From watching the trailer, reading the reviews of everyone who also has seen the trailer and segment of the movie, the "endless" debate about how the new effects will affect the 22nd season of Thomas and Friends, and the complaining that this is nothing but a Thomas/Chuggington collaboration, but most importantly, watching the movie for the umpteenth time, its my turn to give my thought about if this series will be the end of Thomas and Friends as we know it, or the start of something new.
Body Language: The moment when I saw that Thomas and his friends are now able to use the same features as the characters from Chuggington, using "body language" I actually like the fact that it didn't stand out too much as to what everyone feared, maybe the effect was used a little too much, but none of the engines jumped off the rails, or did back wheelies. Why I liked it was because it gives engines more human quality, showing expressions and getting the message across t. Although the effect was used too much, the movie itself, in my opinion are experiments that the producers wanted to show to the audience what will happen in the future and give their feedback about what to change, do and so on.
target audience: Although i'm 25, each time I watch the newest movie or episode, I feel like 5 years old again but watch the audience in my range should understand is that the company itself is targeting towards families with the new generation of children that are being introduced to the Thomas franchise. None of them know about the models that were used in the earlier series, so none of them could possibly know how the series started.
Overall, I loved the movie, the new features, effects that will be used and with the way the company is going, especially with what happened in the movie itself, I hope that in the upcoming movies and episodes, we will get to see more of whats "Beyond Sodor".