cab during the chase scene toward the end (the May 1999 draft had Diesel 10 try to grab Thomas, but instead grab Boomer, leading him to put him on the back of his roof, as Boomer was in Thomas' cab when he followed Thomas into the other part of the Magic Railroad in the said draft, and the original filmed scene had Boomer land on the back of Diesel 10 through the magic buffers).
Cuts Made to the Story
Because of the cuts, many key scenes that gave Britt Allcroft's original story substance and were filmed with Peter Fonda as Burnett Stone and Russell Means as Billy Twofeathers plus Cody McMains as Patch were not in the released version because of the references to P.T. Boomer. The movie scenes that have the cuts were either cut or altered. In addition, the test audience made the response that Means' role was hard to understand, Britt Allcroft found this shocking as he hardly was, and he "spoke with the voice of his history."[3]
Some characters from the original show were meant to appear in the film. Cranky the Crane was going to have a minor role in the film. In the scene where the diesels are at the coal yard, Cranky was originally going to drop fruit onto Diesel 10 instead of the hopper covering him in coal. This scene was scrapped just before filming, although Cranky did make a cameo in the final film. Throughout the story, there was going to be a subplot to Diesel 10's Magic Buffer arc. George the Steamroller was originally going to be a henchman for Diesel, destroying the buffers in exchange for the personal use of the Tidmouth turntable. Throughout the film, George would become uncertain about his actions, with the subplot ending in him betraying Diesel and derailing Splatter and Dodge just before the final chase. This concept never got past the storyboard phase, and George's model never went to Canada.[4]
Cut Voice Acting/Songs
Various theatrical and home media trailers of the movie had depicted characters with voices largely differing from their voices in the original cuts. During Production, it was widely publicized online that an Isle of Mann cab driver and Volunteer Firefighter named John Bellis was to be the voice of Thomas. Having only heard him utter a meager few words, Britt knew that John was the right man to voice Thomas himself, turning to tell her colleagues, "I have just heard the voice of Thomas. The man is exactly how Thomas would sound!" A few days later, she offered John the part, and he accepted.[5]
Despite being flown out to Toronto, record all of Thomas's dialogue, American test audiences, however, thought Bellis' voice made Thomas sound too old and thus, John Bellis was canned. Thomas's voice was performed in the final cut by Canadian voice actor Eddie Glenn. Bellis was apparently disappointed by this, and to the point where he refuses to really discuss the matter with fans who have contacted him to ask him about it.
The same trailers depicted Diesel 10 with a gruff English upper-class accent, as opposed to the New Jersey accent he had in the theatrical release. Sodor Island Forums ended up digging up the information that Diesel 10 was originally voiced by Australian voice actor Keith Scott. But this voice was deemed too frightening by the American test audiences. Canadian actor Neil Crone was then brought in to do the voice of Diesel 10, where he gave him a Russian accent. This to would fall into the hands when the audiences made the wild claim that it would somehow be "offensive," and Crone revised his voice to a New Jersey accent. The troublesome trucks had also been voiced by Crone along with Splatter and Dodge's actor Kevin Frank in the director's cut, but most of their material was cut from the final film.
Britt Allcroft revealed that the original voice intended for James and Percy was Michael Angelis, the narrator for the UK series from 1991-2012. English actor Patrick Breen originally also provided the voices for Dodge and Splatter. Both of them were canned by the test audiences. Susan Roman and Linda Ballantyne replaced Angelis as James and Percy respectively, whilst Neil Crone and Kevin Frank replaced Breen.
What was also revealed is that Lily, 20 years later, was originally meant to be the narrator instead of Mr. Conductor (played by Alec Baldwin) in the final cut. The whole movie was meant to be told by an Adult Lily and Patch (played by Robert Tinkler) to their child. A scene toward the end shows the family in a panning shot of the Pennsylvania fields. The movie also contained several flashback scenes of Young Burnett (Jared Wall) and Tasha (Laura Bower), which ended up being cut due to some involving P.T. Boomer. The scenes are only audibly heard in the movie through Burnett's imagination.
