Though the bloom has well worn off the rose that is motion-capture animation, as evidenced by Disney canceling their deal with the mo-cap obsessed Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg is planning to make a go of it anyway with this December's The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. He worked on the project in secret for years, and finally gave us a brief look at how the stylized animation turned out with a domestic teaser trailer back in May. If that was a little too vague for you, though, there's a new international trailer that gives away a lot more, showing off a bunch of the film's supporting characters, some moments of humor, and even giving us a sense of exactly what kind of adventure our hero Tintin is embarking on. Take a look below.
I may be in the minority, but I like pretty much everything i'm seeing here. The motion-capture seems to be used to give a slight edge of realism to the human characters, but not so much that they get creepy-- all the characters are just stylized enough, and distanced from their human actor counterparts, that you don't feel like you're snooping on the digital soul of Jamie Bell or Simon Pegg. It doesn't really look like any other animated film we've seen before, and I like that a lot, especially with genius adventure storyteller Steven Spielberg putting together the plot that goes along with it. This trailer feels far less dramatic than the U.S. teaser, and I get the feeling that's what we should be expecting more of-- a big, rousing adventure aimed partly at children, but hopefully good and engaging enough to appeal to adults as well.
The Adventures of Tintin will be doing a panel presentation at Comic Con next week, so imagine this is just the beginning of new footage we'll start seeing for the movie, which does need to work hard to market this Belgian comic strip character who most Americans have never heard of. The movie opens December 23, just five days before Spielberg's other holiday film War Horse-- right now that's looking like a pretty serious embarrassment of riches.
