VIDEO: Tintin Trailer Promises High Adventure in Uncanny Valley
Well, here you go: After a light drizzle of poster curios and shadowy stills comes the heavy rain of this new, full-length UK trailer for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. And it really does have everything: Intrigue! Humor! Planes! Explosions! Dogs! And an ensemble of actors doing their best to salvage the uneasy relationship between cutting-edge mo-cap and characters just exaggerated enough not to be totally creepy.
That "uncanny valley" rift is one we've cited here previously as among mo-cap's most consistent dangers (not including the embarrassment of meeting Clint Eastwood in a full-body leotard); it's largely credited with contributing to the downfall of Robert Zemeckis's ImageMovers, and I'm not totally sold on it in this context either. But most everything else seems impressive, from the settings and the action to the vocal convictions of Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. And it's Spielberg, so hey. Benefit of the doubt goes without saying.
[via Dark Horizons]
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Yes, the uncanny-valley still remains but come Christmas it will be filled with cash. Box-office bingo, a double-whammy for Spielberg.
This looks like what Crystal Skull should've been...
Looks like a rollicking old adventure, which is nice. And as with most FX heavy films, I'm sure they'll be working on it up to release, so hopefully the uncanny valley will be more of an uncanny ditch by that point.
To all American readers, including the writer of this article:
Though you might feel that the Uncanny Valley syndrom might be affecting this movie, I must tell you that the results are so faithful to the original comics (and the movements so seamless) that I and millions of people worldwide are crying with emotion.
See, even though Tintin is not that well known in the U.S., all over the world (including the U.K.) it is, by far, the most popular comic ever (let us just say that this movie might become the biggest opener in the history of France and Belgium). I am not a fanatic fanboy of Tintin, I'm just a fanboy absolute, and let me tell you that this trailer proved me that the movie has done it, the style of the comics has been thoroughly safeguarded. Trust my words.
Hate to break it to you, but I grew up in the UK and read all the Tintin books. Everyone of them. I know how popular they are and how special they are to me and everyone else outside the US and to many inside the US. But everything about this looks BAD. Not good. BAD! Haddock looks wrong. Tintin looks and sounds bad. Even Thompson and Thomson come off poorly. Real fans of this series are secretly weeping. So thanks for the "education" about Tintin, but Herge did more with two lines and two dots in emoting with the eyes and eyebrows than these idiots can do with 135 million dollars. Major FAIL.
"let me tell you that this trailer proved me that the movie has done it, the style of the comics has been thoroughly safeguarded. Trust my words."
These are some of the most ignorant words ever placed together in a sentence. TRUST MY WORDS. The style of the comics haven't been safeguarded. They've been forced into a final solution. That's what happens when you take the wonderful characters Herge created and pull all the life out of them. Good day, sir.