Based on the series of comic albums by Belgian artist Georges Remi (Herge), the 2011 movie The Adventures of Tintin has clever moments and stunning visual effects, but, at times, it falls victim to its release as a 3D film. The gyroscopic cinematography is stellar, particularly when Tintin, our intrepid adventurer / reporter, chases after a pickpocket and finds himself on a busy street, veritably trapped in crisscrossing traffic. The audience is at once propelled with Tintin’s gaze: left right, up, and down. In one respect, we are trapped like Tintin and are agape at the infinitely oncoming traffic. At the same time, we are subject to scenes of silliness that follow Tintin’s white fox terrier, Snowy, straddling the hoods of cars, dodging equal traffic, and making his way through a corral of cattle.
Snowy’s romp is necessary to the story, sort of, but its duration is not and is present solely to justify the extra six dollars the audience has spent on required glasses. Other moments on a pirate ship, in a desert, and on a plane conjure this same feeling, and, like scenes that are converted to 3D in post-production, the 2D scenes supposed to be viewed in 3D are equally jarring and remove the viewer from the story, forcing them to focus on the extraneous action.
One can certainly move past these bumps in the road without unbearable frustration, in part because the story is pretty solid. Refreshingly, this – while there are bound to be sequels – is not an origin story. The same way that we met Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, we meet Tintin. Both characters are established and successful in their adventures. We don’t know why Jones moonlights as an extreme adventurer – though it beats holding office hours twice a week – and we don’t know what impelled Tintin to uncover a variety of conspiracies and solve crimes that are quickly exposited to us through various, framed newspaper clippings in his home. In both films, we are swept up in the adventure without being weighted down with reasons why. They do because they do, and we can live with that.
The similarities of Jones and Tintin are both coincidental and by design. Canonically, both characters are based in the early Twentieth Century, with Jones battling Nazis throughout his franchise – until the fourth one that I still claim was the result of a bar bet gone terribly awry – and Tintin originating in a battle with Soviet authorities in 1929. However, his origin does not include most of the characters featured in the 2011 film: Haddock, Calculus, Thompson, Thompson, and Sakharine. Thus, we are immersed in Tintin’s life after he’s begun his success and sort of in his prime, much in the way that we met Jones in 1981. This is where design comes in, led by Steven Spielberg, a man renowned for echoing cinema – both his own and historical.
The Adventures of Tintin, in one sense, feels like a re-launch of Indiana Jones, only this time, for a younger audience. Let’s face it: the current Indiana Jones was a draw to numerous generations in 1981, but now, he’s a nostalgic relic, one that we, sadly, wish would hang up his hat and coil his whip for one last time. Tintin also offers appeal to broad generations. The comic itself has been serialized for better than fifty years, so it’s a fair bet that adults have heard the name at least once. The children who may or may not have heard of Tintin can now live vicariously through his adventures on the big screen, and because it’s animated, the story becomes infinite. Never will an audience sit through a fourth installment of an action-adventure-drama franchise and say, “wow, Indie’s officially old.” Tintin will perpetually be young as his audience ages and progenitizes new viewers.
The potential of a new adventurer franchise is not the only echo within Tintin. There are moments that resonate from Raiders, particularly those set in the desert, where Tintin – like Jones – comes ever-so-close, on many occasions, to eviscerating himself on a plane’s propeller. While his rescue is geared to the 3D-craving crowd, it’s difficult to disregard the sound of the blade burrowing deeper and deeper in the sand – as opposed to the similarly screeching grind it makes against the uber-Nazi’s face and sternum.
Another similarity between this film and the Jones franchise is its PG rating, but this is where the echoing diverges. Both Raiders and Temple of Doom are rated PG, but there are few moments that remind the audience of this. However, Tintin often reminds you that PG implies droves of adolescents and children. Intertwined with the aforementioned 3D-silliness is just cliche silliness that visually panders to those who might have been distracted from the narrative. Like Hugo, Tintin speaks to a shift in viewership. Ratings-wise, Raiders and Doom are open to all ages, but I never feel as if a child next to me would enjoy certain scenes more. In contrast, I can hear kids laugh out loud when Hugo’s Inspector is caught on the train and being slowly tugged through the station, and I can hear the same laughter when Snowy runs under cattle, hitting his head on each one’s utter. I understand it’s a cartoon, but cartoons don’t need to pander. The original serial was more satirical than silly and it hardly feels as if it speaks down to its readers. The same can’t be said for Spielberg’s venture into 3D animation, and that’s unfortunate.
