Most people can say that they got into the Tintin comic books when they were children. I got into them when I was in high school. Do I have issues? Maybe. But, I’ve always liked interesting storylines, and the comics did not fail to interest me. Unfortunately, I broke my general guideline of reading the book before seeing the movie; though, quite frankly, if it weren’t for the movie and the suggestions of my brother, I would not have known the comics existed.
Needless to say, I liked the movie and the comics. Now, you might be asking: if the novel I read is simply an adaptation of the film, then it’s just the film in writing, right? Yes and no. What I like the most about book adaptations to movies is the internal dialogue and narration of how actions are completed. The writing makes everything come together and make sense. If you watch a movie, you might ask why someone did what they did – like run out into the middle of a busy road in the fog, or climb through the window of a supposedly abandoned house when there is a perfectly decent front door. Having the writing there to guide you, helps you to see how the characters are thinking.
And then there’s a matter of omission. We live in a time when some things are okay to put into films – i.e. guns and man-eating sharks – but for some reason cannot be put into text. Originally, I wanted this to be just a plain book review, but with the side-narration and omission of different events throughout the novel in comparison to the movie, this will be my first ever “Book versus Movie” analysis.
Without further ado, let us begin with the plot:
The movie and book both open on a street fair, supposedly in Belgium, where the comic series takes place. We see the male protagonist, Tintin (audiences worldwide are still unsure whether this is his real name or a penname/nickname of some sort) getting his picture painted by Herge, the cartoon’s creator. He stumbles across a model of a ship known as the Unicorn, and chaos automatically ensues – just the way it does in the comics. Within seconds of purchasing the model, he gets bombarded by two potential buyers, who are willing to pay him anything for it. Rather than take either of the offers, he keeps the ship and takes it home, determined to study it and discover its secrets. There has to be some secret; otherwise, why would there be so much interest from two unlikely sources? After trying to find some answers at the library, he returns home to find his model stolen. Suspecting the one potential buyer Mr. Sakharine, who has recently purchased the old Haddock estate, Marlinspike Hall, he makes his way to the property and kind of, sort of, very much breaks and enters into the house. I would make a comment about this, but I am busy summarizing. Anyways: Sakharine doesn’t have his ship, but he is clearly up to something maniacal – he has that air of evil about him, not to mention a habit of swatting his adversaries around with a cane. Regardless, Tintin returns home only to find his flat has been ransacked. Upon further inspection, he sees why: the intruder was looking for a parchment enclosed in the ship. The parchment contains a strange riddle and markings. Tintin only knows this because the parchment had fallen behind his cabinet, and Snowy managed to help him dig it out. Not even a few minutes after this discovery, the second potential buyer Barnaby Dawes appears on his doorstep, trying to warn him of danger before being shot on site. Before passing out or dying (I will cover this later), Dawes manages to spell the word “Karaboudjan” with his blood spotting certain letters on a newspaper. The following morning, Tintin is visited by the policemen Thompson and Thomson, who have a case of their own to work on: a pickpocket looting the city. This very same pickpocket manages to steal Tintin’s wallet only minutes later, and not even a few minutes after this, Tintin is kidnapped via chloroform and large crate and smuggled onto a cargo ship. Here he is questioned and threatened by Sakharine to give up the location of the parchment scroll or die. Luckily, Tintin manages to escape the hold and find the ship’s captain, Archibald Haddock, who has been taken prisoner by Sakharine and his own crew. The two make a heroic and eventful escape via lifeboat, and begin racing Sakharine to recover all of the scrolls and uncover the mystery behind them. And this is where I am going to stop, because, as usual, I have a thing against spoilers. Let’s just say, there is a lot of adventure, a lot of humor, quite a few close calls, and a victorious finish, and leave it there.
Right: let me begin by talking about the movie’s plot.
In terms of animated movies, the plot is not so bad: there is a mystery to solve and a meddling kid who is willing to do anything to solve it. Nothing quite out of the ordinary. I was a bit surprised by the material that somehow constituted a PG rating, rather than a PG-13 rating. Usually, PG material is pretty clean, marked with maybe some crude humor, a hint at violence, maybe a punch to an evil prince’s face (yes, that was a Frozen reference). That said, it is very rare to find a constant showcase of guns in a movie marked PG. “The Adventures of Tintin” (2011) most definitely breaks these barriers for better or worse. The number of guns would seem edgy enough, but there are a couple of other disturbing scenes that should have constituted a moderate PG-13 rating. For example, it is rare enough to have guns in a PG movie, but it is even rarer to see a man shot to death on the front porch of someone’s house, and rarer still to see the same man spell out a message with his own blood. This could almost be BBC “Sherlock” material. This is even rare for the Tintin comic series which – as far as I can remember – only features two deaths, which are not even personally witnessed by the protagonist (read The Broken Ear and Explorers on the Moon for reference). The one death might have been enough to bring the movie closer still to PG-13, but seeing a crew of sailors being eaten by sharks after their ship has just been raided by pirates… it is enough to make one’s stomach twist. Then, there is the matter of excessive drinking and drunkenness. After comparing the comics to the movie, I was surprised that there was so much of this. Captain Haddock does have a drinking problem in the comics, it’s true, but it is never made as blatantly clear as it is in the movie, where Captain Haddock’s drinking is referred to or spoken of every five minutes. Together, all of these factors should have brought the movie up to PG-13.
