Watch the Trailer for Spielberg's New 3D Movie 'The Adventures of Tintin'
by Scott Nye
Color me...slightly less skeptical.
Like many Americans, I'm not terribly familiar with "The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn," a popular comic across the Atlantic. I had some friends who were deep into it, but it never really caught with me. I remain, however, a big Steven Spielberg fan, and he's been trying to adapt this since the early 90s. But then again, Spielberg's fanboy passion projects run the gamut of "Jurassic Park" (which is awesome) to "Hook" (which is...earnest, if not terribly successful). And this is the first run at motion capture by a guy who, until recently, still edited his films with scissors and tape.
Now that the trailer and poster have premiered, we can get a sense of what he's going after, which seems to be full-tilt adventure storytelling.
And I am all about full-tilt, globe-spanning adventure; we're in short supply of those types of films. As for the look of the film, Spielberg and special-effects team Weta seem to have found the right balance between realism and maintaining the cartoonish style of the original's art, though there is obviously still a lot of work to do. Effects-heavy films are typically in production until a few weeks before their release, so I'm not surprised to find very few shots of faces in this teaser. It's sort of a risky venture to introduce a new franchise to American audiences without giving them a look at their protagonist.
The biggest thing that has me excited at this point? I had no idea Edgar Wright, writer/director of "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," had a hand in writing this. Awesome.
"The Adventures of Tintin" (which seems to no longer carry its original subtitle, "The Secret of the Unicorn") will be released December 23rd, and I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more from it before then. Ain't it Cool debuted the American poster you see above, and Empire has the international version for your viewing pleasure.
Watch the trailer for "The Adventures of Tintin" below.