TINTIN Trailer Still Not Eager To Show Those Faces (+ HD Stills)

posted on
05.17.2011

With the last major mo-cap movie hitting a true rock bottom at the box office, one has to wonder how nervous the folks behind Tintin are. The pedigree is monumentally greater, the source material is less dumb, but all the same- this teaser trailer seems to go out of its way to avoid showing human faces, especially talking ones. What it would rather show you is some truly stunning imagery that even in the low-resolution (why? why? whywhy2011whywhy?) version that Empire has debuted, looks to be absolutely gorgeous- I am quite eager to see this in a theater . Fortunately Apple also has the trailer, so you can watch this in full HD, where it looks even more stunning. I’m not sure why Empire gets the shitty copy and they don’t even seem to allow embedding to capitalize on it a bit.

The trailer is mostly glamour shots, with a little bit of dramatic build-up to Tintin’s face finally emerging from all the shadows poured over it in the posters that debuted yesterday. He doesn’t say anything or emote, but it’s there. It begs the question- why wasn’t this just one of the largest scale animation projects of all time, rather than a mo-capping endeavor? The proprietary hybrid shit James Cameron is doing notwithstanding, I’ve still yet to understand why anything needs to be mo-cap. Ever. Maybe with more time and full context this will be the film that finally pulls out of the uncanny valley on the other side, but I’m doubting it. Even some of Zemeckis’ later mo-cap’d films looked pretty sharp in brief clips. I’ve still yet to be convinced it wouldn’t be better to take this motion information and use it as a stepping stone to a truly animated image.

As for the content of the trailer itself- it’s fine, even great. This is a teaser that barely clocks in at a minute long. Its only purpose is to toss in a few flashy shots (the plane crash, the ship, the almost photo-real city street) and tie them together with a big ole TINTIN logo. The only heavy lifting this shit is doing in the US is planting the seed of the name of the property in people’s brains. Elsewhere in the world, it’s simply an announcement that has no work to do. Teaching people who Tintin is, why he’s important, how huge he is in the rest of the world- that will come later.

What do you guys think? Game-changing? Record breaking? What sent of success or failure do you pick up from these earliest of moving images?

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is an upcoming 2011 American motion capture 3D film based onThe Adventures of Tintin, a series of comic books created by Belgian artist Georges “Hergé” Remi. It is directed bySteven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. The script is based on three of the stories: The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure.

Thanks to Brian Henne.