We’ve been hearing about The Adventures of TinTin: Secret of the Unicorn (directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson) for what feels like decades, and finally, the first teaser is here. Based on the beloved Belgian comic strip I’d never heard of before this, the 3D, motion-capture project “stars” Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jamie Bell, and Cary Elwes. As far as I’m concerned, the most interesting thing about it is that Edgar Wright co-wrote the script (with Steven Moffat and Joe Cornish). Seriously, did you guys see Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s last movies? Anyway, now that the first footage is here, it sure looks… uh… motion-capturey. Although it may have broken the record for most dramatic music ever set to footage of a guy staring at a toy boat.
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Here’s Jackson’s explanation for using motion-capture to Empire Magazine back in November:
“With live action you’re going to have actors pretending to be Captain Haddock and Tintin,” says Peter Jackson. “You’d be casting people to look like them. It’s not really going to feel like the Tintin Hergé drew. It’s going to be somewhat different. With CGI we can bring Hergé’s world to life, keep the stylised caricatured faces, keep everything looking like Hergé’s artwork, but make it photo-real.” [Empire]
Photo-real? Not quite. Mannequin real, maybe. Real doll real. In any case, if you’re worried about live action not looking like the cartoons, motion-capture seems like a weird solution. Just draw the things. No one has ever complained about a cartoon’s acting.