First pictures of Spielberg and Jackson’s TINTIN rear their uncanny heads

First pictures of Spielberg and Jackson’s TINTIN rear their uncanny heads

Nov 02

The trouble with adapting popular things from people’s childhoods is that you can never do nostalgia justice. The best you can hope to do is generate fresh nostalgia, like what Michael Bay miraculously did with his Transformers flicks, or you risk alienating the audience.

I was never super excited for a Tintin movie in the first place, and these motion-capped pics do little to instill anticipation. I don’t know what it is about the pictures — maybe I was expecting a more faithfully-cartoony visual style — but they seem to come across as something interesting shoehorned into something crushingly familiar.

Tintin is a collaborative project between industry juggernauts Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. The first film, due late next year (2011), follows the plot of the book (comic?) The Secret Of The Unicorn. I’m pretty sure I read most Tintin books as a kid, but the only one I remember distinctly is the one with giant mushrooms that land on an asteroid, or something, so don’t ask me to summarise the plot.

It stars Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) as boy wonder Tintin, Andy Serkis (Gollum from The Lord Of The Rings) as Captain Haddock, with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thompson and Thomson, Daniel Craig as Red Rackham, and Cary Elwes in some kind of bit-part.

So here we have the first few images from the project. Make of them what you will. They come courtesy of Empire magazine (buy the next issue for more, etc.).

The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn (another franchise with unwieldy titles, neato) is due on 28 December 2011 in the States. We’ll probably get a Boxing Day release, something we’ve come to expect from Jackson’s films over the years.