The Adventures of Tintin

The new Steven Spielberg superproduction comes out in December in the US, but in Europe it's already there and I have seen it. So here is an explanation of what Tintin is and here is the review of this movie, from a fan of the comics.



First off, I am sure 98% of americans have never heard of Tintin & Snowy. They are famous in the rest of the world and have a real cult dedicated to them but somehow even if they're translated in english it seems that they never hit in the USA (note that it's very well known both in England and in Australia).  I think that the reason for that is that this kind of comic books does not exist there. So let me explain to you what is Tintin.

What is a European comic book?

In the USA, when you think comics, you think superhero... you think Batman, Spiderman, Superman... you think Marvel and DC Comics, you think about these tiny booklets that you can get at the comics bookstore... The drawings are usually very realistic, very edgy, the colors pretty dark and it's filled with violence and blood. It is made to resemble the real world strongly. It's not fun, it's a superhero adventure story.



In Europe (and the rest of the world but I call them European because the capital of the comic books is Belgium), forget all this. Comic books are called: "Bandes Dessinées" which literally means drawn strips. They are usually a much bigger book than a comic book, with a hard cover, they are very colorful, very cheery, extremely funny and the drawings are "cartoonised".  To try to give you an example, take the comic strip Garfield. Now instead of making it 3 panels long, you make it 30 pages long, you make it a story. That is what the original European comic book is.

Who is Tintin?

Many websites exist to give you all the possible information you want about Tintin. Like I said before, Tintin is a cult and the word tintinologist has actually entered the vocabulary a long time ago.
The best english website for all resources about Tintin is http://www.tintinologist.org/ but many others exist in various languages.

Tintin is a reporter created by Hergé (1927-1983). He appeared for the first time in 1929 in the comic book "Tintin in the land of the Soviets". He is always accompanied wherever he goes by his dog Snowy (Milou in the O.V.).
Tintin often wonders how he manages to always go on crazy adventures all over the world. He is depicted as a young man, with a very recognizable hair style and is most often dressed in a blue pullover and brown trousers. He is very loyal and would do anything to save his friends. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't swear and seem to be always master of himself.
Snowy is Tintin's little white fox terrier. He is extremely smart, and Tintin owes him his life a good number of times. His only flaw is his passionate love for bones but his devotion for his master wins almost all the time over his love for bones.

The comic book started as only Tintin and Snowy, however as it went on, new characters were added to the crew.

Captain Haddock is an old sea captain, descendant of Lord Haddock. He owns Merlinspike (Moulinsart) castle. When Tintin first meets him in the Crab with the Golden Claw, he is an alcoholic but Tintin helps him overcome that. However his love for whisky remains untarnished and he gets drunk a good number of times. He is extremely famous for his insults, "billions of blue blistering barnacles" (mille millions de mille sabords) and "thundering typhoons" (tonnerre de Brest), as he gets angry very very easily. Unlike Tintin he doesn't like adventures and would much prefer stay home, but he ends up following Tintin everywhere. He is the paternal figure of the comic book. His friendship with Tintin is unconditional and limitless.

Professor Calculus (Tournesol = Sunflower in the O.V.) is a genius absent-minded emotional scientist. He is a firm believer in radiesthesia. For this reason he carries his little pendulum at all time, and usually judges things are "a little bit to the west". He joins the crew in the Treasure of Red Rackham by offering Tintin and Haddock to use his invention, a shark-like submarine. He is mostly deaf, which has the effect of frustrating to no ends Captain Haddock. He cannot stand when Captain Haddock tells him he acts the goat in "Destination Moon", and enters in probably the biggest anger in the whole series. He is always wearing his little green hat and coat with a black umbrella. He lives with Captain Haddock at Merlinspike castle which he helped him buy as Haddock did not have money. He has his own laboratory there where he conducts various experiments. Both the castle and the captain are on the front line to directly suffer the consequences of these experiments.

Detectives Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond) are twin brothers. They have been with Tintin since the first book, at times helping him and at times under the order to arrest him but never or very rarely succeeding. They are completely disconnected from reality, have no detective instinct at all, and do a lot of stupid things like often wearing the stupidest disguises to try to pass incognito which they of course always fail to do. The only difference between the brothers is their moustache. Whatever one says the other repeats, usually not properly, inverting words and syllables. They never solve any case themselves but always get some credit because of their association with Tintin.

Bianca Castafiore is the only female character in the comic books. She is a very famous diva, whose fame mostly comes from the interpretation of the air "Faustus's Jewels" from Gounod. Although apparently she is asked to sing all over the world, her voice seems to be intolerable to all the protagonists of the comic book especially Captain Haddock and except for Professor Calculus, who finds Castafiore absolutely lovely. She helps Tintin more than once in his adventures. She cannot remember Captain Haddock's name properly but she definitely has a crush on him, which he absolutely does not share. She is proud, elegant, quite emotional and is definitely used to have everyone obeys her every wish. She is always accompanied by Irma, her maid, and Igor Wagner, her pianist.

                               

The spirit of the comic books

For possessing both the original comic books in french and having bought those in english as well, I can say that the translation was very well done. It manages to really keep in what I call "the spirit" of the original comic book.

