"Everybody knows him. He is Tintin" says the seller of the unicorn ship in the flea market. That is largely true. Unfortunately, many people in America don't know Tintin and I've tried in my small way to make this immortal character of Herge known in America.
Watching this movie in 3 D was a pleasure.
Spielberg has used motion capture technology and animation in this movie. There is a lot of camera work, shots from different angles and also more shades and colors than are in the comics.
It is a fast-paced, action packed movie which can be thoroughly enjoyed. The casting of the movie is very interesting and even the letter font used is that used in the Tintin comics.
Perhaps the 62 pages of a single Tintin comic were felt to be too little. The plot is, therefore, a reworking of mainly three Tintin comics by Herge:
The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham's Treasure *and *The Crab with the Golden Claws. *A simple purchase of a ship model in flea market leads Tintin, a famous, boyish reporter to a treasure chase, in the course of which he meets Captain Haddock, the whisky loving deuteragonist (whose family history is involved in the story), and, with some changes, other great Herge creations.
These include characters like the villains, Red Rackham and Alan, the twin policemen, Thomson and Thompson ( with a ‘p’ and without), the heavyweight singer, Bianca Castafiore, Nestor (the butler), a kleptomaniac, a sheikh, Tintin’s famous dog, Snowy, and others also enter the picture. I wish they'd somehow brought Professor Calculus and naughty Abdullah into it too.
Calculus is there in* Red Rackham's Treasure*. Kidnapping, escape, secret messages, chases, fights, shootings, travel through the sea and the desert, on land and air, through European cities to Morocco in Africa lead to the defeat of the bad boy, the goodfellas find the treasure, with the end hinting at the possibility of sequel(s).
Spielberg has tried to do a lot in this 107 minutes long movie. Unlike Herge's comics, this movie is not character based but is action based. Sometimes, the movie creators seem carried away by the medium, trying to do too much in too little space.
As a result, the action becomes jarring at times. No space for the spectator to enter and ponder. Perhaps Spielberg thought there was too little in the cinematic space available, at least for the 21st century audience and so, he’s put in a lot more; if I were the screenplay writer I would do it a bit differently, tell him some other incidents to borrow from the original too.
No doubt, the important character traits and mannerisms have been used, but whereas Herge makes even the minor character make their presence known, in the movie, even the major characters fall short. The technique used in the movie makes even a well-known actor like Daniel Craig barely distinguishable and it seems as if the actors have been used not so much for the acting but for the dubbing. Captain Haddock is not so funny and lacks his edge, his ‘blistering barnacles’ sounds flat. The twins are fault too.
To be precise, they lack humour, seem to lose their touch once they enter the movie. Bianca Castafiore, the self-willed, imposing lady, is made a pawn and is unimpressive even if she can shatter bullet-proof glass with her voice. Distressingly, Snowy, Tintin’s dog, does not communicate, except in barks and yelps whereas the Snowy in the comics is communicative and more funny.
Another major change is that Sakharine, the innocent collector of ships in the comics is changed into a menacing descendent of Red Rackham and becomes the chief villain.
The dialogue is alright. When adapting a comic/comics, there can’t be much scope for lengthy dialogues. However, one long dialogue from Haddock ending with “There's something you need to know about failure, Tintin. You can never let it defeat you” would’ve come from Tintin if Herge was there.
Settings, sets and action are great. Crane fight is something new and inventive. Slapstick stuff is good. Some of the shortcomings in the movie are not entirely the scriptwriter’s/director’s fault: while reading a comic, the brain works differently through the willing suspension of disbelief and the impact of the frozen vision is supplemented with other links and channels created by the brain; in case of a movie.
Many of such links, like the auditory and kinetic, are already there and the brain has to sit quite or compromise. This can be both good or bad in terms of fulfilling our expectations and our enjoyment of the movie.
Herge’s clear line method seems followed in the movie’s animation, in fact, the movie goes ahead to show clearly even things like minute fibres on dress and hair. But in terms of human expressions, Herge seems to be more effective with his simple way than Spielberg has been able to do with all the human and technological resources he had.
Motion capture technique used in the movie has brought alive many scenes like the fight on the sea between ships, the aeroplane scene, the fight with the cranes ( not at all in the comics) etc. However, in terms of characters, some shortcomings can be found.
As a Tintin lover, I could not link very well with the Tintin in the movie: this Tintin had a bit more prominent cheekbones and his cheeks were less rounded. At times, I felt that he had a slight squint too. I think the best image of Tintin that appears in the movie is the one in the portrait of Tintin which he gets painted in the flea market.
But that is not Jamie Bell's portrait but of Tintin of the comics and I suppose using that would be authenticity but would require just animation only and make the actor redundant. So I shouldn't grumble much about that.
Like the comics, there is no sex or romance in the movie and you can see it as a positive thing, as one distraction less.
Homage has been paid to Herge by reference to many other Tintin adventures too through newspaper clippings, borrowing of characters, symbols and incidents. Among the Tintin adventures whose reference we can find in the movie are Broken Ear, Cigars of the Pharoh, King Ottokar’s Scepter and Destination Moon (whisky rolling into a ball scene).
I enjoyed the movie, in spite of everything. Is it enjoyable? Very much so, but won’t linger in your mind like ‘E.T.’ or ‘Jurassic Park’. Would Herge have approved of the movie? Probably he would have said, "Cachinnating cockatoo! Alright, it is something, to be precise."
