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[KickThatBathProf]

Did anyone else read these books as a child?  I had a few dozen of these comic books and was probably the only thing I read in my earlier years.

But hey, now there's a movie coming out in 2009 that I am rather excited about.  I'm not so keen on it being all 3-d animation, but Peter Jackson's LotR crew is working on it.  So, I think I can deal with it.

[KickThatBathProf]

Yeah, I'm skeptical too, but I'd at least like to see it in film format and summarily see whether it captured the spirit of the comic books or it completely drops a steaming pile on them.

[StaedlerMars]

As a very, very young kid I read all the Tintin books. As comics they were exquisitely drawn and meticulously researched.

They will never work in any other format.

I think there were two or three animated movies (something with sharks?) that worked pretty well. The real life action was heinous.

Isn't Spielberg directing?

The guy who played Gollum in the Two Towers is playing Captain Haddock...

[thehollow]

I saw a car yesterday with the license plate "OTTOCAR." Is it odd that the first thing that came into my mind was tintin?

Isn't Spielberg directing?

The guy who played Gollum in the Two Towers is playing Captain Haddock...

From wikipedia: 
Spielberg is collaborating with Peter Jackson for a motion capture film trilogy, starring Thomas Sangster and Andy Serkis. Spielberg and Jackson said a live action adaptation would not do justice to the comic books. The story will be taken from among the twenty-three Tintin books published between 1929 and 1976. Spielberg is directing the first film, and filming begins in September 2008.

[KickThatBathProf]

I think there were two or three animated movies (something with sharks?) that worked pretty well. The real life action was heinous.

Yeah, I think there were three or so made in the 60s. That shark one, Temple of the Sun are the ones I remember seeing.  i think there was an earlier one too.  Those live action ones were indeed terrible.

[RedLion]

I used to read them all the time as a little kid!

But my recollections of it are all rather vague. Something about a strange sailor who goes about blustering things like "TEN THOUSAND THUNDERING TYPHOONS!"

[KickThatBathProf]

Oh yes and BILLIONS OF BLISTERING BARNACLES

Whatever barnacles are

[Blue Kitty]

I think there were two or three animated movies (something with sharks?) that worked pretty well.

Yeah, I think there were three or so made in the 60s. That shark one, Temple of the Sun are the ones I remember seeing.

Was that it?  I remember watching a whole series of them in the morning on Nick.

[KickThatBathProf]

Yeah I guess you're right there was a series that did air on Nick.  I did not know about that one.  The ones StaedlerMars and I were talking about these ones

[KickThatBathProf]

I think you might be right about that.  I went back today and read one of the comics today for nostalgic purposes and I noticed some stereotypes of non-European people, but I'm sure that in his time, Herge was just portraying the viewpoint that any Belgian would.  I'm also pretty sure that one of the comics was recalled in some place (Tintin in the Congo, perhaps?)

[Dimmukane]

I do remember that section in one of them about the Chinese stereotypes, which I thought was pretty harsh, even as an elementary school student.

[Jimmy the Squid]

My cousin had all the books, they were pretty damn awesome. I used to watch the cartoon series when I was about 12 and it was basically the best thing ever. I saw some of the live action films on tv. They weren't wholly terrible.

[a pack of wolves]

I think you might be right about that.  I went back today and read one of the comics today for nostalgic purposes and I noticed some stereotypes of non-European people, but I'm sure that in his time, Herge was just portraying the viewpoint that any Belgian would.  I'm also pretty sure that one of the comics was recalled in some place (Tintin in the Congo, perhaps?)

Actually, Hergé had a bit of a sketchy past. He worked on a very right wing paper and associated with a few Belgian fascists, and Tintin appeared in some publications generally seen as collaborationist during the war. However, a lot of people think Hergé just had a tendency to go with the flow when it came to politics and simply wanted to keep working after he returned from France to Belgium following the German invasion. Tintin's rather like that himself actually, there's that one where he accidentally ends up assistant to a dictator and doesn't seem too disturbed by this state of affairs...

