The Adventures of Tintin (film)
The Adventures of Tintin (also known as The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn)[2] is a 2011 animated epic action-adventure film based on Hergé's comic book series of the same name. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, who produced the film with Peter Jackson and Kathleen Kennedy. Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish wrote the screenplay for the film. It stars Jamie Bell as Tintin, Andy Serkis, and Daniel Craig.[5][6][7] In the film, Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock (Serkis) searches for the treasure of the Unicorn, a ship once captained by Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis Haddock, but they face dangerous pursuit by Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Craig), who is the descendant of Sir Francis's nemesis Red Rackham.[8]
The Adventures of Tintin
- Steven Spielberg
- Peter Jackson
- Kathleen Kennedy
- Paramount Pictures
- Nickelodeon Movies
- Columbia Pictures
- Amblin Entertainment
- WingNut Films
- The Kennedy/Marshall Company
- Hemisphere Media Capital
- Paramount Pictures (United Kingdom/United States/New Zealand)
- Sony Pictures Releasing International (International)[1]
- 22 October 2011 (Brussels)
- 25 October 2011 (United Kingdom)
- 26 October 2011 (New Zealand)
- 21 December 2011 (United States)
107 minutes[2]
- United Kingdom
- United States
- New Zealand
English
$135 million[3]
$374 million[4]
Spielberg and Hergé admired each other's work; the director acquired the film rights to The Adventures of Tintin after the author's death in 1983, and re-optioned them in 2002. Filming was due to begin in October 2008 for a 2010 release, but the release was delayed to 2011 after Universal Pictures backed out of producing the film with Paramount Pictures, which had provided $30 million in pre-production; Columbia Pictures replaced Universal as co-financer. The delay resulted in Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who was originally cast as Tintin, departing and being replaced by Bell. The film draws inspiration from the Tintin volumes The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicorn (1943) and Red Rackham's Treasure (1944). Principal photography began in January 2009 and finished that July, with a combination of voice acting, motion capture and traditional computer animation being used.
The Adventures of Tintin premiered in Brussels, Hergé's home region, on 22 October 2011. It was theatrically released in Europe by Sony Pictures Releasing International on 26 October and in the United States by Paramount on 21 December 2011 in Digital 3D and IMAX 3D formats.[9][10] The film received positive reviews from critics, who praised the stylized motion capture animation (particularly the faithful character designs to Hergé's works), visual effects, action sequences, cast performances and musical score. The film was positively compared to Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).[11] The Adventures of Tintin was also a commercial success, grossing over $374 million,[4] and received numerous awards and nominations, including being the first motion-captured animated film (and first non-Pixar film) to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film,[12] while John Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.[13] A sequel directed by Jackson has been announced, but has since stalled in development hell.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
In 1948, Hergé wrote to Walt Disney hoping to pitch The Adventures of Tintin into a potential animated feature in an effort to introduce the series to American audiences. The proposal fell through as Disney was busy working on Cinderella around that time, though Hergé did receive a Mickey Mouse trophy and a picture showing Tintin and Mickey shaking hands decades later.[26]
Steven Spielberg became an avid fan of The Adventures of Tintin in 1981 after a review compared Raiders of the Lost Ark to the comics.[20] Meanwhile, Hergé—who disliked the previous live-action film versions and the Hergé's Adventures of Tintin animated series—became a fan of Spielberg. Michael Farr, author of Tintin: The Complete Companion, recalled Hergé "thought Spielberg was the only person who could ever do Tintin justice".[27] Hergé had been looking to use the medium of film to make Tintin more current, as he felt that the animated films Tintin and the Temple of the Sun and Tintin and the Lake of Sharks had failed to capture the essence of the books.[28] Spielberg and his production partner Kathleen Kennedy of Amblin Entertainment were scheduled to meet with Hergé in 1983 while filming Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in London. Hergé died that week, but his widow Fanny Remi decided to give them the rights.[20] A three-year-long option to film the comics was finalized in 1984,[27] with Universal Pictures as distributor.[29]
