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Medium Term: Spielberg disappoints - his version of Tintin is only mediocre

A week or so ago, just before the new Steven Spielberg Tintin film was released in India, I spoke to a top

fashion photographer about the movie. Tintin had been a favourite of mine for many decades, I said, and I couldn’t wait for the film to be

released.

 

   Ah yes, said the photographer. He knew how I felt.

 

   And?

 

   Well, he said a little apologetically, he had actually already seen the film himself at a preview.

 

   And what did he think?

 

   Well, he said, hesitantly with the air of a man who regretted having to deliver bad news, it was like every Steven Spielberg film of the last decade or so.

 

   Which meant?

 

   It meant, he said, that you always go into a Spielberg film thinking that the magician of the movies will deliver another triumph on par with his best work. But you always leave thinking that while the picture wasn’t bad, it was hardly excellent or even, reminiscent of Spielberg at his best.

 

   Like the last Indiana Jones movie?

 

   Exactly, he said. That was a classic case of a great director being handed a brilliant character and still failing to make the best of the material. Tintin was something like that.

 

   At the time, I thought he was being too harsh. He is a young guy, I said to myself, and therefore the Tintin stories do not resonate with him as much as they do with people of my generation. No matter what he says, I’m sure the movie will be terrific. After all, it combines the genius of Spielberg with modern technology and some of the greatest comic book characters ever created. What could possibly go wrong?

 

   Well, I’ve now seen the film. And regrettably, the photographer was right. In fact, he put it perfectly. There is nothing wrong with Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin. It is a perfectly acceptable comic book movie. But it is just that a picture that combines Spielberg and Tintin should not be merely acceptable. It should be terrific.

 

   And this is a very ordinary movie.

 

   What do I think is wrong with the film? Well, where to start?

 

   For one, I don’t think that technology helps move the story forward. In fact, I think it comes in the way of the experience. There are two ways of doing Tintin and both have been tried before by the French. Either you make a fully animated cartoon picture like Destination Moon, a Tintin feature in which animation artists successfully copied Herge’s style. Or you make a live action movie, as the French also did, with somewhat limited success.

 

 "The final impression is of a director who has no feel for Tintin or the world he inhabits, who has taken the characters and fitted them into an adventure framework using fancy technology that only superficially recreates the universe of Herge."

   Spielberg opts for a third route. He uses the technology called motion capture in which (and bear with me because this is a massive over-simplification) computer animation techniques are grafted on to live action performed by real actors. The technology has its uses. If you are making, say, The Lord Of The Rings, when you want to faithfully reproduce J.R. Tolkien’s vision without turning the picture into a cartoon, it makes sense to use motion capture.

 

   But does it make sense for Tintin?

 

   If you made a live action version of Tintin – as the French demonstrated – viewers don’t really mind that Thompson and Thomson have real noses not just the snub doodles that Herge gave them. Just as we accept that a movie Joker will not look like the Bob Kane-Bill Finger version in a big budget Batman movie, we are prepared to make allowances for reality with Tintin.

 

   But unlike, say, Christopher Nolan or Tim Burton, who had the vision to see beyond technology, Spielberg wants to give us a comic book feel in a live action movie. Alas, the net effect of motion capture is to leave us in a netherworld which is neither real nor fully cartoon-like. We know that Thompson and Thomson are played by real actors. But we can’t work out why their faces seem slightly unreal.

 

   The obvious parallel is with the Harry Potter movies, where technology was used only when it was really necessary. We knew (or suspected, at any rate) that technology had been used to erase Ralph Fiennes’ nose to remain true to J.K. Rowling’s vision. But because Voldemort and Potter were real characters, played by real people, we took a real interest in their stories.

 

   In the case of Tintin, the material is not light enough to work as cartoons nor real enough to make us care about the characters as though they were human beings.

 

   If you take the technological misjudgements away, the movie is still not very good. The genius of Herge’s Tintin lay in his creator’s ability to surround the so-called boy reporter with a host of characters you cared about so that you never really worried too much about Tintin himself. You never asked: if he is a reporter, why doesn’t he file stories? Or why doesn’t he have a girlfriend? Why does he live with an older bearded man?

 

   The problem with Spielberg’s Tintin is that we are supposed to care about him for much of the movie. For a full third of the picture, Captain Haddock does not even make an appearance. Instead, we are expected to be thrilled by the adventures of Tintin, boy detective.

 

   Frankly, this is a terrible idea. Tintin is neither convincing as a detective nor credible when he gets into fights and knocks people out. This part of the picture is so risible that it is only rescued by the cartoon Snowy, the dog who has more screen presence than Spielberg’s Tintin.

 

   Things pick up once Haddock is introduced. (Did you know that he had a Scottish accent? Don’t remember that from the books – but then, he is French in the original Herge comics anyway.) But, one would have enjoyed more scenes set at Marlinspike (not possible because it is not yet Haddock’s home in this movie) and the introduction of such great characters as Professor Calculus. Instead, Spielberg, who has clearly not grown up on the comics in the way we in India have, plots much of the movie as an Indiana Jones adventure story in which Harrison Ford is replaced by a cartoonish pipsqueak.

 

   The final impression is of a director who has no feel for Tintin or the world he inhabits, who has taken the characters and fitted them into an adventure framework using fancy technology that only superficially recreates the universe of Herge.

 

   Watching this movie I realised how right J.K. Rowling was. When Harry Potter was to be filmed, Spielberg bid for the franchise. Even though he was the world’s biggest director with a history of making movies about young boys, Rowling turned him down. He had no feel for Harry Potter, she said.

 

   Judging by this movie, the Herge estate should have done the same. Nothing Steven Spielberg makes can be very bad. But as the Tintin picture demonstrates, it is entirely possible for Spielberg’s work to be dully mediocre, especially when he steps outside his all-American comfort zone.

 


 

CommentsComments

  • Gujjar Boy 21 Dec 2011

    I can't believe you trashed the live motion capture. I thought it was the best thing to have happened to Tin Tin. How else would you create Snowy. But i can understand that on the whole the Tin Tin movie was not stand out brilliant. It felt more like an episode of a Tin Tin TV series.

  • Mukund Vasishta 24 Nov 2011

    Hi

    Though I somewhat agree with what you said about the movie being mediocre. Tintin's creator is known to have thought otherwise of Spielberg's capabilities.

    "Michael Farr, author of Tintin: The Complete Companion, recalled Hergé "thought Spielberg was the only person who could ever do Tintin justice" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin_(film)

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