Full Disclosure: I had read a few of Herge’s Tintin books when I was 10 even though some of the books were in French. I have the two Tintin action figures and the rare “Tintin Goes to Soviet Russia” with the additional car from the same book of which only 32 were made that I got a closeout sale at a Tintin store in Stockholm. I also have a needlepoint Cap’n Haddock t-shirt that I got on a beach in Thailand. So supposedly that makes me qualified to sit in judgement of this latest result of our global culture being wrapped into two hours.
Full Disclosure: I had read a few of Herge’s Tintin books when I was 10 even though some of the books were in French. I have the two Tintin action figures and the rare “Tintin Goes to Soviet Russia” with the additional car from the same book of which only 32 were made that I got a closeout sale at a Tintin store in Stockholm. I also have a needlepoint Cap’n Haddock t-shirt that I got on a beach in Thailand. So supposedly that makes me qualified to sit in judgement of this latest result of our global culture being wrapped into two hours. What better way to celebrate the work of the Belgium artist than using the most childlike of American directors to team up with the New Zealand’s biggest director with the latest of Silicon Valley computer technology incorporating the finest of British actors?
The way I remember it, Tintin was a spunky reporter, wholly innocent, who found himself and his dog, Snowy, in improbably dangerous and exciting adventures around the world. It has an exotic and surreal quality that I always thought was hilarious. That this weird man-kid and his dog would be hanging with a drunk sea captain dodging machine guns, flying airplanes, and going into space all for some news story that I never saw him write. The art work was simple, lines and bright colors and every frame conveyed movement and action that appealed to 10-year-olds everywhere in the world who have access to a library.
Steven Spielberg does a pretty good job trusting a good story told well. Classic Tintin-ism’s like “Great Snakes!” and “Good job, Snowy” are kept in the script. He lays out the story effectively, giving it time to breathe and develop momentum. You can sense that he had to pull Peter Jackson’s Weta team back from it’s excesses so the movie could allow for something called “dramatic tension” to build naturally.
The creative tension between the Simple Spielberg and the Overstuffing-Of-Every-Frame Peter Jackson snaps at the end when Mr. Jackson crams every moment of the fun-filled choreographed chase sequences with “business.” The last set piece has a incredibly complex motorcycle/falcon chase sequence that needs to be seen again just to figure out where the tank came from.
Even so, there is a disconnect between the medium and the material. The charm and comedy of Tintin came from it’s simplicity and the movie is a bleeding edge technological wonder, so complex with its motion capture facial recognition resurfacing and digital re-jiggered whozimatics that it seems like any other childhood comic book would have been better suited to this format. You either have to ignore the work of thousands of digital artists who worked on this to enjoy the story, or you pity the story and marvel at the technical wizardry. That was a wide gulf for my brain to straddle.
This is the sum of our cultural footprint at the moment. A mash of ideas and technologies and various disciplines that are thrown together whether they should be or not. Like dance and architecture, sure I’ve seen it tried, but did I see movement or buildings in a new way? Not really. Did this really capture Herge’s Tintin? Not really, but for a bunch of kids who never heard of him I guess that is not the point. I just sound like a a sad old jazz purist railing against some auto-tuned pop star on the radio. Back to my action figures then.
Dean Haglund