Spielberg commissioned E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial writer Melissa Mathison to script a film about Tintin battling ivory hunters in Africa.[27] Spielberg saw Tintin as an "Indiana Jones for kids" and wanted Jack Nicholson to play Haddock.[30] Unsatisfied with the script, Spielberg continued production on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; the rights returned to the Hergé Foundation. Claude Berri and Roman Polanski became interested in filming the property, while Warner Bros. Pictures negotiated for the rights, but they could not guarantee the "creative integrity" that the Foundation found in Spielberg.[27] In 2001, Spielberg revealed his interest in depicting Tintin with computer animation.[31] In November 2002, his studio DreamWorks Pictures reestablished the option to film the series.[32] Spielberg originally said he would only produce the film.[33] In 2004, French magazine Capital reported Spielberg was intending a trilogy based on The Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackham's Treasure, The Seven Crystal Balls / Prisoners of the Sun and The Blue Lotus / Tintin in Tibet (which are separate stories, but both feature Chang Chong-Chen).[34] By then, Spielberg had reverted to his idea of a live-action adaptation and called Peter Jackson to ask if Weta Digital would create a computer-generated Snowy.[8]
Differences from the source material[edit]
The film mainly draws its story from The Secret of the Unicorn (1943) and The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941) and to a much lesser degree, from Red Rackham's Treasure (1944). There are major differences from the source material, most notably with regard to the antagonists. In the book, Ivan Sakharine is a minor character, neither a villain nor the descendant of Red Rackham. As Sakharine was made the main antagonist in the film, the book's main villains, the Bird brothers, are absent from the adaptation, save for a small "cameo" in the initial sequence at the market. As a result of this change, many events transpire that bear no relation to events in the books involving Sakharine's character.[58] As in other adaptations, Snowy's "voice" is not used.
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of 236 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.00/10. The website's consensus reads: "Drawing deep from the classic Raiders of the Lost Ark playbook, Steven Spielberg has crafted another spirited, thrilling adventure in the form of Tintin."[11] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[68] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[69]
Colin Covert of the Star Tribune gave the film four stars out of four and said that Spielberg's first venture into animation was his most delightful dose of pure entertainment since Raiders of the Lost Ark.[70] Amy Biancolli of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Such are the timeless joys of the books (and now the movie), this sparkling absurdity and knack for buckling swash under the worst of circumstances. The boy may have the world's strangest cowlick, but he sure can roll with the punches".[71] Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four, calling it "an ambitious and lively caper, miles smarter than your average 3-D family film". He praised the setting of the film, stating its similarity to the original Tintin comic strips and was also pleased with the 3-D technology used in the film, saying that "Spielberg employed it as an enhancement to 2-D instead of an attention-grabbing gimmick".[72]
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also gave the film three and a half stars out of four and wrote: "The movie comes at you in a whoosh, like a volcano of creative ideas in full eruption. Presented as the first part of a trilogy produced by Spielberg and Peter Jackson, The Adventures of Tintin hits home for the kid in all of us who wants to bust out and run free".[73] Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times said: "Think of The Adventures of Tintin as a song of innocence and experience, able to combine a sweet sense of childlike wonder and pureness of heart with the most worldly and sophisticated of modern technology. More than anything, it's just a whole lot of fun".[74]
Richard Corliss of Time wrote: "Motion capture, which transforms actors into cartoon characters in a vividly animated landscape, is the technique Spielberg has been waiting for—the Christmas gift … that he's dreamed of since his movie childhood".[75] Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter was also very positive about the film, describing it as "a good ol' fashioned adventure flick that hearkens back to the filmmaker's action-packed, tongue-in-cheek swashbucklers of the 1980s. Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is a visually dazzling adaptation". Comparing it with another film, Mintzer said Tintin has "an altogether more successful mocap experience than earlier efforts like The Polar Express".[76]
