The Adventures of Tin Tin

[Johann]

I went to the movies with a friend on Christmas Eve and we saw Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of TinTin.

Excellent film.
For children, for adults, this film is for everybody. A new franchise has been launched in amazing 3-D style.
Peter Jackson produced it, with his special effects teams at Weta providing all of the glorious CGI and motion capture wizardry.
Jackson's trusty man-of-all-trades Andy Serkis is Captain Haddock, and I completely forgot that it was Serkis "portraying" him.
Revelations like that are reasons I go to movies. To see an actor disappear into a role is what I want to see.

The camera is truly a motion-picture camera.
It goes everywhere, and a sequence where an eagle flies through the air in pursuit of one of the 3 pieces to a mystery about the Unicorn ship was amazing.
It looked like one take! Darting around and over everything in it's path- it was marvelous.

I'm not a fan of children's movies particularly, but I don't have anything against them. It's just that I see so few of them that I'm kinda outta the loop. But this one is really great. It may be the best thing I've seen Spielberg do since A.I.
The opening credits are cool and peppy and visually awesome.

A new style of CGI characters has arrived, and it's totally convincing.
It's convincing because we know as an audience that these characters are not real. That's part of the fun.
We know while watching that it's not "real" but we give it up anyway.
TinTin's dog Snowy is the star. He's a dog with an IQ.
Indeed he's smarter than the humans most of the time.

I read that Spielberg put 3 seperate TinTin stories into one movie but I didn't notice.
It's all seamless and a real treat to watch.
I want to see this again on a big screen. The 3-D is not intrusive. In fact, it accents the story to a T.
The images pop and sing.
Spielberg has had critical rockets fired at him for eons (and a lot of it is justified) but I have to say that this film re-iterates why he's so revered.
He has taken to 3-D and motion capture like a duck to water and hit a giant home run with this movie.
It's virtually flawless!
Seriously- tell me how and why this movie fails.
That's right.
You can't.
Spielberg and Peter Jackson are reigning kings, damn the critics.
If Spielberg throws me a movie that I can't criticize, then he's alright.
He's a good man.
Bravo for The Adventures of TinTin.
I look forward to more films in this series.
It won me over huge.

[tabuno]

Animation continues to improve in its realistic authenticity of real human actors. In about five years, the ability for the live audience to distinquish between animated characters and real live actors will be diminished to the point where it may be impossible to tell the difference. Of course well paid actors may have something to say about that. What is really amazing is how 3-D and high tech animation allows for the comic strip to come into its own moving, auditory media form unlike even those of the past. Tin Tin almost represents a new form of visual media unlike that of overt live acting and real sets along with the development of a new looking and vibrant form of animation that seems to capture the fusion of fantasy action not available in believable form in real life along with the imaginary magic of unreal characters that allow for a special on screen dynamic that is also not usually easily digestible with live characters. Hopefully a new niche has been found like in Japanese form of anima that will prevent this form of animation going all the way to replacing live actors and real sets or real locations.

[Chris Knipp]

Animation continues to improve in its realistic authenticity of real human actors. In about five years, the ability for the live audience to distinquish between animated characters and real live actors will be diminished to the point where it may be impossible to tell the difference.That's a grim thought but unlikely, surely., at least where grownup, sophisticated viewers are concerned. Motion capture continues to look quite artificial. But if people are fooled and/or impressed by 3D, I guess they will be willing to believe animation almost real. I should have thought its charm was bound up in its artificiality. Motion capture won't puut actors out of business since actors move to create the images. Something like this was done with AVATAR, I believe.

One tends to write the name as one word, Tintin, as the Belgian author Hergé did.

What one may say is that these technologies may cause the mainstream audience's perceptions to deteriorate to the point that they won't care if they're looking at 3D, 2D, motion capture, animation, or real actors. Or kids won't anyway.

[Johann]

Glad you've seen it tabuno. It deserves any and all accolades that it gets.
Peter Jackson's Weta should get an Oscar nomination for best visual effects.
They've done something new and exciting. It's hard nowadays to find new innovations in movies but we keep getting them.
2011 in particular saw a real explosion of 3-D movies, movies with QUALITY.
Werner Herzog practically re-invented 3-D with CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS. If you missed it on a big screen then you really missed something HUGE and amazing.

Chris has got it right.
Most of the charm of TINTIN is indeed that we as an audience know that it's not real- which ironically makes you believe in it more!
The motion capture/3-D effects are so damn great that it elicits high praise- well-justified praise.
To me this one is nearly perfect.
Any glaring flaws? Not that I can see.
Great characters, great story, visually stimulating, a new and interesting franchise....what more can we ask for?

SEQUELS! that's what. And Spielberg has assured us that there will be more adventures of TinTin and Snowy, with Peter Jackson at the helm for the next one. Looking forward to it already. I'm jazzed about a kids movie. Who knew?