A week or so ago, I went to see TinTin after a long-awaited desire to see it. I believe to many people in my age range, Tintin was part of our childhood. We grew up reading Tintin’s comics and his adventures (whether in English or French). Tintin was possibly my favorite comic character ever. I still remember the first comic I read spontaneously was when I borrowed Tintin and the Seven Crystal Balls from the library. I fell in love with it and started trying to read the whole series. Flip back to the present, a few months ago, I got the whole series and I’m working hard on reading it in entirety. Seeing this movie meant a lot to me and I believe its an understatement when I say that I had expectations. Whether these expectations were met or not, I’ll break down in the rest of my blog.
First of all, my expectations were quite high. For one, it was based on one of my favorite comics with a whole bunch of characters that I love. Second, the movie itself is directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and the voice talents are all very good. Third, before I went to see the movie, I don’t remember where exactly but I remembered someone telling me it was compared to the success of Jurassic Park. With all that in this movie’s advantage, how could anything go wrong? Of course, there were some elements that did go wrong. The movie was good but not exactly what I had expected. Some parts (mostly in the beginning) were lengthy where I felt like the movie was dragging longer than it should and I looked at my watch to see how long the movie had lapsed. When I check the time at the theatres, thats never a good sign (unless of course, I have plans afterwards) especially when it wasn’t a very long movie (compared to the norm of movies averaging about 2 hours nowadays).
One of the things I did thoroughly enjoy about the movie was the computer graphics. It was state-of-art and beautiful. I remembered seeing the trailer and thinking that it was with actual people. When it zoomed in and I saw that it was animated, I was taken by surprise. It was a wonderful surprise because especially in the scene where they are at sea, the water around them is so detailed and very realistic. The visuals of this film was absolutely amazing. Thank goodness they had that because the characters brought to life was really lacking a bit of that something. Tintin was really missing a bit of excitement and adventure for one. I felt that as I had become very much attached to Snowy by the end of the movie. Snowy still remained the silly but smart dog who pulled Tintin out of trouble by chance as in the books. I really hate doing the debate of how books put into movies are different and seldomly portray in full the original piece of literature. Usually you would hear me criticizing the actual storyline, in this case, my problem was really with the character portrayal. There was a lack of fun and wittiness in the characters. Snowy shined as I mentioned before, and I’d have to say that I was also happy with Captain Haddock.
There is another thing I really enjoyed about the movie. I like movie adaptations for the fact that when it is adapted, they take the essence and bring it to the screen and make modifications. It was inspired from the original but there are little changes that have to be made in order to intrigue movie goers. I strongly believe that whatever attracts you to not be able to put down a book is probably not the same aspect that captivates you in a movie. Of course different genres will have different potential so this will be a never ending analysis and debate for another post. So my point is, before I went in to see Tintin, I had wondered how they would do it because it was in the middle of the series, so they had to find a way to not only introduce all the characters but not destroy the flow of the adventure/story itself. I was extremely impressed with how they had integrated parts from several of the books before and after. Using Captain Haddock’s introduction in the original book and mixing it with Secret Unicorn’s storyline and a part of Red Rackham’s search was fantastic and I found added a wonderful twist but didn’t lose the essence of the character, especially with Captain Haddock and added a bit of humor into the whole idea.
This “review” took me so long to finish as its my first one but I felt my project needed to get a move on to other aspects (not just photography). Hopefully you enjoyed it. If there’s anything else you suggest in future reviews (if any, because they are time consuming) please share some experiences and opinions, comments, with me.
Tranquil Dreams 