There are plenty of others willing to call you a failure. A fool. A loser. A hopeless souse. Don’t you ever say it of yourself. You send out the wrong signal, that is what people pick up. Don’t you understand? You care about something, you fight for it. You hit a wall, you push through it. There’s something you need to know about failure, Tintin. You can never let it defeat you.
Captain Haddock
So this wasn’t my first choice of my first movie of 2020. I’m not going to lie to you. It was the most readily available and every other movie I looked up wasn’t on either streaming services I (my father) subscribes to. But my god…I love this movie.
I was always aware of Tintin growing up. I’m sure being an avid reader that I read a couple of the books. I definitely watched the animated show. Snowy was always one of the best literary dogs. But I’d never say I was a huge fan of Tintin. He was fun, yet I tended to lean more towards female protagonists in media as a kid. You know because the world is littered with male heroes that are constantly shoved at you and have to scavenge through the garbage dump to find a semblance of something of quality. But Tintin is a cool dude. I respect.
When this movie originally came out, I was actually pretty excited about it because there was that little ginger with his dog using intelligence and mostly his ability to stumble into clues, people and adventure while Snowy carried the duo. I was still riding the high of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and everything Edgar Wright touches is gold. GOLD. Also, Steven Spielberg is…Steven Spielberg. The voice cast is just stupid good. The animation. The fucking animation. It needs to calm the down. I remember watching this for the first time and pausing it realizing every pore and hair on character’s faces was visible. The details on the clothing…don’t even start with me. I get really excited about water animation because I can recall as a kid that one animator was like ‘That shit is hard to do right.’ So when I see some amazing water animation, I just about losing my mind.
If you’ve seen The Adventures Of Tintin before, you’ll know how batshit crazy the Bagghar chase scene at the end of the movie is. If you haven’t seen it, I’d list it as one of my favourite chase scene ever. The breakdown of the motorcycle and sidecar from a standard chase to Tintin using the handlebars to glide down wires above the street is ridiculously stunning to watch much like the movie itself.
I adore that Snowy is the smartest character in the movie unless a sandwich is involved. How Tintin is skilled at what he does but is also sometimes clueless, awkward and has a knack for getting whacked on the head. Haddock is a brutish drunk with a heart of gold. Thomson and Thompson are the perfect comedic relief and casting Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as them was genius. Nothing less should have been expected with Edgar Wright’s involvement in this. The villain is an intelligent one. While the bumbling ‘let me tell you my plan while I let the hero get away’ is fun, it’s nice to have a villain who actually uses their brain. And he also has a hawk which is pretty dope.
I’ve also just got to throw in how, like every element of this movie, the score is just perfection. But it’s composed by the legendary John Williams so that shouldn’t be surprising.
One thing I did forget about this movie while rewatching it is how fun, well-made and creative the opening credits are. I love a good opening credits. You don’t know how hyped I get for a new Bond movie because of the expectations I have on their opening credits. But that’s a talk for another time. The Tintin opening credits are stylized similar to the books and that, in itself, is super fun. An excellent led into a film that is equally fun, well-made and creative.
I do think this movie is one of the less spoken about treasures of the 2010s. Maybe that is a good enough reason to have had this as my first watch of this new decade. I totally meant to do that. I didn’t search for three movies before without prevail and remembered that I had Tintin kicking around. Nope. Tintin was the absolute correct choice and the only choice.
Kind Of A Big Reel 