But, enough bashing. The movie is commendable in many aspects, the first of which I cannot stop thinking about: the artwork. If you are not going to watch the movie for its story – which is still good despite the above-mentioned points – watch for the artwork. It is absolutely gorgeous. If not for the cartoonish faces with the gigantic noses, the movie might appear to be live action. The sea glistens under the sun the way it is supposed to, reflections are seen in windows and glasses, and Tintin’s hair is textured like that of an actual human being. Snowy’s fur blows in the wind, you can see the bricks in every wall, and the viewer can make out every book that exists in the gigantic library scene. To say the artwork is “excellent” is an understatement. And then the plot, as I have said before, is not bad either. It outlines everything necessary for a hero’s journey: the ordinary setting of the real world, a mysterious object, a call to adventure, a maniacal villain, a mentor character (Captain Haddock), and a series of tasks to complete, followed by a chase, a final face-off with the villain, and a big reveal that leads to a happy ending. And the story is made interesting by a wide variety of characters who represent the forces of good and evil, with good winning at the very end. Even if the movie is not the exact same as the comics, even if some factors cause its being a kids’ movie to come into question, it is still worth the watch.
Now for the moment I have been dying to discuss: the movie versus the novel adaptation. I think, perhaps, the novel adapter Alexander C. Irvine realized the same points I made above about all of the death, guns, and violence, because he did downplay and omit some of these points in the adaptation itself. Instead of dying on the spot, Barnaby Dawes just passes out. He even appears to be recovering by the end of the chapter as Snowy begins licking his face with gratitude. Already, part of the PG-13 factor has been taken away. As an added plus, the death of the sailors is mentioned but not graphically described. Also, the amount of guns is slightly reduced. While the movie shows some form of a gun or ammunition-shooting device in almost every good versus evil encounter, held by both the good and the bad – the book at least tries to keep the guns limited. Movie Tintin uses guns regularly. He even had a gun with him when he came to answer the door, as Dawes was calling on him very late at night after a very hectic and dangerous day. Book Tintin is a bit more cautious. At one point, the book even says that Tintin doesn’t like guns. Maybe this is true, maybe not: but I know for a fact that Tintin is not necessarily shy about holding a gun in the comic book series, nor does he overuse them. He uses them whenever defense is necessary. Is it necessary for him to be holding a gun when he goes to answer the door in the movie? This is debatable at best. Is it necessary to replace an actual gun for a flare gun when it comes to shooting out an ignition lead on a fighter jet? No. Not really. Quite frankly, the flare gun makes even less sense. Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that I am for gun violence. I am however making the following point: if a movie producer puts one questionable thing into a movie, then what is the difference between implementing it into visual media as opposed to written media? Why write two completely different sets of details for the same story? Same with Haddock’s drinking habits. If the book is written to the same audience that watches the movie, what’s the point in downplaying it?
Meanwhile, the book has some other factors that set it apart from its movie parent. The first factor is internal dialogue. In most movies, the viewer does not have a chance to see or hear what the main character is thinking. I can name only a few films that do this: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “Inception,” and “Bandslam” (but only for the one scene in which Will is trying to kiss Sa5m – not a typo). That said, the viewer has no idea what Tintin is thinking when he or she watches the movie. With the book’s internal dialogue, the tables are finally turned, and our main character no longer appears so cryptic. Not only that, but the reader gets a glimpse at just how self-righteous Tintin is. He is on this chase after a number of mysterious scrolls, trying not to be killed by a man lugging a sword concealed in a cane for the entirety of the journey, almost dying of dehydration in the desert, and ending up in a completely strange city filled with strange people, any of which could be disguised henchmen of Sakharine’s, and all he can think about is how the leader of the city, Ben Salaad, is cheating the people out of their water supply, and how to stop it. These thoughts are what bring the reader to finally see the benefit of the doubt, that while Tintin might be a bit too impulsive for his own good at times and often lacking in sound judgment, he is in fact a good person. Not that we ever think that he is bad, but seeing into his thoughts gives us a general idea of his nature as a character. At the same time, the book also held a lot of contradictions. In the scene where Haddock is lamenting his burning of the rowboat, one of Tintin’s thoughts is that he hates it when people wallow in their mistakes and failures. Anyone who has seen the movie knows that there is an entire scene where Tintin wallows in the failure of gathering the three scrolls. I’m not quite sure if this was a mistake, a negative character development, or just proof that even superhero figures have their weak moments; but the contradictions are there and open to interpretation. There is one contradiction that doesn’t make much sense in the novel, and it is when Tintin is evaluating Nestor, the butler. On the same page in which he decides that Nestor has been on their side the entire time, he also decides that he can’t trust Nestor. Again, it could have simply been a writing mistake, an editing oversight, a weighing of two different arguments, or a case of slight bipolarity. As an avid reader and a writer, I was just slightly put off by so quick a change in decision. But, that’s just a personal opinion.
Regardless of its positives and negatives, both the movie and its adaptation are worth a watch/read. And, I’m sure the upcoming sequel will be worth it as well. Now, if only we could get a production update from Peter Jackson. A lot of us have been waiting. I hope it’s not too long off…
Le Unofficial Critique 