Belgian newspaper Le Soir's film critics Daniel Couvreur and Nicolas Crousse called the film "a great popular adventure movie", stating "[the film's] enthusiasm and childhood spirit are unreservedly infectious".[77] Le Figaro praised the film, considering it to be "crammed with action, humor and suspense".[78] Leslie Felperin of Variety wrote: "Clearly rejuvenated by his collaboration with producer Peter Jackson, and blessed with a smart script and the best craftsmanship money can buy, Spielberg has fashioned a whiz-bang thrill ride that's largely faithful to the wholesome spirit of his source but still appealing to younger, Tintin-challenged auds".[79]
La Libre Belgique was, however, a little less enthusiastic; its film critic Alain Lorfèvre called the film "a technical success, [with] a Tintin vivid as it should be [and] a somewhat excessive Haddock".[59] The Guardian's Xan Brooks gave the film two stars out of five, stating: "While the big set pieces are often exuberantly handled, the human details are sorely wanting. How curious that Hergé achieved more expression with his use of ink-spot eyes and humble line drawings than a bank of computers and an army of animators were able to achieve".[80] Blog Critics writer Ross Miller said: "Author Hergé's wonderfully bold and diverse array of characters are a mixed bag when it comes to how they've been translated to the big-screen" and that while the mystery might be "perfectly serviceable for film ... the execution of it at times feels languid and stodgy, like it's stumbling along from one eye-catching setpiece to the next". However, he summed it up as "an enjoyable watch with some spectacular set-pieces, lavish visuals and some fine motion-capture performances".[81]
Tom McCarthy, the author of a study of the Tintin books, described Hollywood's treatment in this film of its characters and stories as "truly execrable", stating that it ignores the books' key idea of inauthenticity. The themes of fakeness and phoniness and counterfeit that drive many of the original plots are replaced in the film with messages that feel "as though we have wandered into a seminar on monetisation through self-empowerment … It's like making a biopic of Nietzsche that depicts him as a born-again Christian, or of Gandhi as a trigger-happy Rambo blasting his way through the Raj".[82]
Steve Rose from The Guardian wrote about one of the film's major criticisms: that The Adventures of Tintin, much like The Polar Express, crossed into the uncanny valley, thereby rendering Tintin "too human and not human at all".[83] Manohla Dargis, one of the chief critics of The New York Times, called the movie "a marvel of gee-wizardry and a night's entertainment that can feel like a lifetime". The simplicity of the comic strip, she wrote, is a crucial part of the success of Tintin, who is "an avatar for armchair adventurers". Dargis noted that Tintin's appearance in the film "resembled Hergé's creation, yet was eerily different as if, like Pinocchio, his transformation into human form had been prematurely interrupted". Another major fault in the film, Dargis opines, is how it is overworked; she writes that there is "hardly a moment of downtime, a chance to catch your breath or contemplate the tension between the animated Expressionism and the photo-realist flourishes". Nevertheless, she singles out some of the "interludes of cinematic delight", approving of the visual imagination employed within the movie's numerous exciting scenes.[84]
The film was named in New York magazine's David Edelstein's Top 10 List for 2011.[85] It was also included in HitFix's top 10 films of 2011.[86]
Box office[edit]
The Adventures of Tintin grossed $77,591,831 in North America and $296,402,120 in other territories for a worldwide total of $373,993,951.[4]
In the United States, it is one of only 12 feature films to be released in over 3,000 theaters and still improve on its box office performance in its second weekend, increasing 17.6% from $9,720,993 to $11,436,160.[87] On its first day, the film opened in the UK, France and Belgium, earning $8.6 million. In Belgium, Tintin's country of origin, the film made $520,000, while France provided $4.6 million, a number higher than other similar Wednesday debuts.[88] In France, it was the second-best debut of the year for its first day after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.[89] On its first weekend it topped the overseas box office with $56.2 million from 21 countries.[90] In Belgium, it earned $1.99 million. It also earned the top spot in many major markets like France and the Maghreb region ($21 million), where it set a record opening weekend for an animated title; the UK, Ireland and Malta ($10.9 million), Germany ($4.71 million) and Spain ($3.75 million).[91][92][93] It retained first place for a second consecutive and final weekend, earning $39.0 million from 45 territories.[94] In its native Belgium it was up 20% to $2.39 million, while in France it plummeted 61% to $8.42 million. Its biggest debut was in Russia and the CIS ($4.81 million).[95][96]
