The Adventures of Tintin

Steven Spielberg is a true filmmaker.

How can I be so certain? After all, isn’t appreciating a movie quite like any other democratic process? Some like something, some again like something else, so on and so forth. But I am making a statement in absolutism. And why?

Call me sentimental, call me partial, call me anything you like, but Steven Spielberg is a Tintin fan! And what does that have to do with filmmaking? Have you ever known of a better editor that Georges Remi? Also known as Herge?

Spielberg incidentally had never read any of the Tintin comic books till he was making Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was during one of the reviews of the Harrison Ford starrer that one critic referred to it as a Tintin adventure. And that made Spielberg call for every single Tintin comic book. The books that were collected for the master director were in French, and Spielberg could not make one word from the other (no Google Translate was available in those days) and the storylines were all lost on him. But the art, that was what made Spielberg a Herge fan from the get go! To think of it, there is a popular saying which goes to speak about a picture making up for a thousand words!

The urge to film a live-action Tintin feature grew in Steven Spielberg from that day on. While filming for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in London in 1983, Spielberg even planned an appointment with Herge, to negotiate the movie rights. It is believed from authoritative sources that Herge, too, had commented on Spielberg being the only filmmaker in the world to do justice to Tintin on screen, and therefore a meeting was set.

Herge, unfortunately, died later that week.

His widow still sold the movie rights to Spielberg, but the screenplay that was affected for the movie left Spielberg utterly disillusioned with bringing the boy reporter to the big screen. Consequently, the rights were given back to the Herge Foundation and after many years and a lot of bids for the movie rights, even by filmmakers like Roman Polanski, it came back to Spielberg, who was finally all set to make a movie out it.

And when it came to Milou (Snowy), Steven Spielberg turned to Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame and asked if his production company could animate the fox terrier. And then came the words of wisdom. Peter Jackson, himself a self-confessed Tintin maniac, asked Spielberg to make a motion-capture animated movie, “…else the characters won’t quite look like Herge characters.” And I couldn’t agree more!

I had — a long, long time back — been taken to see He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, as in the live-action motion picture. And as a kid, I was keen to throw up all over the screen. Because they were not the characters that I played with, they were nothing at all like the characters that I saw in the animated films. Then what the hell was I watching?

And therefore, when Andy Serkis (Captain Haddock), Jamie Bell (Tintin), Daniel Craig (Red Rackham) and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Thompson and Thomson) were signed on, The Adventures of Tintin finally became reality!

I won’t bother recounting the entire story here, I don’t think that’s necessary. After all, who wouldn’t want to watch a Tintin film, that too one made by Steven Spielberg with Peter Jackson in tow?

But while on that subject, it needs to be remembered that Spielberg kind of takes an alternate route by amalgamating three Tintin comic books — The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure. Naturally, one can hear purists scoff, but stop and consider for a moment the method in which Tintin comics actually came into being post the fall of Belgium during World War II. To avoid controversial current affairs topics, Herge pushed back the entire storyline to just include fantastical, escapist themes — most notably, The Shooting Star. Therefore, there is no need to ridicule before observing the new storyline that the movie offers. All I am saying is that see the glass once before deciding that it is half-full or half-empty!

John Williams’ inspirational jazz masterpiece during the opening credits is worth the price of your ticket. But more importantly, The Adventures of Tintin needs to be seen for the animated masterpiece that it is. I remember my friend say, “Half the time the extras don’t even look like animation.” And yet, Steven Spielberg still lets us live in the world of Herge, in a blemish-free Europe, albeit fantastical, but something that we needed very badly. Wouldn’t want the “willing suspension of disbelief” to wash itself away completely now, would we?

Thank you, Mr. Spielberg, for letting people worldwide relive their childhood. Even if it were for just one and a half hours.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart! And I mean it…

Yours truly,

The Maharaja of Gaipajama.

Courtesy : Artpickles