Still, one of the giants of comics. A film that isn't based on Hergé's artwork seems utterly pointless, they'll undoubtedly make it a lot less weird and sketchy as well.

[snalin]

I loved The adventures of Tintin. The tv-series. The drawings were simple but good, the voice acting (both the norwegian and the english dubbing, I never saw the original, for the obvious reason that I would not understand it) were bloody brilliant. And Tintin is a really cool guy. Down-to-earth, nice and good.

I have to read the comics.

[Spluff]

I used to love the cartoon, never read the comics.

[LucyStag]

I loved those books as a kid, my brother and I read them all. Probably thanks to my mother's usual good taste. I rediscovered them every few years, but the last time I REALLY got how amazing they are. Plus I am so much more into cartoons/comics than I used to be.

But racist? Yeah, I'm sorry to say there's a laundry list of cringeworthy stuff in many of the books. I hate to think of what was in th Congo one which Herge even noticed later was racist. That and the Soviets one I have not read.

By the way, whoever, the Chinese were actually portrayed much better than most non-whites. Much worse on the Japanese and others.

I vaguely remember the Nick show but I was never crazy about it. Friggin Snowy didn't even talk!

I don't know about these movies, but I am intrigued.

[Dimmukane]

No, I mean Tintin was talking to somebody who had outrageous preconceptions of what the Chinese were like and was talking about bound feet, throwing babies in the river, long braids, etc.  When they were actually shown it wasn't bad, but a character was going on about how crazy they were...I think it was Braddock.

[TheFuriousWombat]

Do you mean Haddock? There is no Braddock as far as I know.
I'm seriously skeptical about the movie. Tintin was a very big part of my childhood and it's going to be very hard to capture the distinctive visual style and overall feel of the comics (racism aside).

[StaedlerMars]

In the Blue Lotus Tintin is confronted with Westerners who have this impression of china, and refuse to go into the non-international quarter of whichever city (shanghai?) they're in for that reason. One of Tintin's friends is actually Chinese, he meats him in the Blue Lotus and climbs the Himalayas looking for him in Tintin in Tibet.

Tintin has a lot of confrontations with Americans.

Where the idea that Herge was racist comes from is Tintin in the Congo, where the native population is displayed as childish and barbaric. But this was an idea pretty popular at the time about the depths of Africa.

Yeah... I was brought up on Tintin. It comes with being Belgian.

EDIT: corrected for correctness

[Dimmukane]

Do you mean Haddock? There is no Braddock as far as I know.
I'm seriously skeptical about the movie. Tintin was a very big part of my childhood and it's going to be very hard to capture the distinctive visual style and overall feel of the comics (racism aside).

That's the one.  It's been a while, forgive me.

[Red Peril]

Oh yes and BILLIONS OF BLISTERING BARNACLES

Whatever barnacles are

Those kind of rock like molluscs you get stuck on ship's hulls.

A Tintin film might be ok if they steer clear of the more outrageously stereotypted moments, maybe editing several books together. I actually loved the hammy acting in the TV series, Haddock just seemed 5 seconds away from a coronary all the time.

[TheFuriousWombat]

Oh yes and BILLIONS OF BLISTERING BARNACLES

Don't forget these!

[RedLion]

Holy shit, that page is wondrous.

Cachinnating cockatoo!!

[pwhodges]

Anyone here read this?  I think it's rather good; but I like strange stories.

Paul

[StaedlerMars]

It's not even by Herge?

Also, the reviews make it out to be terrible.

[Caspian]

Hearing about this movie made me do a little sex-wee. I was a huge fan of tintin back when I was a kid; still have a stash of them in the toilet that I read fairly often. Guess it's just because I'm optimistic by nature but I'm really looking forward to this. Sure, some things of my childhood (DBZ, for one) wouldn't work too well in live action, but having seen the cartoon of this, and having read the comics I'm quite optimistic that it'll turn out well. I'm thinking of something vaguely Indiana Jones-ish in approach, and that's exciting.


