The Adventures of Tintin Review

The Adventures of Tintin is based on the Belgian comic strips of the same name by Hergé, which have had a strong influence on pop culture adventures in the decades since their initial publication. In 1981, director Steven Spielberg became a fan of Tintin after a critic compared his film Raiders of the Lost Ark to the famed comic stip. Hergé himself – who disliked the Tintin adaptations during his lifetime – believed Spielberg was the only director that could do Tintin justice. It’s fitting then, that when The Adventures of Tintin finally received a major feature film in 2011, it was directed by none other than Steven Spielberg himself. To add a cherry on top, Peter Jackson also had a prominent role with the film as a producer. Suffice to say, Tintin was getting some pretty special treatment.

Tintin would end up being the first animated film directed by Spielberg, as it utilized motion capture technology (though there’s an argument to be made as to how much a motion capture film counts as being animated). Tintin ended up garnering critical acclaim, earning favorable comparisons to Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series.

The film begins when Tintin (Jamie Bell), a young journalist, spots a model ship – the Unicorn – at a market. No sooner does Tintin purchase the ship that he is approached by two separate individuals who want to buy it off him. The first man is in a hurry and warns Tintin to “get out while he still can” before Tintin refuses the offer. The second man, Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig) is more calm and collected, offering Tintin whatever he wants in exchange for the model of the Unicorn, but Tintin still refuses.

Now more curious than ever about the ship, Tintin takes the model home, only for it to be broken by his rambunctious dog Snowy, with an important piece getting lost in the commotion. Tintin’s apartment is later robbed, and the model ship stolen. Thankfully, the thieves couldn’t find the broken piece, which Snowy manages to uncover. This piece contains a small scroll, which promises to reveal the location of the real life Unicorn, and its unfathomable treasures, if the other pieces of the scroll are found.

This leads to a wild series of events for Tintin and Snowy, which sees them taking to land, sea and air in (and avoiding) almost every vehicle imaginable. They go to exotic lands, get into fistfights, and importantly, team up with a washed up sea captain named Haddock (Andy Serkis), who is a slave to the bottle. All the while trying to stay one step ahead of Sakharine and his men, who seek the fortune of the Unicorn for themselves, and are willing to do anything to get it.

The film is a lot of fun, and is one of those action-adventure movies that rarely gives the audience a moment to catch their breath. The Adventures of Tintin is one of those “BANG ZOOM!” rollercoaster type adventures that you rarely see much of anymore (perhaps even less so in the decade since Tintin’s release). I don’t think many would argue against the idea that The Adventures of Tintin is a more worthy successor to the 80s Indiana Jones trilogy than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ever was.

While the action and entertainment value may be consistently satisfying, the animation may be more of a mixed bag for some audiences. Although motion capture may work for visual effects characters in live-action movies, it hasn’t faired so well when using it as the basis for an entire animated film. Live-action films capture reality, animated films capture its essence by making their own reality. By trying to make animation look more real, motion capture films just end up looking artificial.

Thankfully, by the time Tintin rolled around, filmmakers seemed to have learned a bit since the days of the expressionless faces of The Polar Express. The characters here are heavily stylized (Sakharine kind of looks like an exaggerated version of Spielberg himself). They look like Hergés characters but with realistic skin and textures. The stylization certainly helps Tintin be less unintentionally creepy than previous motion capture films, although the ten years since the film’s release have revealed its visuals aren’t necessarily timeless, either. Some of the character’s movements can look stiff and awkward. Definitely an improvement over past efforts in motion capture, but even Tintin might look a little off to some viewers.

Still, I guess it plays all the more to the film’s benefit that The Adventures of Tintin is as fast paced and action packed as it is. You’ll be so swept away by the big set pieces that you likely won’t be thinking too deeply about the visuals while you’re watching the film, and can appreciate the overall look of it at face value.

Adding to the film’s entertainment value is its sense of humor. While Tintin may be aiming to look realistic, it embraces its animated side when it comes to comedy. Snowy being more competent and crafty than the humans, Captain Haddock often stumbling into a solution by sheer accident, things like that. And we even have a duo of bumbling police officers in Thomson and Thompson (Nick Frost and Simon Pegg).

As the icing on the cake, The Adventures of Tintin features a great musical score courtesy of John Williams (this is a Spielberg film, after all). The music really sets the fun tone of the film right out of the gate.

