The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Intrepid young reporter, Tintin, and his loyal dog, Snowy, are thrust into a world of high adventure when they discover a ship carrying an explosive secret. As Tintin is drawn into a centuries-old mystery, Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine suspects him of stealing a priceless treasure. Tintin and Snowy, with the help of salty, cantankerous Captain Haddock and bumbling detectives, Thompson and Thomson, travel half the world, one step ahead of their enemies, as Tintin endeavors to find the Unicorn, a sunken ship that may hold a vast fortune, but also an ancient curse.
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It was widely reported that, after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Hergé (who died in 1983) said that Spielberg was the only filmmaker who could do Tintin justice on screen (there had been several attempts over the years to cinematize Tintin’s adventures, including cell animation, stop-motion animation, and even live action).
The details are standard Saturday matinee fodder; you can see why "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was compared to Tintin when it came out.
No longer constrained by little things like physics when placing his camera, Spielberg is able to craft some of the most rollicking, slam-bam action sequences of his career, harkening back to his earlier, care-free efforts like "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
The end result is something like “The Da Vinci Code” meets “Raiders of the Lost Ark” meets the Hardy Boys.
Back when he was making "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the fourth installment of the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" series, director Steven Spielberg faced something of a daunting task.
Tintin also avoids the “uncanny valley” in that the characters, while photorealistic down to their skin pores and nose hairs, are given just enough cartoonish dimensions (Tintin’s cowlick, Captain Haddock’s bulbous nose) to escape the waxen creepiness of the zombie children in The Polar Express (2004).
Using performance-capture animation that could be confused for live-action on multiple occasions, director Steven Spielberg (2008's " Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ") ensures that his characters haven't any of the dead-eyed qualities that some viewers once accused 2004's " The Polar Express " of.
The movie makes use of the motion-capture animation technique pioneered by director Robert Zemeckis in films like "The Polar Express."
Spielberg employs 3-D motion capture technology similar to what his contemporary, Robert Zemeckis, has used in his last three films (with results varying from the wonderful “The Polar Express” to the woeful “A Christmas Carol”).
Instead, it utilizes the motion capture process that Robert Zemeckis first popularized with "The Polar Express."
The usual effect of this -- as seen in Robert Zemeckis' last three films The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), and A Christmas Carol (2009) -- is realistically creepy characters with soulless, dead eyes.
It's performance-capture filmmaking in 3-D (think "The Polar Express" but with more advanced "Avatar"-like tricks).
James Cameron used it brilliantly in “Avatar” because his characters were supposed to look otherworldly; used on human characters, it’s just creepy.
On the other hand, his ability to deploy cutting-edge technologies--such as 3D and the type of advanced motion-capture animation that brought the likes of "Avatar" to life in this case--in eye-popping ways would presumably attract audiences who were largely unfamiliar with Tintin, especially in the U.S., where the stories have never quite caught on as anything other than as a cult favorite or an occasional Dennis Miller reference.
The process has been used most successfully in what we perhaps incorrectly refer to as live-action films, including "Avatar," Jackson's "King Kong" and the recent "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," in which performance capture's Man of a Thousand LED Faces, Andy Serkis, became such an impressive Caesar the chimpanzee that 20th Century Fox is touting him for a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
This year has been as groundbreaking of a year for 3D as 2009 was when James Cameron shocked the world with “Avatar.”
Motion capture has been used in feature films often, from The Polar Express to Avatar.
The drawings truly come alive during the fantastical action scenes; a couple of swashbuckling sequences outdo all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies and a ‘long-take’ chase through the streets of Morocco combines the best elements of Indiana Jones and Police Story into a truly transcendent, Spielbergian cinematic moment.
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But Spielberg is also clearly at play, diving into Tintin's exploring, energetic spirit and reconnecting with the sly filmmaker we met in Jaws.
He even allows a couple of winking self-referential moments, like when Tintin swims in the ocean, and his red cowlick is visible floating across the surface like the shark’s fin in “Jaws.”
Based on 1943’s The Secret of the Unicorn and the follow-up, Red Rackman’s Treasure and utilizing the latest in cutting edge motion capture technology, the man responsible for such seminal popcorn blockbusters as Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.
Better yet, Spielberg concocts a few wonderful grace notes, as when Tintin's forelock cuts the waves like a shark's fin (hello, "Jaws"!), or when Tintin and Haddock experience a glittering rainfall of gold pieces.
Among the set pieces, a giddy seaplane chase (leavened with a Jaws gag and centered on the Captain's belching of rubbing alcohol) and a motorcycle pursuit that catapults Tintin over Moroccan roofs are as accomplished as any of Spielberg's Indiana Jones climaxes.
For all its breathless globetrotting action-adventure, the Spielberg movie that "Tintin" suggests is not "Raiders" but "1941," the 1979 World War II comedy that collapsed beneath its own bloat.
And yet, virtually every scene in the film has some elaborate structure to it--even the sight of Snowy chasing an errant cat around a room seems to cause more destruction than the climax of "1941"--and it all just grows kind of boring after a while.
Intrigue, chases, fights, killings, explosions, and flying bullets are the order of the day, with a musical track as always by John Williams, making the whole thing sound more than ever like a cross between "Indiana Jones" and "1941."
The story combines elements from three of Hergé’s 23 Tintin adventures: The Crab With the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicorn (1943), and Red Rackham’s Treasure (1944).
(A pirate-ship duel between Haddock's and Sakharine's ancestors, with both combatants stamping out an explosives fuse multiple times, has the flavor of the Jones cliffhangers and the somewhat unfairly reviled 1941.)
However I found the film just okay, and from a director like Spielberg that’s almost worse than being a total 1941.
It's Indiana Jones meets "Captain Blood."
The second is to take the story itself — the graphic-novel action of “Tales from the Crypt,” “V for Vendetta” or just about any superhero story — and cast flesh-and-blood actors in the roles.
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Many had written it off after Disney parted ways with the medium's biggest champion, Robert Zemeckis, and scrapped his "Yellow Submarine" remake idea.
As previously practiced most aggressively by Robert Zemeckis, in such films as "The Polar Express," "Beowulf" and the recent flop "Mars Needs Moms," "performance capture" or "motion capture" is an expensive and technically sophisticated process in which the movements and facial expressions of actors in Lycra suits covered in reflective markers are photographed and digitally translated into animation.
It's thorough and particularized without looking creepy the way Robert Zemeckis's CGI rotoscoping did ("Polar Express," "Beowulf").
Given Tintin’s origins in comic books, the CGI-animation approach is arguably justified, unlike several of Zemeckis’s performance capture films like Beowulf (2007), which needlessly replaced human actors with similar-looking digital avatars.
Who can say, but at least the result is less disconcerting than the sight of an ultra-buff living painting with Ray Winstone 's face in that " Beowulf " thing.
In the past, this technique, as demonstrated in movies like Robert Zemeckis ’s “The Polar Express” and “ Beowulf ,” came across as machine-tooled – soulless.
Part of its success comes from the always-grand vision of Spielberg, who proves that performance-capture animation -- a la "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf" (as opposed to traditional computer-generated animation, a la "Toy Story") -- has come a long way.