Tintin, as seen by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson
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A long time ago (in July) in a land far away (Comic-Con in San Diego), our sibling blog Hero Complex sat down with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to talk about bringing Hergé’s beloved character Tintin to life. Their 3-D movie, ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ -- produced by Jackson and directed by Spielberg -- opens Wednesday.
Hergé was a Belgian artist who began writing and drawing Tintin as a comic strip in 1929. The strips, which became wildly popular around the world, were collected in two dozen books featuring the young adventurous reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy. ‘I read Tintin before I could read,’ said Jackson, who is from New Zealand. Hero Complex writes:
“With this project, I was excited first just as a Tintin fan to know that I was finally going to see the film version by Steven that I had been reading about since 1983 in interviews and magazines,” Jackson said, acknowledging the long and winding path of the project. Spielberg had never heard of Tintin before 1981, when he read European reviews of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and saw repeated comparisons between the Hergé character and his own globe-trotting hero. He secured the rights to make a movie but the project sat on his shelf for years....
‘The Adventures of Tintin’ was released in Europe two months ago; the movie, which had a $130-million budget, has already earned $239 million worldwide. But does it portray the Tintin readers love?
“What I’ve tried to do with my contribution to the film was to lock in to the different ways that I loved Tintin both as a child and as an adult,” Jackson told Hero Complex. “Hopefully, the film will work on that level, with all the things young viewers will enjoy but also the humor and satire that an adult will pick up. If we can lock in to that DNA that Hergé created, well, that’s the plan.”
After the jump: the movie trailer for ‘The Adventures of Tintin.’
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-- Carolyn Kellogg
