Odds & Ends
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Casting of Tintin
The Age, via The Guardian, have the news that Thomas Sangster has been cast as Tintin in the upcoming Steven Spielberg / Peter Jackson mega-series.  Sangster's best known as Liam Neeson's stepson from Love Actually. I liked him in that film; he was sweet without being saccharine, and he seems like as good a choice as anybody. But the casting of this part really underlines the difficulty that still confronts the Tintin movies. By casting the 17 year old Sangster, the Spielberg and Jackson have acknowledged the popular description of Tintin as a "boy reporter." But in the comics Tintin's age is deliberately ambiguous; indeed, the intriguing thing about Tintin is that he's such a "blank" character. We can read almost anything into Tintin - his age, background, job and so on are left almost completely unexplored. (Even his gender is soft-pedalled; while he's definitely a boy, he's a fairly androgynous one). But maybe Sangster will also become a cypher: we don't yet know quite how much the final film Tintin will look like Sangster, or whether his performance will be translated to a computer generated character who looks like the comic book character. I remain very curious about the proposed technique to be used for the film (and I talked about the difficulties of a computer-generated Tintin here); this could be either a breakthrough film for the medium or a Beowulf-esque testament to its shortcomings. The other interesting news is that Andy Serkis is cast as Captain Haddock. I have previously expressed my admiration for Serkis' collaboration with the Weta people, but perhaps it's time to call "enough!" on the idea that Serkis can play anything or anyone through computer animation. I'm surprised they didn't go with John Rhys-Davies; while Serkis was obviously a comfortable choice for Peter Jackson in particular, I'd have thought Rhys-Davies would have been even more of a natural selection. After all, his two most famous roles are in Spielberg's Indiana Jones films and Jackson's Lord of the Rings series, and he has the bellicose bluster to make a good Haddock. And whenever we mention Rhys-Davies, we have to mention his sort-of double: Brian Blessed. Perhaps he missed the casting call.  Labels: animation, peter jackson, rumours, spielberg, tintin Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Sunday, May 20, 2007
Tintin!
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 Adventure 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:
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.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. Labels: animation, peter jackson, rumours, spielberg, tintin Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. |
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