Also: About the racist undertones. Who cares, seriously? It wouldn't be the only old book with them, and the comics were totally excellent, racist/sexist/soprano-ist (What was her name again? I always forget) undertones aside.           

[StaedlerMars]

It's not going to be live action. It's going to be animated.

Bianca Castafiore

[TheFuriousWombat]

It's being done by Weta a la Gollum's character so it's not technically pure animation.

[onewheelwizzard]

I love love love Tintin.  The early ones (Soviet, Congo, Blue Lotus, Broken Ear, ) do contain a lot of racist stereotypes but Herge definitely cleaned up his act as he went on and by the time he was writing with supporting characters like General Alcazar, Jolyon Wagg, and Ben Kalish Ezab, the quality of the books completely overshadowed any residual stereotyping.  Tintin is brilliant.

CGI is basically the only way a modern adaptation of Tintin could work, and even then I'm skeptical.  But we'll see.

[a pack of wolves]

Also: About the racist undertones. Who cares, seriously? It wouldn't be the only old book with them, and the comics were totally excellent, racist/sexist/soprano-ist (What was her name again? I always forget) undertones aside.           

I care. It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the books (and almost certainly still would, I just haven't read them in years) but I still find it interesting. Mark Twain isn't rendered null and void by dodgy racism and neither is Hergé, but that doesn't mean there's any reason to ignore it. Aside from anything else it all makes that thoroughly unofficial comic where Tintin is re-imagined as a working class anarchist with a foul mouth and strong desire to throw down with the police and shoot the bosses even funnier.

[The Cheesinator]

I really don't have enough of these...only about 8. I have two episodes of the show on VHS, but my VCR is busted. Quite a sad state of affairs. The racism thing was just a stereotype of Western bigamy of the period, that's all. I think it's just supposed to show how silly some of the myths we attribute to people we don't know really are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_and_Mortimer ---- something similar that I'd like to read, although it seems that I'd have to drive to Quebec, and then try to read it in French.

[axerton]

Guys, you're all missing the most vital point, the script for these are being written by Steven Moffat, possibly one of the greatest screen writers I have ever seen. This for those who don't know is the guy who wrote Jekyll, Coupling, some of the best of the new doctor who stories (The empty child, the girl in the fire place, blink, silence in the library) and for those of you old enough to remember it Press Gang.

I can't wait for this to be released. 

[LucyStag]

That is not the vital point, but it is an added creamy center of pure awesome. Of course, the latest Moffat-penned "Dr Who" episode was actually a huge disappoint to me. A C effort by an A+ student, as someone else put it. Regardless, all of his other Who scripts are AMAZING. "The Doctor Dances/ The Empty Child" is what got me hooked on the show, and it still hasn't been beaten.

Plus, "Coupling" should have been totally annoying, due to the large amount of HILARIOUS GENDER STEREOTYPES!!!! based humor, but somehow it's totally hysterical. British comedic timing helped, but the writing is really kick ass.

In conclusion, in spite of the recent mistake, Moffat still rules.

[singeivoire]

Agreed, Coupling would have been obnoxious were it not for Moffat's writing. As it was, it was terribly entertaining.

So, I had not heard that he was writing Tintin before now. That has me beyond excited. I grew up with the books, and I am tired of my friends looking at me vacantly whenever I use Haddock curses in regular conversation.

Ectoplasms!

[LucyStag]

You need to get new and better friends. If I were your friend, I would high five you whenever you used such curses.

I too have suffered the sadness of having no friends who had Tintin childhoods.

[Schmorgluck]

I do remember that section in one of them about the Chinese stereotypes, which I thought was pretty harsh, even as an elementary school student.

Aside from what StaedlerMars mentionned, there's this part in the Blue Lotus when Tintin tells of Western stereotypes about the Chinese to his friend Chang.