Spielberg and Jackson talk here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2097373-1,00.html
I’ve seen a trailer and I’m looking forward to it.
That’s already out of date. And funny that they don’t even mention that the script was written by 3 English men: Steven Moffat (writer of plenty of UK television including The Office and Doctor Who), Edgar Wright (writer/director of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim), and Joe Cornish (one half of comedy duo Adam & Joe, writer/director of Attack The Block). That article tries to lay everything on Spielberg’s shoulders.
And anyway, most of the people quoted are REALLY SUPER die-hard fans, of course they’re going to be ultra-critical. The UK premiere of the film was last night, and the Twitter reaction I’ve seen is much the opposite. Here’s one:
And another:
A few more:
Here’s a great non-Twitter review:
Even good reviews from Belgium, Tintin’s homeland.
People sometimes love to be cynical about these kinds of things, but Tintin and Hugo will be THE two family movies over the holiday season, and I hope parents take their kids to see both. I’ve seen Hugo, and it’s absolutely magical. I haven’t seen this yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese both coming out with wonderful children’s films that will also delight adults? (Not to mention The Artist too). December will indeed be magic again.
Thanks for all of those reviews, Equipoise! Now I feel even better about it.
Opens in Thailand soon. I never heard of Tintin until I came here so am not all that familiar with the characters. However, I wanted to drop in and say I have a copy of the notorious Tintin in Bangkok, which looks like the real deal but is fake. One day sometime in the 1990s, I read that police in Brussels had broken up some sort of ring that was producing them. At about the same time, a local weekly bar roundup column in the Bangkok Post mentioned that Voodoo Bar in the Nana Plaza red-light district was selling them. I hustled down and bought two copies, giving one to a friend upcountry. They look like the real deal, and Tintin and crew’s exploits in the red-light areas of Bangkok are highly amusing. I figure it may be worth some money someday, up there with the can of Singh beer advertising the canceled Rolling Stones concert.
And X-rated? Details, man, we need details!
He’s from Scotland, actually.
I grew up reading the Tintin books, they were a popular read in school libraries down in this part of the world (alongside Asterix) and the trailers make it look like tons of fun. Can’t wait. Unfortunately it doesn’t get released here until after Christmas.
…who is a show-runner for the English TV institution Doctor Who, which is, for some obscure reason, produced in Wales.
Oops! It’s called Tintin in Thailand, not Bangkok. 1999, it says, at least for publication. The Brussels raid was in 2001. That sounds about right. But this is the one.
Quote from link: “The quality of the Thai copies was later found to supersede that of the Belgian copies.” 
We’re No. 1!
Thanks for the link. Sounds mildly risque but not obscene.
The animation looks way creepy. Too uncanny valleyesque to succeed?
True, not exactly obscene, but maybe a little more than mildly risque.
I’m looking forward to seeing this one.
I saw the trailer at the movies a couple of months ago, and as soon as I heard him call the dog “Snowy” it clicked in my brain and I started poking my husband excitedly. He, of course, being American, had never heard of this Tintin guy, so he had no idea why I was so excited. I remember reading the comics when I was a kid, and I really hope the movie doesn’t disappoint.
I started reading the Tintin books back when I lived in Montreal in the 1970s. They were very popular there, both in English and French. I now have a collection of most of the books in French. I’m happy to say that I can still understand them even though I’ve been living in California for over 30 years so hardly ever get a chance to practice French nowadays.
I’d really like to see this movie but don’t get many chances to go to movies at all nowadays. My “free time” is mostly taken up caring for my son, who is almost two years old now.
I saw the trailer a couple of months ago, and I agree about the creepiness of the animation. Also, there’s a general dire tone to it that all blockbusters are now required to have, but doesn’t really gibe well with the Tintin stories. Add that to Tintin being the metric system of comics (popular everywhere but America) and I don’t see how it could be successful. (Actual comment from the theater, “Do they mean Rin Tin Tin?”)
Tintin is reasonably well known in America. Most bookstores, at least around where I live, carry Tintin books. He’s not as popular here as he is in Europe, but being American doesn’t mean that someone will “of course” have never heard of him.
Isn’t this the same sort of performance-capture animation that looked creepy in Mars Needs Moms, the Jim Carrey version of A Christmas Carol and The Polar Express? I thought that those performance-capture movies had not done well.
On the other hand, I’m hopeful about this. The production team is all-star; Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Steven Moffat, etc. And this is something that’s going to appeal to Europeans even more than Americans. Wikipedia says that one or two sequels are planned, so it could be a franchise.
Admittedly it’s a small sample size, but only one of dozens the American friends (close to my age, late 20s to mid 30s) I’ve made during my 5 years here had ever heard of Tintin, and her mother is European.
I didn’t mean for my comment to be nasty - I just figured Tintin was like Passe-Partout… generally, Americans aren’t familiar with it.
I didn’t think you were being nasty! I’m just saying that Tintin, while not common, isn’t totally unknown.
Might be regional, too, of course. Common in California might be utterly obscure in New York.
And that’s the problem these days. If a movie doesn’t have a built-in audience, it won’t be a success. Doesn’t anyone check something out that they’re not familiar with? They might like it – don’t they want to find out?