SDCC 2016: ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ And ‘Man In The High Castle’ Take Centre Stage At The Amazon Village!

Early this morning, Shane O’Hare and I had the opportunity to visit the Amazon Village offsite event at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

The Amazon Village is open today (Thursday) from 9AM to 7PM, Friday from 9AM to 7PM, Saturday from 9AM to 8PM, and Sunday from 9AM to 5PM at 301 1st Ave (1st Ave. and Martin Luther King Promenade).

As you’d probably imagine, an offsite event from one of the most progressive companies at the convention is bound to be a must visit, and we would certainly recommend jumping in line for this one.

Two Amazon exclusive properties are front and centre at SDCC this year, being Thunderbirds Are Go and Man in the High Castle. Both of these properties look freaking fantastic, and both of these properties made me sad to be a Canadian resident, where I can work on Man in the High Castle (it’s filmed in my current home base of Vancouver), but cannot legally watch it.

Two separate, well air conditioned (thank you Amazon) test house the themed installations, and first we visited the Thunderbirds Are Go tent, where fans will have the opportunity to take photos with larger than life versions of their favourite Thunderbirds Are Go characters (including a neat green screen experience), sit in the cockpit of a nearly 1:1 scale Thunderbird 2 (and of course take photos), and learn about all of the sweet, sweet Thunderbirds characters along the way. Several televisions throughout the installation repeated trailers from the Thunderbirds Are Go series, which offers a neat mix of miniatures and stop motion, along with some slick CGI, and it made me seriously want to binge the series during my short time in the United States.

Next up, we moved into the Man in the High Castle installation, which was developed by NVE. This impressive tent featured props and artwork from the series, a neat virtual reality experience powered by the HTC Vive, and an ‘Amazon Passport’ game, in which you could receive stamps from the Amazon employees and trade them in for a sweet, sweet lithograph. During the Man in the High Castle demonstration, Shane and I were actually able to live stream the experience, which you can watch right here:

As someone who has spent some time on and around the Man in the High Castle sets, it was tough to look at the intricate costumes and props, and hear of the exceptional plot of the series while knowing that it’s a series that I won’t have the opportunity to watch any time soon.

The photos really don’t do the experience justice. If you’re a fan of the series, or even someone who is lightly curious about it, this is an offsite that you should be standing in line for.

Did you have a chance to visit the experience? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!