The film grossed ₹7.5 crore (US$900,000) on its opening weekend (11–13 November 2011) in India, an all-time record for a Spielberg film and for an animated feature in India. The film was released with 351 prints, the largest-ever release for an animated film.[97][98][99] In four weeks, it became the highest-grossing animated film of all time in the country with ₹25.4 crore (US$3.0 million).[100]
Accolades[edit]
The Adventures of Tintin was nominated for Best Original Score at the 84th Academy Awards.[101] It was the first all-digital motion-captured animated film (as well as the first non-Pixar film) to win a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film.[102] It also received two nominations at the 65th British Academy Film Awards in the categories of Best Animated Film and Best Special Visual Effects.[103]
Proposed sequels[edit]
Originally, the second Tintin film was to be based on Hergé's The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun.[128] However, screenwriter Anthony Horowitz later stated that those books would be the second sequel and another story would become the first sequel.[7]
Peter Jackson announced that he would direct the sequel once he had finished The Hobbit trilogy.[128] Two years before The Secret of the Unicorn, Jackson mentioned that his favorite Tintin stories were The Seven Crystal Balls, Prisoners of the Sun, The Black Island, and The Calculus Affair, but he had not yet decided which stories would form the basis of the second film. He added "it would be great" to use Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon for a third or fourth film in the series.
By the time The Secret of the Unicorn was released, Spielberg said the book that would form the sequel had been chosen and that the Thomson and Thompson detectives would "have a much bigger role".[129] The sequel would be produced by Spielberg and directed by Jackson.[129] Kathleen Kennedy said the script might be completed by February or March 2012 and motion-captured in summer 2012, so that the film would be on track to be released by Christmas 2014 or mid-2015.[130]
In the months following the release of The Secret of the Unicorn, Spielberg revealed that a story outline for the sequel had been completed and that it was based on two books.[131] Horowitz tweeted that Professor Calculus would be introduced in the sequel.[132][133] During a press tour in Belgium for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Jackson said he intended to shoot performance-capture in 2013, aiming for a release date in 2015.[134]
In March 2013, Spielberg said: "Don't hold me to it, but we're hoping the film will come out around Christmas-time in 2015. We know which books we're making, we can't share that now but we're combining two books which were always intended to be combined by Hergé". He refused to confirm the names of the books, but said The Blue Lotus would probably be the third Tintin film.[135] In December 2014, when Jackson was asked if the Tintin sequel would be his next project after The Hobbit trilogy, he said that it would be made "at some point soon", but he added that he wanted to direct two New Zealand films before that.[136]
In June 2015, Jamie Bell stated that the sequel was titled Tintin and the Temple of the Sun and that he hoped shooting would begin in early 2016 for a possible release by the end of 2017 or early 2018.[137] Later in November, Horowitz said that he was no longer working on the sequel, and did not know if it was still being made,[138] and in March 2016, he confirmed that the script he had written for the sequel had been scrapped.[139]
In March 2016, Scout.co.nz announced that Jackson would produce the sequel rather than direct. The website also announced that a third Tintin film was in development, with Jackson serving as executive producer. Bell and Serkis were reported to be reprising their roles in both films.[140] Spielberg later announced that Jackson was still attached to directing the sequel, and that it would enter work once Jackson completed another Amblin Partners/DreamWorks production.[141]
In March 2018, Spielberg reiterated the above, saying that "Peter Jackson has to do the second part. Normally, if all goes well, he will soon start working on the script. As it takes two years of animation work on the film, for you, I would not expect to see it for about three years. But Peter will stick to it. Tintin is not dead!"[5][6] In interviews later the same year, Jackson affirmed his intent to make another Tintin film, but said that a script was yet to be written.[142]
In an April 2022 interview with Forbes, Jamie Bell expressed interest in reprising his role saying. "He [Peter Jackson]’s always doing something, so if they said let’s get the band back together, we’d go do it. It’s going to be weird if I play Tintin at 45, but still, the technology allows it, so that’s fine."[143] In April 2024, Andy Serkis stated that Jackson was working on the sequel.[144][145]