The Adventures of Tintin: A Modern Rendering of the Classic Comic

I remember watching the animated Adventures of Tintin series on TV when I was younger, but I never really read the comics. Then a few years ago, I found myself waiting for a friend in a Borders bookstore. With plenty of time to kill, I wandered into the children's section. Wedged on a low shelf where no one would ever think to look for them were a few copies of The Adventures of Tintin. Greeting them like a long lost friend, I spent the next hour huddled on the floor dodging crawling children as I delved into The Blue Lotus, flashes of which I remembered from the TV series I watched all those years ago. And with that, my love for Tintin was reborn.

I was incredibly excited to hear about the Steven Spielberg-Peter Jackson collaboration to bring Tintin on to the big screen. So I spent Christmas morning with my favorite Belgian reporter and his faithful canine companion Snowy, and boy do they look good. The film is an absolute triumph of motion-capture film-making. Some people might argue that if you're going to make actors go to all the trouble of being on set and acting for motion capture anyway, they might as well as make a live-action film. Well that is just ridiculous. The Tintin comics are pieces of art and the only way to adequately capture their beauty on screen is through the lavish freedom that motion capture and digital animation can give you. The world that Spielberg, Jackson, and the geniuses at Weta Digital have managed to create feels like real life and fantasy all rolled into one and that alone is worth the price of admission.

In fact, I must unfortunately admit that the look of the film is probably the only reason to see this movie in a theater. Although I thoroughly enjoyed it at the beginning, towards the end there were entirely too many chase sequences and action scenes and it was all starting to wear a bit thin. I'm glad I saw it in regular 3D instead of springing for IMAX because I can assure you that you'll have a roaring headache by the end if you're not much of an IMAX person. While the first half of the film is enjoyable as you meet the familiar (or unfamiliar if you never read the books) cast of characters, the plot seems to be struggling by the end, and you reach the discovery of the sought after treasure with a quiet sigh of relief. The actors are top notch and capture the essence of their comicbook counterparts perfectly, but the script could have done with a polish. The extraordinary Steven Moffat wrote the first draft of the script, but couldn't finish it due to subsequent commitments to Doctor Who. I believe the movie might be a somewhat different beast had he been able to work the script from start to finish, and I must say I laud Spielberg and Jackson for wooing him over to be their writer in the first place.

The final product is therefore somewhat hit and miss. Fans of the comics will delight in seeing their beloved Tintin captured so brilliantly on the screen, but fans might also object to the somewhat loud nature of the film and lack of subtleties or sufficient intrigue. Newbies (especially children) will delight in this new world and be able to follow the story along with ease, but again, the story might not sustain them through the entire thing. I must confess, I haven't read the books that this particular movie was based on, so I can't speak to how faithful an adaptation it is. I'm just hoping for a Blue Lotus sequel, because that is one hell of a terrifying and satisfying story.

I still wholly recommend this film, especially if you really love Tintin, of if you just love films and the huge strides in animation and motion-capture that we get to see from year to year. But if you're somewhere in the middle, this movie might be just what you need to spur you on to discover the stunning artistry of Herge and the series of Tintin comic books that brought this entire franchise into being.