It certainly is a good idea for Spencer to feel threatened as it adds much needed depth to why Spencer would bother in the first place. As you rightly say what could he possibly get from having Hiro scrapped in the actual film? Save for getting some sort of morbid delight from a fellow steam engine being scrapped no worthwhile reason was ever given. At least if Spencer feared losing his job he'd have a goal. Furthermore even Thomas himself can get very protective of his position at times; particularly in the Great Discovery when Stanley arrives. So I could see Spencer in a similar scenario.

I still think that this film, Blue Mountain Mystery, King of the Railway and Tale of the Brave are the only four films in the franchise that I consider to be decent because of how consistent they are with the characters. If I was to change one thing with them, it would be removing the narration entirely, the only time that it works is when Michael Angelis or Mark Moraghan would be setting the stage for what is to come at the beginning and closing the story at the end, but again, when less is more in those instances, it allows the audience to take away more from the story then having someone telling them what to think.

It's very true, the heart really carries this film as does Toga Igawa with the voice cast. God bless him, he brings the perfect 'physically broken man' emotion and even before Hiro showed how heroic he can be in the Brenner era, I wanted to protect Hiro with my life. Spencer I wasn't too bothered about mainly because of the fascinating take on it by MasterOfTheLemons that went as far back as 2016. He portrayed the A4s as a dynasty that, through their fear of being scrapped, used their record breaker status to help scrappers choose which engines to scrap and used that technique to preserve themselves. I adore your editing style and your point on the very RWS-esque comeuppance to Spencer.

Despite its flaws, I really love Hero of the Rails and is a top tier for me. I like your little rewrite on how this could've been done. However, I think one reason why Spencer wanted Hiro scrapped is not just because he was fed up of being shown up, but because of horrible scars of what happened to his brother Sir Ralph Wedgewood during WWII. I know that this isn't something the books nor the show dare mention as Sodor is meant to be a world of escapism aside from a few mentions, but it could've possibly bring out more within Spencer's character not just as a villain, but his literal breaking point as he feels a little insecure. It was this movie that really made him a secondary main character which works well in his character development. I really love how the main engines are a unity and feel grown up in this. Yeah they all would know STH will never scrap them, but fear has a way of overwhelming anyone from their own perspective when done right. And I think it works well as it has a little dark moments.

I really liked how you reworked Spencer's motive, it really adds some depth to him a pose to him just wanting to "delete" Hiro lol. Really well put together, love these essay format reviews, keep it up!

One thing I would also add to this rewrite is having Gordon as the main character because I thought it could developed his and Spencer’s rivalry and Gordon could save hiro as he feels sorry for the loss of his siblings on the mainland.

I too had thoughts on how Hero of the Rails could be improved. And I especially like your choices on how this movie could be better.

This is a perfect essay, from analysing the good, bad and ugly of HOTR, to comparing it and other Thomas movies to Italian food! Gotta love the Father Ted references as well!

Just to go over some lore issues, Hero of the Rails is probably when the series decided to throw all of the respect for railway realism and historic accuracy that Rev. Awdry established in his original stories, as well as continuity with both the original model series and the books... primarily in the inclusion of Hiro as the original locomotive of the NWR. So, Hiro is a JNR D51 "Degoichi". The D51 was produced in the mid to late 1930s, in the leadup to WWII, and is a 3ft 6in gauge (cape gauge) locomotive as cape gauge is the primary gauge used in Japan. There were standard gauge export models built for use in the Korean Peninsula and Japanese-occupied areas of China, and for export to Taiwan, but they were just the normal cape gauge locomotive with a wider frame and gauging for use on standard gauge track. This is the first red flag - if Hiro is a standard gauge export-model D51, he can't have ever worked in Japan itself. And if he did work in Japan, he'd have to be a cape-gauge D51 and thus not compatible with either the standard gauge rails of the Northwestern Railway or the 23in gauge track of the Mid-Sodor or Skarloey. The next issue is the build date vs the opening year for the Northwest Railway. The EARLIEST year that Hiro could have been built in is 1936, as that's when the first D51s rolled out of the works. However, the NWR opened in 1915, over two decades before Hiro could have been built. Therefore, Hiro could _never_ have been the NWR's original locomotive. Now we get to scaling issues. The D51 is a little under 65ft in length. An LB&SCR E2 like Thomas is 33ft 3in in length, a little under half the length of a D51. Gordon, an LNER A1 (technically an "A0" but he's so close in overall design to an A1 that it doesn't matter, plus the A0 doesn't exist IRL) is 70ft 5in in length. This means, realistically, that Hiro should be just a little over twice Thomas's size and slightly smaller than Gordon. However, Hiro's model is MASSIVELY overscaled, retaining the proportions of a cape gauge D51 but scaling them up to the size of a standard gauge locomotive, putting Hiro at nearly 20 feet _longer_ than Gordon and almost three times Thomas's length. Just as a side note, I have an N scale model of a D51, and one of a 7MT Britannia pacific. Due to scale weirdness with N scale, the D51 is 1:150 (used in Japan to represent cape gauge on 9mm gauge track) and the Britannia is 1:148 (proportionately upscaled from US N scale's 1:160 in the same way that OO is upscaled from HO), so they're both roughly the same scale. The Britannia, as expected, is somewhat larger than the D51. Hiro is a walking... er, rolling pile of contradictions. He has potential to be a good character but he needs a lot of reworking to really be able to shine. That being said, that's not the hard part here. I like your idea of making him privately owned by the Duke and Duchess, rather than a locomotive imported to construct the NWR when he chronologically couldn't have existed at the time. It also would make sense that he was purchased new out of the works, rather than having worked in Japan, since that would justify him being a standard gauge export DT650 (the Taiwanese designation) rather than a cape gauge D51. At that point, scale his model down to match his realistic size and that whole issue is fixed.

