If you’ve been anywhere near the film geek webpages during the week you’ll have seen this news: Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are making movies of Herge’s comic book series The Adventures of Tintin. Spielberg in particular has been mentioned in relation to this property before, but it really seems to be moving forward now. Courtesy of Variety:
Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are teaming to direct and produce three back-to-back features based on Georges Remi’s beloved Belgian comic-strip hero Tintin for DreamWorks. Pics will be produced in full digital 3-D using performance capture technology.The two filmmakers will each direct at least one of the movies; studio wouldn’t say which director would helm the third… The Spielberg-Jackson project isn’t likely to languish in development for long. Spielberg could become available this fall after wrapping “Indiana Jones 4.” Jackson will wrap “Bones” by the end of the year.
I have mixed feelings about this whole thing, but I’m certainly very interested. Tintin was a staple of my childhood; as I got a bit older, I cast them aside, deciding that the other big comic book series, Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix was a bit hipper. Yet I came full circle when I revisited the Tintin books as an adult. They might superficially be pitched a little younger than the jokey Asterix books, but Herge was clearly the superior artist. His beautifully simple graphical style and grasp of the comic book form really sets the Tintin books apart. He also showed remarkable facility at different genres: the Tintin books range from the full-blown adventure of sending Tintin to the moon (in Explorers on the Moon) to the minimalist house-bound mystery of The Castafiore Emerald, a comic drama where the ultimate joke is that Herge generates a whole book around nothing of consequence.
A lot of the books would work really well as films (and several versions already exist in both live action and animation, as you can read here), and both Spielberg and Jackson make sense as directors for the project. Spielberg’s Indiana Jones films, for example, are not too far from the spirit of the most adventure-based of the Tintin books, while Peter Jackson, with King Kong particularly, also ventured in something of a similar direction. And who wouldn’t like to see the two in a semi-collaboration? Jackson is the George Lucas of the new millennium, and you could imagine him bringing out the best in Spielberg in much the way Lucas did back in the early 1980s with Raiders of the Lost Ark.
What worries me a little bit is the references to the animation technology to be used for the project. Peter Jackson’s effects house Weta have apparently produced a 20 minute test reel of computer animated motion capture footage. Variety again:
Jackson’s New Zealand-based WETA Digital, the f/x house behind “The Lord of the Rings” franchise, produced a 20-minute test reel bringing to life the characters created by Remi, who wrote under the pen name of Herge.
“Herge’s characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul which goes far beyond anything we’ve seen to date with computer animated characters,” Spielberg said.
“We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Herge created,” Spielberg continued….
Jackson said WETA will stay true to Remi’s original designs in bringing the cast of Tintin to life, but that the characters won’t look cartoonish.
“Instead,” Jackson said, “we’re making them look photorealistic; the fibers of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people — but real Herge people!”
I would love to see that test footage, and I have enormous respect for the Weta people, who are far and away the best effects house at the moment and who did amazing work in the Lord of the Rings series and King Kong. But it doesn’t quite sound right. Herge’s signature style is based on simple linework, little shading and flat areas of colour: it is, apparently, one of the definitive examples of what has become known as the ligne clair (“clear line”) style. So, for example, here’s a classic image of Tintin and Snowy:
The obvious way to film this style is in conventional hand-drawn animation: while not all comic-strip drawing styles can be translated into animation, there’s nothing terribly difficult about translating Herge’s style. Yet Jackson and Spielberg are avoiding this option, presumably for a combination of reasons. Firstly, neither has a close relationship with a traditional animation shop (since Dreamworks Animation, which Spielberg helped establish, has gotten out of that business). Secondly, it would be harder to distinguish a traditionally animated feature from the earlier Tintin features that have already been made, and computer animation is seen as more marketable anyway. And finally, neither director has the skills to direct a hand-drawn feature themselves, since there’s really very little common ground between the process of directing live-action and animation. Motion capture on the Robert Zemeckis / Polar Express model seemingly bridges that gap.
It’s an illusion, though. As I said when whinging about George Miller’s direction of Happy Feet, the idea that live-action directors can capably direct computer-animation is something of a misconception: to date, there has been little evidence that those who have done so have understood the particular qualities of the medium in which they’ve worked.
But perhaps more to the point, it is difficult to see how Herge’s style would translate to computer animation. Simple, clean styles like Herge’s work well in comic strip or traditional animation, but computer animation doesn’t do that kind of thing well. Think of Mickey Mouse: the pure black circles of his ears work really well as a graphical shorthand when drawn, but in computer animation – which is more literal, and makes us resolve shapes into actual volumes – those circles quickly look very strange, like giant bowling balls. It’s hard to see how Tintin would be any different. If kept simple, the characters features would quickly become grotesque (Tintin’s head would end up looking like a melon), but I can’t imagine how the more photo-realistic style Jackson evokes (“the pores of their skin and each individual hair”) would reconcile with Herge’s style. So I’m just hoping that demo reel really pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
One other thing: the Variety story says that Jackson and Spielberg have three stories in mind, but doesn’t say which ones. The obvious puzzle is which ones they’ve chosen. Here are my picks:
Tintin in Tibet
I think this one’s the most certain. It’s often cited as Herge’s masterpiece, and certainly its beautiful visuals (with its stark white mountain environments) should look great on film. It also has the strongest emotional centre of any of the books, with the adventure being compelled by Tintin’s search for his missing friend Chang. Put this down for Jackson.
The Seven Crystal Balls / Prisoners of the Sun
These two have everything: some occult elements, interesting locations (ranging from Captain Haddock’s home at Marlinspike to South America), good stuff for supporting characters like the Thomson twins and Calculus, and lots of big action set-pieces. As long as they fix the silly ending (in which the characters are saved by an eclipse) it should work really well. I’m very confident on these as well, and could see either Jackson, Spielberg, or another director doing them.
The Calculus Affair
The third one’s a bit of a roughie. I could imagine either of the other double volumes (Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackham’s Treasure or Destination Moon / Explorers on the Moon) being tempting, but looking at them, I’m not sure either would film specially well. So my pick is The Calculus Affair; after Tintin in Tibet it’s the one I’d make if I were Jackson or Spielberg. If I’m right about the other two, then I think it becomes particularly likely: its espionage thriller style would make a great change from the more swashbuckling tone of the others. The central plot (about the fight for control of a cold war superweapon) is kind of retro but still compelling. And it has some awesome action sequences, including a helicopter / boat chase and another in a tank. Put this down for Spielberg.
So there are my guesses. You read it here first.