The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

[Chibs]

From the Wikipedia article:

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is an upcoming 2011 American performance capture 3D film based on The Adventures of Tintin, a series of comic books created by Belgian artist Georges "Hergé" Remi. It is directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. The script is based on three of the stories: The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure.

Combining the stories of The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure, the film depicts Tintin's (Jamie Bell) first encounter with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) and the discovery of a clue to the treasure of his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock. They set out to find it with protection from a prison escapee who tried to get the treasure as well as Detectives Thompson and Thomson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost).

HD Trailer - YouTube

Normally when you see a movie poster like that on the Internet, it's usually a fan-made mockup of wishful dreams.

That poster is completely legit, though.

With Steven Spielberg directing and Peter Jackson on board, both fans of the original Tintin series, as well as Edgar Wright and Steven Moffat, of Scott Pilgrim and Doctor Who fames respectively, writing the screenplay, and WETA doing the stellar-looking animation, this actually has the potential to be a really well-done film adaption of a classic.

The film is being done completely in motion capture animation, an animation process that would put a lot of people off of the prospect of seeing it, as it's the same animation technique used in films like The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. It's a rather disliked technique due to the very Uncanny Valley that it leaves on viewers. This is has prompted many to call the technique "dead eye animation." I'll admit, the last shot of Tintin in the trailer was a but off-putting for myself. It's taken some time to get used to going from this to this.

But I digress. Also, take heart in the fact that those aforementioned mo-cap films were done by a different studio, ImageMoves, who are now closed. As mentioned before WETA Digital, the crew behind the visual effects for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson's King Kong remake and James Cameron's Avatar will be doing the animation for this film.

I have quite a bit of fair faith in this most being, at the very least, satisfying, as it has an immensely talented production crew working on the film. Being a Tintin fan myself, I'm glad that this is a product that is making me feel more excited for the final cut than uninterested.

This is the part with your thoughts and comments.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Looking forward to it, disregarding that I haven't read a Tintin comic nor watched the cartoon in well over a decade.

 

[Fawfulfan]

Epic. Win.
I didn't know anyone else around here knew about Tintin. You know, there's a Tintin reference in Tortured Planet...there's a room in LGZ2 that's taken straight from Destination Moon (or rather, it was ported as well as possible).

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Woah, Tintin 3D animated movie? That sounds interesting.

...that reminds me, I need to get round to watching the very last few of the animated cartoon versions of the Tintin comics. =x

 

[Autosaver]

We learned about Tintin in French class. I've looked at the comics (as a girl brought them into class one day) but I haven't read them.

I actually liked the animation style in The Polar Express and The Christmas Carol. So I bet I wouldn't really dislike it this time around.

As mentioned before WETA Digital, the crew behind the visual effects for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson's King Kong remake and James Cameron's Avatar will be doing the animation for this film.

This is going to be a pretty good looking movie.

 

[Guile de America]

With something like Tintin and these guys, I think the only way this could be bad if the world ended before it came out.

 

[LongcrierCat]

Wow. They really do look like real Herge people. Consider me excited at the moment. Couple that with the fact that this movie is absolutely beautiful in terms of Global Illumination and effects.

Nickelodeon's getting a tight grip on these fantastic CG animated films from WETA and ILM. Just what are they up to.....?

 

[Sergeant Brown]

"Thread post goes here."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0-9-AtJEak

And even then the video is an understatement of how I feel.

There are just no words that can describe this-- wait, there are some.
"You cannot grasp the awesomeness of this movie."

 

[Chibs]

New International Trailer that just came out within the last day or so. Runs about 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

I'll admit that I had some skepticism over the previous teaser, especially because of the very limited look at the face animation which looked slightly off-putting, not to mention that overall it was a very brief look at the film.

However, this trailer offers a full two and a half minutes of great footage from the movie and I can safely say that any and all fears about the movie from the previous trailer have vanished. I told myself I wouldn't get hyped over this movie in the now incredibly unlikely case that this movie would bomb, but this is sadly proving near impossible after this new trailer.

 

[Bobinator]

So, I've never heard a lot about Tintin before. I know it's apparently some kind of thing that's really popular in Europe, but barely anybody in the US dpes. From what I heard, it's apparently a comic/cartoon series about a dude who's basically like Indiana Jones, only less of a badass. Also, he goes to the moon. From the one game I played with him in it, he can also get killed by suitcases and little girls' yoyos', so that doesn't really make him look very good, either.

So, as a dude who knows pretty much nothing about this thing, but might be interested, where should I start?

 

[Chibs]

Read the description then start looking for the comics. I'd suggest Cigars of the Pharaoh as a good place to start.