While there may be some perception that comic book movie fever is cooling off, at least one super-epic-mega film that will change the world is in the works — the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson Tintin 3D-mocap-CGI epic. Spielberg is directing while Jackson produces The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, which comes out 12/23/11. The cast includes Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook, Carey Elwes, and Daniel Mays, most of whom did mocap or supplied vocal talents. This far, details of the movie have been closely guarded — Tintin being one of the world’s most popular characters — although not so much in America. From a business standpoint, a successful film could relaunch the Tintin books in the English speaking world, WATCHMEN style. With so much talent involved, expectations are high.
But what will it look like? Empire magazine has the first images from the movie, and every website including this has them up. Click for larger versions.
From where we sit? It’s not quite as disturbing as The Polar Express, but it’s not exactly cuddly, either.
What do you think?
Still can’t see whether Tintin has those characteristic button eyes…
It is a bit of a cheat that the first released images are all hiding Tintin’s face in shadow. Captain Haddock looks a bit like Andy Serkis, but I’m sure that’s intentional.
Snowy (Milou!) looks just right.
This kind of material is just perfect for Spielberg, and the cast is good. I suspect it will do well.
It looks like they gave Tintin a more generic/less cartoony face (not saying that’s bad, just making the observation). Snowy does look pretty identical.
I must admit that Captain Haddock looks a bit troll-ish in the still — but that last shot of them on the overturned boat looks pretty impressive.
Yeah must say looks cool,but will it retain that orignal spirit from the graphic novels. A lot of people in Europe grew up with reading tin tin so. But i have no doubt it will be great for the t shirt and sell tickets. Who will daniel craig look like ?? A mixture of Andy Sirkis ??
I am incredibly dubious. I’m not sure why they decided with to go with such a heavy handed rendered style of animation– part of the appeal of the original was the simplicity and starkness of the illustrations. Just because one is capable of animating 10,000 hairs on a character’s head doesn’t mean they necessarily should. It’s not Avatar, it’s Tintin.
Not that my opinion matters one wit but I’m not likely to see this. Once again the effort to get this character seen has been engulfed by a high tech, multi-million dollar effort to convince us that high tech can improve and hand drawn comics that captured our imagination without even the need of a light bulb to be embraced as fun. I don’t expect that many will understand that but I also don’t expect those who look to Hollywood all the time for entertainment validation to care either.
Too many details. They’re looking to lose the forest, but every photorealistic tree will be in its appointed place, dammit.
Why couldn’t they do a 3-d Ligne Clare? It’s so weird looking and complicated.
In a way motion capture makes sense, because the drawings were so cold and lifeless -and I say that as a fan of the Herge style. (Of course the movie won’t be as flat and lifeless as the drawings, but close:)). Also, Tintin has already been done successfully in 2D as a TV series, for those who want that.
Is it my imagination but does he look like Pete Campbell?
When I heard Jackson & Spielberg were doing a CG TINTIN, I wasn’t sure… I’ve loved Herge’s work since childhood… then I heard a lot about what faithful fans they were, and I started looking forward to seeing Herge’s lovely, appealing DRAWING STYLE adapted to 3-D animation. HIS STYLE. Herge’s style. 3D cartoons. CARTOONS! Not “TINTIN ON THE POLAR EXPRESS”.