Outstanding review along with the pizza delivery 😃👍

GORDON: Thomas is NOT a toy! PT BOOMER: I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that.

"This isn't a perfect rewrite to the movie or anything," Are you kidding! This is amazing! I wish this was the premises for the actual movie! I would love it a heck of a lot more if it was done like this\!

Another great analysis on a Sharon Miller movie. Honestly after this one and the Blue Mountain mystery video I would love to see you tackle Misty Island rescue and Day of the diesels but those are two other cans of worms on their own. Honestly I might try to adapt this in some sort of way. But keep up the good work dude.

God, seeing your old HOTR remake clip on the TV in this video really brought me back. I remember how your scene remakes didn't use audio from the movies- iirc it was *ME* who played Spencer! God, I could do so much better now despite not being a professional voice actor, but I had fun with it regardless and it was a fun little thing to do back then. Great stuff, man. Excellent videro essay on the movie. Brought back some good memories.

Now that we have the great idea grounded! We need an adaptation!

To be honest I think your idea could really work. I would also rework his backstory maybe a little and say that he didn't arrive during the early days of sodor. maybe at a later date? I don't know. All I know is that your idea definitely gives Spencer the motive he lacked in the original movie. a really good rewrite where you only change a little and it drastically improves the movie.

Its hilarious for me watching this because I myself, when I get Trainz Simulator and have the time, resources, and motivation/energy to do so, have an ideal place in Sodor's timeline for this movie to take place and an overall plot too.

Little late to the party, but dang, your rework is great!

I remembered getting overly excited for this film when it first came out back in the day.

Really love your little rewrite. Would add a lot

"thomas is not a toy" THAT'S THE STUPIDEST BUL-

In my headcannon, I think Hiro saw what happened to Neil and the other engines on Sodor one by one, and since the controller was probably Sir Thopam Hatt's dad, he thought he would have been scrapped as well -also, I view Hiro as a prototype produced by the Japanese industry and they were eager to sell it to the british market just so they could test their own industrialization, that explains how Hiro, who's basis was made kinda 3 to 5 years apart from Salty, end up in Sodor-

Very good review mate. 😉 And it’s ok, I completely understand that Hero of the Rails isn’t actually your favourite. 🤗 And btw. I just wanna apologise for the spoilers of Hiro’s backstory. Hope we can forgive and make it up. 😢🤝

I'd love to hear you fix king of the railway

4:15 I would actually have to disagree with that point about Cars 3. The obstacle of the film isn’t Jackson Storm, he’s just a character who is a physical symbol of of what lightning is going up against. The true obstacle is the fact that lightning doesn’t want to be forced out of racing but knows that he’s outdated and simply can’t keep up with the competition. Even if he won that race, the shareholders would come up with some reason why lightning can’t race anymore and effectively prohibit him from ever racing again or else fire him. So instead, lightning chose to willingly step down and give cruise the chance she missed out on to become a racer. On the surface level, it may seem unsatisfying for lightning to not win the race himself, but narratively. I think it works better.

I think Hero of the rails is how Magic Railroad should have been, with Lady in Hiros place and Diesel 10 in Spencers place, would have been better by removing the Shining Time part and the magic BS.

Hear this, Spencer doesn’t like Hiro because of WW2, but this doesn’t work well with a kids movie

My head cannon explanation for why Spencer wanted Hiro scrapped is because of his elitism. He saw Hiro as out of date and worthless, and as such, he deserved to be destroyed. Ironically Spencer is quite like the diesels that replaced his class in that way. The problem is, although that helps my personal viewing experience, objectively the film, never elaborates on that. It never gives you a solid reason why he wants Hiro dead, it just goes by the logic of “Spencer is mean so of course he want something bad to happen, even if it doesn’t benefit him.”

7:43

Nice

This works a whole lot better. But what if Hero wasn't a Japanese engine and was an older British engine owned by the grandparents of the Duke and Duchess. Maybe he could have been an A2 from LNER Or some sort of bigger steam engine from LNER. Think about it, An Example of this would be an old version of the Xbox wants to be played again while the newer version of the Xbox he's trying to show how Supreme it can be, A playing terms of words. What do you think? The more ideas the more Creative It would have been!

I like that idea Mind if i try to make it into like a 'what if' video?

ok real question did u eat those fries with the large amount of salt or did u just throw them away?

Did you thought about Classic characters being in this movie?

I wouldn’t change the plot of this movie. This movies good. It’s way better than Misty Island Rescue

This movie would be much better is they cut down the narration.

It was a brilliant film I'll tell you how to fix it just cut down the narrators role massively

Did you seriously drop a face reveal in this video and not bring any attention to it at all? After only knowing you from your voice for over a decade (I LOVED your old videos back in the day, they still hold up remarkably well even now) it's honestly kind of underwhelming. But I guess you can do it how you want, who am I to judge XD.

You coul'dt Handle the whole thing you said like that because you just keep skipinng the whole scene with the f###ing copyright crap