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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

New TinTin trailer online!

Tom Lowe said:
There were dozens of crappy live-action Batman and Superman movies before Donner and Nolan did them right. Just because a book or franchise has never been properly filmed before does not mean it's impossible.
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The problem in those cases were the scripts. Batman is grounded in reality - even the comic books are. In Tintin, the issue, to begin with, is the appearance and behaviour of the characters. They aren't very "life-like". They have a singular charm to them which is lost the moment they are portrayed by humans. The characters are "ageless". Live action makes perfect sense for Batman - just not for Tintin. Herge himself would fight against live action adaptations.

Then again, this is the opinion of someone who has read each Tintin adventure ten times over. I am sure a live action adaptation could work well for new audiences. But I am sure most of the charm of the books will be lost in the process. The narratives are absolutely live action adaptable - as Indiana Jones proves it - but the characters (and some of the slapstick) are not. And really, that is what Tintin is about.
 
It seems to me that the people that are negative about the choice of going mocap animation have not read the books, so they don't "get it". These features are adaptions of Hergé's books. He was the only artist who made these - unlike Superman or Batman or whatever. Hergé defined a very unique and specific group of characters and universe - so I completely get why they went with this.

No one is saying that doing it live action would be impossible - that's not the point. And they are NOT going to replicate 100% realism - obviously not if you know the books! And that also seems pretty evident from the trailer.

The choice of going mocap will probably make sense when it premieres. I think that the trailer represents a choice of marketing more than a true sense of the movie, as this perhaps isn't the easiest to market.

I'm glad they didn't go live action on these new adaptions. Live action's been done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM3aL5qdHqk&feature=related
 
Subhadip Sen said:
they would just be laughable as photorealistic humans, no matter how good the acting.
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Subhadip Sen said:
The problem in those cases were the scripts. Batman is grounded in reality - even the comic books are. In Tintin, the issue, to begin with, is the appearance and behaviour of the characters. They aren't very "life-like".
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...and you're saying this to defend the use of techniques used to simulate life-like human beings, with their art direction being photorealistic?
 
Scenes with the yellow sea plane and the fire in the life boat are from Crab with the Golden Claws not Secret of the Unicorn
(I know because I read these to my kids recently).

Is this trailer for the whole series? Or are they mixing up the plots from the books?
 
Replicating Herge's style properly for a major release would have been a great compliment, but it also would have been a very hard sale at today's box office... Yet I am sure Spielberg chose MOCAP because of it's basic purpose, which is to get real performances from actors and be able to take those wherever you need to. To do this right you would have to get both new audiences (mostly kids), and satisfy those that knew Tintin before hand. There is heritage at play here. I think he nailed the look. It splits the difference between something "neat and new", and the original artwork. Don't look for a technological break-through here. It is enough to have the sensibility to bottle this, and the grand cinematic eloquence to translate it into film with justice. It isn't random Spielberg was on the job.

J Davis said:
Is this trailer for the whole series? Or are they mixing up the plots from the books?
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I trust his judgement. I would probably make one film out of Destination Moon and Explorers On The Moon.

[off topic]I would also turn the entire Robotech: Macross Saga into 3 to 5 movies.[/off topic] :)
 
The mocap/performance capture does not appear to be a significant improvement over "Beowulf", etc. It doesn't even appear to be on par with "Avatar." But I will reserve judgement on that until I see the full picture.
 
Tom, I don't think you are understanding one of my points. I think he didn't want to have exacting facial MOCAP. I think he wanted it to be un-realistic in certain ways. Comic-like. On purpose.
 
paulherrin said:
...and you're saying this to defend the use of techniques used to simulate life-like human beings, with their art direction being photorealistic?
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But they are not life-like! I made a mistake by using the word "photorealistic". I was just talking about humans. Yes, they are photorealistic, to an extent, but they are not like humans. The character renditions from the trailer - look at their noses, eyes, mouths - not really like humans. I don't know how I can clarify this - like Jackson said - they look like "real Herge people".

Edit - Found this quote from Jackson:

“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.”
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On a different note, my biggest problem with the trailer is that a) Tintin meets Haddock for the first time and b) He introduces himself as Archibald. None of these feel right to me, at all. Why screw around with Herge's chronology?
 
