The Adventures of Tintin
DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG
A swashbuckling, old-fashioned family caper rendered in spectacular, state-of-the-art performance-capture 3D, Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin brings Hergé’s globally-beloved boy reporter to the big screen in fine style. The Belgian author reportedly became convinced that Spielberg was the man to helm a Hollywood Tintin adaptation upon seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, and, fittingly, Tintin sees the legendary director rediscover something approaching his early ’80s form. Aided by a trio of all-star screenwriters in Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish, Spielberg succeeds in simultaneously honouring Hergé’s rich source material and in delivering what feels like a truer followup to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade than 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Hergé devotees, as well as fans of Nelvana’s Tintin animated series, may recognize that the film actually condenses three of the be-quiffed Belgian’s comic book escapades, including The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham’s Treasure. The triple adaptation re-imagines Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig) and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) as ancestral antagonists, descended from the pirate Red Rackham and explorer Sir Francis Haddock, respectively. Tintin (Jamie Bell), with faithful terrier Snowy in tow, is unwittingly swept into the feud when he purchases a model ship that holds a clue to the location of the historical Haddock’s sunken treasure, which the unscrupulous Sakharine is determined to salvage. Moffat and company proceed by stitching together each book’s key set pieces, producing a comically perilous, Last Crusade–like procession across land, sea, and air.
Though the similarities are evident—most notably in an eye-popping penultimate action sequence that recalls Last Crusade‘s frenetic tank chase toward the Holy Grail—The Adventures of Tintin doesn’t quite hit the heights of Indy’s third outing, let alone Raiders. Tintin himself isn’t nearly as compelling a screen presence as Harrison Ford’s iconic archaeologist, even if Serkis comes close with yet another show-stealing performance-capture turn. Also lacking is anything like the father-son dynamic that served as Last Crusade‘s heart, or the romance that performed the same function in Raiders. Where Tintin does deliver—and deliver handsomely, thanks to Weta’s Digital’s remarkable effects—is in enthusiastic evocation of throwback Saturday-afternoon thrills.