The Adventures of Tintin

Here's a statement that will get no argument: Steven Spielberg has directed some of the most thrilling action movies in the history of cinema.


But even the man who's worked with sharks, dinosaurs and Indiana Jones says that he was impressed by the almost limitless possibilities for creating action scenes with performance-capture animation, the medium of his latest project, "The Adventures of Tintin," which opens Wednesday.


"I thought I was a kid and somebody had locked me overnight into Toys R Us and I was allowed to take everything off the shelves and play with them to my heart's content," says Spielberg as he describes working with the technique that transfers the movements of actors to computers to create ultra-realistic animation.


The two-part "The Crab with the Golden Claws" finds Tintin embroiled with drug smugglers, who are using a cargo ship for transport, unbeknownst to its besotted Captain Haddock, who becomes Tintin's best friend and appears in other adventures. Also featured are the bumbling Scotland Yard detectives Thomson and Thompson, who, though unrelated, look virtually alike. "The Secret of the Unicorn," also a two-parter, and "Red Rackham's Treasure" involve Tintin and Haddock trying solve a riddle left by Haddock's 17th-century ancestor that could lead them to a pirate's treasure. There is danger at every turn as criminals race to find the clues left in three model ships. These stories all came out in the 1940s.
VIDEO: Watch the trailer for the upcoming 'Tintin' movie
The set features four stories not touched on in the film — "Cigars of the Pharaoh" and "The Blue Lotus," which tell the story of Tintin's battle with a gang of smugglers; "The Black Island," in which he thwarts a counterfeiting operation; and "The Calculus Affair," in which he keeps spies from stealing a sonic device invented by his genius friend Professor Calculus that shatters glass and china.
The first three stories were published in the 1930s, while "Calculus" was first published in 1954. All of the stories are told in two parts. Shout! Factory will release The Adventures of Tintin: Season Two in February 2012.
Hergé (Georges Remi), who died at age 76 in 1983, first introduced the heroic journalist in French in a children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper in 1929. It was eventually serialized and collected into books, spawned a magazine and adaptations on TV, radio, stage and film. The series has been published in more than 80 languages in 50 countries. Hergé wrote and illustrated 23 The Adventures of Tintin comic books starting in 1929 — the first being Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and the last being Tintin and the Picaros in 1976. An unfinished 24th story, Tintin and Alph-Art, was published posthumously in 1986.
Spielberg, who has said in interviews that he became a fan of the comics in 1981 when a review compared his Raiders of the Lost Ark to Tintin, first acquired the rights to the film from the artist's widow shortly after Remi died in 1983. Depending on how this movie fares at the box office, Spielberg and Jackson could make two more Tintin movies.