Roberto Lequeux said:
Tom, I don't think you are understanding one of my points. I think he didn't want to have exacting facial MOCAP. I think he wanted it to be un-realistic in certain ways. Comic-like. On purpose.
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Perhaps "robot-like" :)
 
with all due respect, the style they were going for was semi-stylized photoreal with characters that very closely resemble normal human beings in both proportion and especially texture. just like polar express, beowulf, christmas carol... in short, they've decided to go with the 'uncanny valley' look. i will just say that i think it was a poor choice, and i feel sorry for all the fans. huge respect for spielberg and jackson, and i'm sure there are some really great things about this movie, but i can't agree with the stylistic choice.

photoreal and cartoony are opposite ends of a spectrum, both in look and movement. mush in between. photoreal is a silly idea to begin with outside of visual effects...

hopefully everything else about the movie will make up for it's deficiencies... or maybe we weren't seeing final animations.
 
Herge's work on Tintin was heavily influenced by Art Deco designers and caricaturists such as Rene Vincent. They were obviously attempting to replicate this minimalist approach in 3D modelling. The biggest mistake they made was Mo-Cap for the main animation. Sure a certain amount would have been fine, however they should have hand animated the majority of the characters movement if they wanted to really capture the energy and charm of Herge's work. I was taken aback by it to begin with but have got used to it now. I was a massive Tintin fan as a kid but don't really care, as I am sure it will be a forgettable experience. Live action would not have worked. Hand drawn or 3D modelled would be the only successful way of capturing Herge's Tintin. You would of course be able to take the characters and create a filmic version of Tintin, but it would not be the Tintin we know. The same is true for Asterix.

They will have had to update the storyworld a bit, so as not to offend half the world (in that politically correct fashion) as they were very 'old world' in a racial and cultural way.
 
Tom Lowe said:
Perhaps "robot-like" :)
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I saw Beowulf a few times. I loved The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I loved Avatar, which I saw in both 2D and 3D; but those were humanoids being reproduced. I never saw Polar Express. CCBB was darn close to perfect at times! But there is so much more to these films than that...

I am big on realism (and I also have a huge naturalistic vein in me, Tom.) But I am going to see Tintin for the story and the characters. The last thing I will be thinking about is photorealism, or about the technology implementation, the 3D, etc... I might do that on a second pass, though I might not if I didn't like the story and characters.

I am content with the look. I understand why it was done with a "photorealistic style", and I can see the original was treated with respect. I love Spielberg above practically all others; in certain important ways he is king of cinema for me. So I think I will like it. I am really pulling for it! But, especially with this property, it is ALL about the essence and the characters, for me. I hope they get that right. The rest can fall by the wayside.
 
My wife Suzy is big fan of TinTin, she has the entire English language collection of them. She liked the look of the trailer immediately and was very glad that it wasn't live action.

For cartoon stylized live action this might have been done in a style similar to Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty or Popeye the Sailor with Robin Williams. Neither of those was very successful. But TinTin is such a stylized cartoonish figure that it would have been nearly impossible to pull off.

I find the mixed live/cartoon aesthetic intriguing, especially for 3D. Avatar as a unique work stands on its own. With TinTin as Robert said there is long heritage to consider with its odd mix of somewhat realistic backgrounds and highly stylized characters and action. We are both definitely looking forward to it. Hope the feel of the story and characters carries through with the look.
 
I really like the look. And I'm not a big fan of the motion capture, but I think the look really works here.
One of my friends is also a documentary filmmaker, big Tintin fan. He's careful with his expectations, he's not a big Spielbergfan (unlike me) but he's very pleased with the look too.

Something else, which no one talks about here, while it's the thing that impress me the most about the trailer: no one comments on the subjects EXCEPT the stylistic choice of the mocap? I really love the camera shots, the lightning, editing, the feel of adventure and the humor in the trailer. Reminds me of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, which I still find my favourite Indy movie.
It seems more of the Indy-magic style then Indy 4 was.
 
Julio Quintana said:
I don't dislike the look of the characters. I just hate their lifeless doll eyes.
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I think that has more to do with the average shot being 1 second long in the trailer than anything else. Let's wait for the film.

Interestingly, this is the first blockbuster in ages that releases in Europe and South Asia well before the USA.

Another pet peeve! It is Tintin, not TinTin or Tin Tin! It's a single French name - Tintin. Obviously the pronunciation being anglicized in the English editions.

It is also interesting that, judging by this thread, fans of the books seem to appreciate the look more than those who are not familiar with them.
 
err... the CU at 1:22 made me stop just to look at the eyes again.

It is either that or big white circles with a black dot inside.

I understand your point, but I don't think it will bother me. We'll see.
 
paulherrin said:
...hough it is certainly in some ways beautiful, it looks both too close and yet not close enough...
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Yep, the danger of the dreaded "Uncanny Valley" effect. Not quite live action, not quite a cartoon... somewhere inbetween.

Spielberg is an extremely bright, creative man. I wouldn't be too quick to judge the film before it comes out. I can remember a lot of criticism of Avatar six months before that was released, along with predictions that the film would flop.
 
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