Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds, like Team America, was filmed and made by using puppets. Team America is based off of and was inspired by Thunderbirds. It is a British mid-1960s television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation". The series followed the adventures of International Rescue, an organization created to help those in grave danger using technically advanced equipment and machinery. The series focused on the head of the organization, ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy, and his five sons who piloted the "Thunderbird" machines. Perennially popular, the series is still shown today and has inspired a number of subsequent television programmes and films.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone got the idea to make Team America around 2002 (three years after Bigger, Longer and Uncut, in which, due to the "hassle" of the film, they vowed to never do another film, which they decided against when it came to Team America), when they were bored and decided to go channel surfing and came across Thunderbirds reruns and the remembered they had seen it as kids, but were not fans because "the dialogue was so expository and slow, and it took itself really seriously." The duo, now mesmerized by the concepts of the series, then decided to go digging about the rights to the series and found out about film of the series Universal Pictures was doing directed by Jonathan Frakes, known for playing William T. Riker on Star Treak: The Next Generation. "We said, 'What? Jonathan Frakes is directing puppets?' and then we found out it was a live-action version, and we were disappointed," said Parker. How they reacted to the 2004 Thunderbirds is unknown. This drove them to make Team America, initially intended to be a puppet remake of The Day After Tomorrow (after finding out it had been sold to 20th Century Fox, due to a one-line pitch regarding global warming and getting a copy of the script) called "The Day After The Day After Tomorrow", before being convinced that it could cause legal trouble, before it became a parody of the big action movies Jerry Bruckheimer makes.

Gerry Anderson was due to meet with Parker, but they cancelled it, thinking he would not understand the expletives of the film. Anderson saw the completed film and felt "there are good, fun parts [in the film] but the language wasn't to my liking."

Elements of the movies that reference Thunderbirds

• The puppetry techniques mirror the original series (the animatronics that make their mouths and eyes move, they fact that some close-up shots of hands are actually human hands made to look like the puppet hands (apart from the fact that here, in order to make them look like puppet hands, they wear flesh-colored rubber gloves, where that part does not happen in Thunderbirds), etc.). This technique is refered to as "Supercrappymation", a pun on Supermarionation.
• Certain puppets resemble characters from Thunderbirds; Gary resembles Scott, Joe resembles Alan, Sarah resembles Tin-Tin (both sets of characters of whom are in a romantic realtionship), Spottswoode resembles and sounds like Jeff and Jeff's actor Peter Dyneley's other characters on the show, Kim's Translator resembles both Virgil and Troy Tempest from the series preceding it; Stingray (who himself was based on the late James Garner). In addition, the terrorist wearing a gas mask in the bar in Cairo appears to resemble a black version of the main villain, The Hood.
• The Osprey and Submarine function similar to Thunderbirds 2 and 4, as the former carries non-flying vehicles with Thunderbird 2 and the latter is a a submarine like Thunderbird 4.