Tintin: Not Too Terrifying After All

I've been watching the development of The Adventures of Tintin with a bit of excitement and some trepidation. Going in to the movie, I knew it would be difficult to separate my feelings for the source material from the experience of watching the film - always a danger when going in to any adaptation. Judging the film on its own merits was a bit difficult, but, all in all, The Adventures of Tintin made for a fun moviegoing experience.

Part of the reason that it was so difficult to look at Tintin as a separate experience from the comics is that there are SO MANY different stories brought together. The Adventures of Tintin was meant to be an adaptation of two Tintin stories - The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure, but I noticed prominent scenes and characters from at least FIVE different stories mashed together. It's probably not something that would bother most people; however, I'm not sure that the selected scenes worked together well.

It makes sense that, when introducing a new intellectual property to the masses, you'd want to select more recognizable elements to attract the largest audience possible. All the different scenes selected for Tintin do work well...ish. I noticed a few lapses in logic during certain transitions between set pieces - getting the characters from one recognizable locale to the other didn't always make sense. Maybe someone who isn't so familiar with the Tintin comics wouldn't be bothered so much by it.

There's a big tonal change from the comics to the movie as well. The comics emphasize comedy a bit more, while the movie's more about the action. Unfortunately, this means the comic elements of the movie (ie. the Thomson/Thompson pairing) feel out of place - but not cripplingly so.

As for the action... well, it's AWESOME. Fight scenes that last only a panel or two in the comics are extended for several minutes, and, while it is a bit over the top, it's a LOT of fun to watch. Especially notable are Tintin's escape from an enemy boat and a flashback involving Captain Haddock's ancestor and the pirate, Red Rackham. The animation allows for some amazing stunt choreography that wouldn't really work in any other medium.

Speaking of the animation, I'll admit to being a bit worried about the Zemeckis-style motion capture, but it actually works really well. Tintin himself and the villain look GREAT, and the other characters, whose exaggerated features come straight from the original art, aren't off-putting at all as I first thought they would be. Seeing these character in motion is actually pretty delightful - you can see the essence of the actor behind the character (Daniel Craig and Andy Serkis do especially well), but the visual is all animation, and pretty well-rendered animation at that.

The 3-D still sucks, though, and adds just about nothing to the experience.

Surprisingly, I think my favorite part of the movie is the opening title sequence - which sounds like a diss, I know, but isn't meant to be. I never really realized it before, but I'm a bit of a sucker for a well-executed title sequence, and Tintin has one of the best I've ever seen. I'd almost say the movie's worth the price of admission just for the opening credits.

The rest of the film, though, is pretty great, despite some weaknesses in the writing. The motion capture is good, the acting is fine, and the action is top-notch. The Adventures of Tintin probably won't win any awards, but it's definitely worth a watch if you're into some good action.

Tintin: Something to Look Forward to After All?

There's a movie due out this December based on The Adventures of Tintin, and, as I've already said, I'm not optimistic about it.

At least, I wasn't.

Then the poster came out:


The movie's got a couple of big names attached to it that are sure to earn it some credibility, so you can consider me genuinely intrigued.

No, I'm not talking about Spielberg and Jackson. That's just silly.

I mean THESE guys:


Steven Moffat is regarded by many (myself included) to be the best writer on Doctor Who; however, I'm actually the TEENIEST bit fonder of his work on the revived Sherlock series.

And then there's Edgar Wright, whose work I'm not terribly familiar with, but his involvement in my favorite movie of 2010 means I'll be looking at this... frankly terrifying... movie with a bit more optimism.

The Terrifying Face of the Tintin Movie

I may be the only person on this side of the Atlantic Ocean who cares about this, but Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are collaberating on a Tintin movie.

For those of you who don't know (and that may well be everyone), Tintin was a comic character created by Belgian artist Hergé - and he's pretty big in Europe. I remember reading Tintin comics when I was pretty young - mainly because I enjoyed reading about the dog. Those twin detective guys were pretty funny too, I guess.

Recently, I've rediscovered Tintin - now more as an interesting artistic and historical artifact than anything else. Hergé depicted a lot of scenes that would be difficult to find in children's comics today - like this opium den:


Hergé wasn't afraid to address social issues of his day, which are now matters of history to the rest of us. His view of Americans, and especially their treatment of Native Americans, is particularly interesting - not to mention fairly damning.

Anyway, the visual style's the big deal for today's purposes. Hergé invented what is now called the ligne claire style of cartooning. That doesn't mean a whole lot to me, but I do know that it's quite nice to look at. Spielberg and Jackson have decided that they'd rather not use live-action to portray Tintin & company, opting instead to go with the same motion-capture technology that brought Gollum to life. The idea is to maintain as much of that magical Hergé artwork as they can.

Practically, this means that fan-favorite Captain Haddock, who usually looks like this:

...will now look like THIS:

Yeah, I am NOT down with this sickness!