Childhood revisited

Movie: The Adventures of Tintin

                       

Genre:  animated

                       

Length: 107 minutes

It is indeed a powerful emotion to be able to rediscover an important part of one’s childhood.

This is something I did, recently, when I took myself off to see Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin.

The various adventures undertaken by Tintin (intrepid journalist) and his faithful hound Snowy formed, for my brother and I, an important part of our childhood as we first discovered, quickly collected, read and reread all the comic books.

Previous attempts to bring Tintin to the big/small screen I have seen – done as straight forward, old-fashioned cartoons – were, in my humble opinion, major disappointments and captured neither the essence nor the subtle characteristics or nuances of the books various characters.

Fortunately, aficionados of the comic books will not be disappointed by this latest attempt to bring Herge’s creations to the big screen.

The film is a faithful rendition of the books. This is evident right from the opening credits, where a cartoon Tintin traverses the globe against a backdrop of newspaper headlines of his exploits (many of which are covered in the books).

The attention to detail is astonishing – so much so that one of the fonts – used during the opening credits - is identical to that used on the cover of every book.

The film certainly took me to the days of my youth and brought back so many fond memories.

Spielberg acquired the rights to produce a film based upon the Adventures of Tintin series following Hergé's death in 1983, and re-optioned them in 2002.

The movie - based on three of the original comic books: The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicorn (1943), and Red Rackham's Treasure (1944) – has been filmed as a performance capture film.

The same technique – which refers to recording the actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation – was also used to film Avatar.

Thankfully, the use of performance capture in this movie is used to great effect.

It helps to flesh out the characters and brings them and the story to life. Before seeing the film I had not read any of the books in over 15 years and yet, whilst watching, I recognised several of the scenes which were taken straight from the books.

The movie has – like the comic books it is based on – been created using an amazing palette of colour, action and sound.

It has lovingly recreated the comic books and the characters – such as the Captain Haddock and Thomson and Thompson – even utter the same catchphrases that they did in the books.

I honestly don’t believe that Tintin could have been filmed any other way – its subject matter was made for motion capture.

The movie is an outstanding achievement and I encourage all fans of the comic books to see it.

Rating: 9/10