Two extra songs, known as "The Whistling Song" (not to be confused with the seventh season song of the same name) and "Girl In Green," were also present in the director's cut, but they were removed for unknown reasons.
Availability
The only scene from the original cut that was made available commercially was included on the DVD release as an extra. This scene, called "Sundae Surprise," was insignificant, showing Mr. Conductor Junior relaxing and deciding to take one more sip from his Sundae, only to be splashed by it through the giant straw.
In February 2009, a YouTube user by the name of Jord87 uploaded the original chase scene with P.T. Boomer as what had been a dubbing project for the user's film class. However, the scene was overdubbed with overbearing music from the 1998 movie Dark City as part of this dubbing project. Despite both reasonable and admittedly annoying requests from fans to upload the unedited scene, the user only responded with immature and mocking insults toward them.
The scene depicted showed Boomer being flung from the magic buffers and landing directly onto the back of Diesel 10's cab, where he joins the pursuit of Lady and Burnett and ends up falling off the viaduct with Diesel 10. The scene is slapped with a time code and a watermark stating "Property of Destination No Unauthorized Duplication."
The scenes leak online is explained by the fact that a teacher at the Harris Institute in Toronto, Canada, had worked on the movie, though only has access to the scene in question for educational purposes. He was tracked down by a forum user on Sodor Island Forums and got information that he was considering (as of March 2012) uploading the unaltered scene somewhere online. This didn't happen, however, but given that he is a teacher and has more important things to do, it was understandable why he would forget.
In 2013, another scene was discovered from a BBC AP Archive article from August 1999 featuring unused raw footage of a scene, including P.T. Boomer (Doug Lennox). This scene in question is described in scripts as P.T. Boomer checking through a pile of "Shining Times" newspapers. He stops at one - scribbled in the top corner are the words "Burnett Stone - Muffle Mountain." Boomer gives a satisfied smile as a young boy collects the pile of newspapers and cycles away.[6]
On July 21st, 2014, a Vine user from Japan uploaded an original trailer made for the movie before Boomer was cut. These were low-quality recordings taken in front of the TV screen, and the trailer had Japanese subtitles imposed over the video. This showed three scenes with Boomer present. One of Boomer sitting on the mountainside while seemingly stating, "I'll get my revenge" (The audio lacks clarity), one of him carrying explosives, and one of the explosions he set off that sends Thomas off the mountainside.
A deleted scene of Burnett building a birdhouse can be found on "The Making of Thomas and the Magic Railroad" from the German DVD release.
On August 4th, 2014, a higher-quality version was uploaded by the Thomas archive channel TTTEArchives. The trailer was discovered to have been sourced from a Japanese Doraemon VHS. The trailer is in full English, but with Japanese subtitles.
On November 28th, 2015, P.T. Boomer's actor, Doug Lennox, passed away at the age of 77. In his memory, the original chase scene was uploaded to YouTube without the Dark City music. The original was passed out to various people by a SiF user in June 2015, though to keep it private in cooperation with the wishes of the professor mentioned above. But soon enough, it was leaked by one person it was passed to. With the clear audio, it is revealed that the temp music for the score was music from the soundtracks of Stuart Little, composed by Alan Silvestri, and Toy Story 2, composed by Randy Newman.
On January 4th, 2016, Thomas & Friends railway consultant Sam Wilkinson posted a picture on his (now defunct) Facebook page of the beginning of an early rough cut of the film where it shows a scrapbook with a hand of an Adult Lily Stone at the beginning from the film. Sam was originally going to find more copies of the original workprint, as the rough cut he found had a lot of unfinished content. The project, according to Sam, is still ongoing; however, after a year without updates and HiT Entertainment possibly being concerned with damage control to the Thomas brand because of this, it seems very unlikely.
In December 2019, a complete workprint of the film was leaked to the Thomas the Tank Engine fandom. It was shared around privately. By May 5th, it spread and eventually became available to the wider part of the internet to the dismay of the film's director, Britt Allcroft, and the rest of the fandom for jeopardizing the potential release of a higher quality "director's cut" on the upcoming Blu-Ray.[7][8][9] This workprint contains unfinished special effects and sound. Furthermore, it was originally leaked in 480p but was later purged. Further mirrors of it are only in 240p.