On a more sour note, this film was initially to be the first in a planned trilogy of Tintin movies (the second would have swapped the director and producer roles for Spielberg and Peter Jackson, while a third film would have featured both filmmakers in both roles). But the Tintin sequels seem unlikely by this point. Spielberg and Jackson still bring them up from time to time, but it’s been ten years now. I guess I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

Still, the Tintin movie we did get is a whole lot of fun. The kind of movie you can easily rewatch again and again for the sheer joy of it. It was a visual spectacle upon release in 2011, perhaps less so now. But its sense of excitement and adventure is undeniable.

Ready Player One Review

In this day and age, pop culture has become self-aware. With the generation that grew up in the 1980s – the decade in which pop culture became culture – now shaping entertainment, it’s really no surprise that movies, video games, and even books are often blatant homages to the 1980s works that inspired them. It should really come as no surprise then, that one of the most popular books of this decade is Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One, which largely takes place in a virtual reality universe where pop culture can conveniently be referenced at any and every turn. It seems like a match made in heaven then, that Ready Player One’s cinematic adaptation would be directed by Steven Spielberg, the man who arguably had the single biggest impact on popular culture during its golden age. And while Ready Player One may be the kind of movie you can poke a million holes into, when all is said and done, it does manage to capture that “feel good” Spielberg vibe.

The story takes place in a not-too-distant, somewhat dystopian future. In a time where “people simply want to escape their problems instead of fixing them,” the world takes refuge in a virtual world known as “The Oasis,” where people can live a second life as whatever they like, whether it be their own creation or replicating a figure from popular culture.

The Oasis began life as a video game by game designer James Halliday (Mark Rylance), but over time, became something of its own parallel universe, where its players live quite literal second lives within the game, without the limitations of reality holding them back. As the real world around everyone went to pot (it’s never explicitly mentioned how the world got in the state it’s in during the events of the film), people thrived within the Oasis, finding success, fame, fortune or simply living out their dreams within the game world. The Oasis seemingly took over all media, with movies, video games and all other forms of entertainment being found within the game (where such works can be experienced as they would be in our world via movie theater or home console, or they can be lived through by those playing within the Oasis).

Because of the Oasis’ influence on the world, Halliday’s company became the most lucrative in the world, and Halliday himself became something of a deity in the eyes of many. After Halliday passed away, his in-game Oasis avatar, Anorak the All-Knowing, revealed a new quest within the Oasis. If players can discover three secret keys by accomplishing secret tasks, they can find an “Easter egg” that will give them control over the Oasis and his company. The first such challenge is a seemingly unbeatable death race. Five years have gone by since Halliday’s passing, and no one has found a means to beat the race and achieve the first key, let alone the clues to the other challenges.

There are, of course, evildoers at work in the form of the IOI company (the second largest in the world), run by the conniving Nolan Serrento (Ben Mendelsohn). IOI run questionable operations within the Oasis in order to force others into their debt, effectively making them slaves to the company. Of course, IOI seeks to find Anorak’s Easter egg so that they can gain full control of the Oasis, expanding their empire exponentially.

The hero of the story is Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a young adult from the slums of Ohio, and whose Oasis alter ego is the silver-haired Parzival. Watts wishes to find the Easter egg, as to improve his life beyond his wildest dreams. His quest for the egg is joined by Samantha Cook (Olivia Cooke), a rebel determined to stop IOI from gaining control of the Oasis. There’s also Watt’s in-game best friend Aech (Lena Waithe), who repairs weapons and vehicles in the Oasis; as well as Daito and Sho (Win Morisaki and Philip Zhao), who often help Aech get out of jams.

“You can be anything you want in the Oasis, and this is what you went with? Okay.”

It’s not exactly one of Spielberg’s smarter movies, but it does fit in nicely with his nearly unparalleled catalog of adventure-based, popcorn blockbusters. Simply put, Ready Player One is a fun movie. Its premise, while maybe a bit silly on paper, makes for exciting set-pieces, dazzling visual effects (though some of the CG characters may take some time to get used to), and a myriad of pop culture references both visual and verbal.