Tintin was created at a time of economic unbalance, and spanned over 40 years with the first album published in 1929 and the last in 1976.  Because of that, the main subject of the comic books vary alot with the political and socio-economics situation of the time. For example the first album is set in colonial Africa. Black people are shown not speaking properly and mostly depicted as  serving white people. As shocking as this can seem now, it was the common vision people had of Africa in 1931 (time of publication of Tintin in the Congo) and so it should not be taken as racism or anything of the sort. On the same note, it shows Tintin killing about any possible animal... again, nowadays it is shocking but at the time, going on safaris to hunt and kill african animals was one of the most popular thing.
On the other hand, the next to last book, Flight 714 (written in 1968) depicts Tintin's meeting with aliens. This was of course the time of the race to the moon and when science fiction started, with series like Star Trek etc...
So each of this comic book has to be read with caution remembering when it was written and the circumstances of the time. They are by no means racist. As a matter of fact they are quite the contrary. Tintin does not care about the color of the skin, he will save anyone. The only thing that matters to him is justice and it applies to everyone!

Now that this is clarified, let me go back to the spirit of the books. There is no strong violence like in many american comic books. In fact the most violence you can find in it is a few punches, that's about it. The pictures are never too harsh for the eyes, they are always pleasant and will never make you turn away in disgust. Captain Haddock's "insults" are hilarious and never aggressive. Tintin never kills anyone, there is never blood drawn. He always resort to the police, never does justice himself and is absolutely incorruptible. He is always polite and fair even with his enemies. And above all, no one in the books is ever vulgar... EVER.
These books are meant to be adventurous, light and funny, and that's what they are!
These are books that you enjoy reading at any age. I was about 5 when I started reading them, and over 20 years later, I still read them. I enjoyed them then, and I enjoy them now... very much!

The movie

Hopefully now I have given you a good idea of what to expect. So let me move on to the movie itself.

First off overall it is not a bad movie, if I did not know the comic books I would even say it's good but if you are a fan of the comic books, you will probably hate it.

Note that it is an "Avatar Naa'vi" style movie, where real actors act but their faces are reprocessed and it looks cartoonish instead.

On the acting itself, nothing to say it's actually pretty good.

On the story however, yuuuuuuuk.... boy did Spielberg screw it up. He mixed 3 of the comic books together, the Crab with the Golden Claw, The Secret of the Unicorn (SotU) and Red Rackam's Treasure (RRT). While the latter two are in reality one long story, the first one has nothing to do with them. But Spielberg needed it because it introduces Captain Haddock. What is a very poor choice is to have mixed these specific 3 books together.


The Crab with the Golden Claw has a very complex story and should have made for one movie just by itself. It would have shown the main protagonists and would have, I think, carried the spirit of Tintin much better. It would have allowed everyone to better understand the characters. It is the perfect comic book to adapt to a movie. A great story, great bad guys, great side-kick... but no instead, Spielberg decided to ruin it all... and just use it to introduce Captain Haddock.

The other problem comes from the choice of the 2 other books, Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackam's Treasure. While alot happens in SotU, virtually nothing happens in RRT. It's very french to make books or movies out of almost nothing but very unamerican. If americans don't have a bad guy in movies they don't know what to do... In RRT, Tintin and Haddock meet Calculus, they set on a cruise to go get the treasure of the unicorn at the bottom of the ocean. Their is no antagonist, just the story of their adventure to find the treasure. But nonetheless, these two books would have been great into one movie. Again instead, Spielberg twists the story of SotU and forget the all RRT book except the last 4 pages.... just great.

And added to this, he americanized the all thing so that the whole spirit of Tintin is lost. 

You see Haddock burping like a pig (this shocked me beyond no end... NEVER would have I imagined Haddock doing this) but never uttering one of his trademark insult (which is EXTREMELY disappointing for a fan of the books), you see Tintin a bit too eager to "kick some ass", much more worried about his story than about justice and you see the Thompson brothers being portrayed as absolute complete morons which makes them become very very disagreeable (granted in the book they're a tad bit stupid but they are always very likable).
And of course, dear Mr Spielberg introduces THE bad guy (which of course doesn't exist in the book) by converting an inoffensive secondary 2 pages character into the arch nemesis of Captain Haddock  (because otherwise the movie would suck right, because it HAS to be good vs evil).
Add to this some action packed scenes, Captain Haddock waving a bazooka (wtf is this James Bond??), explosions all over and a dead bad guy and you get a good (read awful) american superproduction. 
Of course with it comes also the fight against alcohol (OMG Haddock likes whisky, what a terrible thing...), because in our society it's ok to shoot people in the face but it's not ok to drink and because there is no way that one could show to an american audience a drinking character. But thank God, Tintin is there to save Haddock from the evil addiction...
And finally, to end in an apotheosis, one of the main protagonist of RRT, Prof. Calculus, does not even appear in the movie (good job Steven, I hate you), while Bianca Castafiore, which has strictly NOTHING to do in this movie and doesn't even appear in these books, is given a stupid role to patch up together the now really poor story and because if there wasn't the presence of a woman in the movie all the feminist groups would be bitching.

So here is what this all mix gives: bad guys become good guys, good guys become bad guys, main antagonists disappear, main PROTAGONIST disappear, new antagonists appear, ridiculous and useless scenes appear, useless characters appear, real story disappears, new shitty story appears.... combine all this and it will give you A REALLY BAD TINTIN MOVIE but A GOOD TYPICAL ACTION/ADVENTURE MOVIE.

So honestly Mr Spielberg, do us all a favor and leave the french stories alone if you're not going to respect them and just transform them into another one of these flavorless american action movie.