On August 13th, 2020, the official ShoutKids YouTube Channel uploaded a trailer for the 20th Anniversary Thomas and the Magic Railroad Blu-ray. The trailer confirmed that the deleted scenes from the leaked workprint would appear on the Blu-ray as bonus features.[10] It was also confirmed that deleted scenes that weren't in the leak will also be included.
Gallery
Images
Videos
Promotional Material
Deleted Scenes
See Also
Thomas & Friends
- Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go (partially found test animation of reboot of British children TV series; 2019)
- Thomas & Friends: Day of the Diesels (lost original cut of direct-to-DVD film; existence unconfirmed; 2011)
- Thomas & Friends "Jack Jumps In" (found Alec Baldwin narration of British children's TV series episode; 2002)
- Thomas & Friends "Series 7" (partially found original music of British children's TV series American dub; mid-2000s)
- Thomas & Friends "Series 12" (partially found Pierce Brosnan narrations of British children's animated series; 2008)
Thomas the Tank Engine
- Thomas the Tank Engine (lost pilot episode of unproduced 2D animated adaptation of "The Railway Series" books; 1976)
- Thomas the Tank Engine "Down the Mine" (partially found pitch pilot version of British children's TV series episode; 1983)
- Thomas the Tank Engine "The Missing Coach" (partially found footage from cancelled British children's TV series episode; 1986)
- Thomas the Tank Engine "Season 3" (found original Michael Angelis narrations of British children's TV series episodes; 1991)
- Thomas the Tank Engine "Season 4" (found pre-recorded version of British children's TV series episodes; 1994)
- Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (partially lost deleted scenes of British children's TV series; 1984-2021)
Other
- The Adventures of Thomas (partially found production material of cancelled "Thomas the Tank Engine" live-action film; early-mid 2010s)
- Barry the Rescue Engine (lost production material of cancelled "The Railway Series" book; 1980s)
- Jack and the Sodor Construction Company (partially lost episodes and production material of cancelled spin-off series; 2002)
- Storytime with Thomas (partially found Fox Family series; 1999-2000)
- The Thomas & Friends Institute of Innovation (partially found informational short film; 2013-2014)
- Thomas and the Magic Railroad (lost test footage of 3.5" character models for British children's TV series; 1995)
- Thomas and the U.K. Trip & Thomas Number 1 (found Japanese "Thomas the Tank Engine" crossover TV special and music video; 1991)
- Thomas the Tank Engine (found original illustrated edition of book; 1946)
- Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (found build of cancelled NES port of educational game; 1993)
- Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends (lost build of cancelled PlayStation educational game; 1999)
- The Three Railway Engines (lost live BBC broadcast adaptation of "The Railway Series" books; 1953)
- The Three Railway Engines (found original edition of book; 1945)
References
- ↑ Britt Allcroft E-mail Correspondence from 2007. Retrieved 11 Aug '13
- ↑ Online Investigation Into the Film's Mysterious History. Retrieved 11 Aug '13
- ↑ 2012 Facebook Post by Britt Allcroft on the Passing of Russell Means. Retrieved 11 Aug '13
- ↑ Online investigation into the film's mysterious history. Retrieved 11 Aug '13
- ↑ Online Investigation Into the Film's Mysterious History. Retrieved 11 Aug '13
- ↑ A 1999 Production Clip, Featuring the Filming of a P.T. Boomer Scene. Retrieved 11 Aug '13
- ↑ Britt Allcrot's first Facebook post asking fans to stop spreading the leaked workprint. Retrieved 21 May '20
- ↑ Britt Allcrot's second Facebook post asking fans to stop spreading the leaked workprint. Retrieved 21 May '20
- ↑ Britt Allcrot's third Facebook post asking fans to stop spreading the leaked workprint. Retrieved 21 May '20
- ↑ The Shout Factory Kids trailer for the 20th Anniversary Blu-ray. Retrieved 27 Sep '20