Bringing Tintin to the big screen was always going to anger many purists, those who would have preferred if Hergé’s famous ginger-haired boy reporter had stayed on the page. But on the big screen our bequiffed hero has now appeared, in the hands of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, a directing and producing duo who have revealed that plans are already underway for a sequel, with the potential for many more based on the 24 different books.
One question often asked of a Tintin film is should it be live action or animation?
Almost three decades after he first acquired the film rights, Spielberg has answered that question by creating a 3-D performance capture animation, a masterful mixture of live action and animation.
The animation looks beautifully realistic and the action is reminiscent of the best of Indiana Jones, as Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his trusty fox terrier Snowy get a sniff of a good story and set off to get to the bottom of a new mystery.
They are joined by Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), and the bumbling Thompson and Thomson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost), as they travel the world on a treasure hunt for a sunken ship commanded by Haddock’s ancestor, always one step ahead of baddie-in-chief Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig).
There are some delicious details for aficionados. Watch out especially for the caricatures, and the birds flying around somebody’s head in one scene after they receive a bump on the head, two loving nods to Hergé’s original drawings.
Tintin is bold and brassy, with a tendency to go against all journalistic convention and make himself the centre of the story. He also has an uncanny knack of getting himself into a pickle, but that was half the fun of the books and it is half the fun of the film, written by the all-British team of Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish.
Famous Belgian Hergé originally wrote his stories as weekly serials, with there often being a cliffhanger at the end of each page, and this translates well to the film version with twists and turns coming thick and fast.
Purists may still curse billions of blue blistering barnacles, but for most lovers of Tintin it has been well worth the extended wait to finally see our hero on the big screen.
