I don’t care what anybody else says. At this point, I am flat out excited about the impending release of “The Adventures Of Tintin”.
It’s exciting enough that Spielberg and Jackson are working together, and whatever you think about this film or that film, specific titles from either filmography, if that combination of brainpower doesn’t excite you, then we simply don’t have a common starting point in any conversation about film.
It’s exciting enough that Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish were brought in to finish what Stephen Moffat began, and again, that’s one of those equations that puts lead in the pencil, figuratively speaking.
And after the reaction many people had to Andy Serkis in “Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes,” it’s a safe bet that there will be a lot of attention on his performance as Captain Haddock, which has always been one of the most enjoyable characters in the Tintin universe.
It’s a long list of reasons I’m excited before we get anywhere near mentioning the motion-capture that’s been used to create the film, but there is some genuinely eye-popping stuff in this new trailer. If you haven’t watched it yet, I’ll just say keep your eyes out for everything involving a motorcycle and a sidecar…
… look, the truth is that WETA is running rings around everyone on this particular sort of cutting-edge right now, and this looks like Spielberg is doing some adventure-movie action scene stuff that he’s never been able to do before, stuff that would be a nightmare to shoot on a set, but that can be pure play for the director and his actors working in this particular medium. I’m so curious to see what it looks like when we see a film that Steven Freakin’ Spielberg shot by hand. This is a first time.
In motion capture, Spielberg is essentially the cameraman, working in a very free and personal way. And he’s working with some fun actors, a hopeully-affectionate screenplay, and these tools he’s never played with before. I’ve seen Spielberg on a film set literally playing with the new high-tech toy, and it wasn’t even his set. He was just there because he was shooting something else on the same lot, and he was taking a break. Watching this iconic filmmaker playing around with a motion-control camera on that set is one of the reasons I’m dying to see what happens now that he’s got this motion-capture camera and he’s taking it for a test drive.
I love that “Tintin” is about to open in the UK while it’s not set for a few months in the US, because it means we’re getting the trailer that we’d normally see a few weeks before release right now in the US, and it’s giving us our best look yet at what these guys have made.
“The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn” opens in the UK on October 26, and it opens in the US on December 21, 2011.