Now, there are some obvious flaws with the film. Namely, Ready Player One is the kind of movie whose internal logic you can nitpick for hours. For example, in searching for hints of the Easter egg, Parzival regularly visits the Halliday Library, a literal museum of Halliday’s life and memory, where people can actually watch moments of Halliday’s life play out. Despite seeming like the obvious place to look for clues in Halliday’s egg hunt, Parzival is the only person who ever seems to go there (it’s explained that with no one finding the first key after five years, people looked elsewhere for clues after the library failed to provide results. But am I really to expect that no one else is willing to look into a visual recreation of Halliday’s brain for clues?). Similarly, many of the results to these clues turn out to be things that don’t seem particularly difficult to figure out, and it’s hard to imagine so many years would go by with no one finding them when pretty much everyone in the world is playing the Oasis. And as any self-respecting gamer knows, an Easter egg is a hidden object or moment in a game that doesn’t actually provide any practical use. So the fact that Halliday’s Easter egg gives its finder the very practical use of control of his company doesn’t so much make it an Easter egg so much as a secret. But I digress.

In all seriousness, I hate to point out logical stretches in a movie like this. I feel too often these days people let trivial inconsistencies prevent them from enjoying movies, and I certainly don’t want to jump in that boat. The ‘fun factor’ of Ready Player One certainly isn’t damaged by a few “but wait” elements, but it does boast enough of them that even I have to stop and point them out.

Less forgivable, however, is the lack of attention given to the supporting characters. Aech gets a decent amount of screen time, but poor Sho and Daito feel largely forgotten for long stretches of the movie, to the point where you may wonder why there needed to be five heroes in the first place.

As strange as this may sound, the story may have benefitted if the stakes were a bit lower. Having an evil corporation seeking to enslave people, and having a rebellion (yes, they use the word ‘rebellion’) standing against them seems too contrived in a story like this. One scene in the movie sees Sorrento discussing all the advertisements IOI hopes to add to the Oasis when they find the egg. I almost feel like simply playing off that aspect of the bad guys would have benefitted the story. Just have them trying to gain control of the Oasis to turn a beloved game into a commercial. The hero could remain a poor kid trying to get a better life, but does this story really need the dystopian element?

Perhaps I’m just getting sidetracked to what I would have liked the story to be. The truth is the story that is here is still a lot of fun. The movie even expands on the book by widening its inclusion of pop culture to not only be limited by 1980s movie and video game nostalgia, but sees other decades and media (such as anime) sprinkled throughout as well. Yeah, we get to hear some awesome 80s tunes, but we also get to see Tracer from Overwatch heading into war alongside the Battletoads, and an entire planet dedicated to Minecraft.

Okay, so Ready Player One may teeter on pandering with some of the references, but in a movie like this, that’s only aiming to be pure fun, is it really such a bad thing to simply want to see some of your favorite movie and game characters on the big screen? And in a bit of humility, Spielberg actively avoided from referencing his own works, even though he easily could have, given his influence on the 1980s (though somewhat touchingly, Spielberg pays plenty of homage to his protegé Robert Zemeckis, particularly Back to the Future). So maybe these references and cameos are a trap for people like me, but they’re fun and lack vanity, so I’m not really going to complain about falling for them hook, line and sinker.

Ready Player One is a flawed movie: the supporting cast is often forgotten, there are a bit too many sci-fi tropes at play with the bad guys, and the narrative has its rough edges. But the movie is a whole lot of fun, with some terrific action scenes and visual effects, and it only gets better as it plays out. By the end of it, I was happy I’d seen Ready Player One. I mean, you get to see The Iron Giant and a Gundam smackdown against Mecha-Godzilla! Doesn’t that just say it all?

6

We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story Review

1993 was an interesting year for dinosaur movies. Not only was it the year that Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park conquered the box office, but it was also the year that saw the release of the bizarre, dinosaur-centric Super Mario Bros. movie. To top off 1993’s dino-mania, we had We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story, which also happened to be executive produced by Spielberg. Though it isn’t a fondly remembered animated flick, We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story may scratch the nostalgic itch of 90s kids. Unfortunately, nostalgia may really be the only thing We’re Back has going for it.

Truth be told, the movie does have a decently entertaining opening act, but that may just be because of how off-the-wall the setup is. After a baby bird is bullied by his siblings, he decides to run away from home to join the circus. That’s when he’s consoled by a tyrannosaurus rex – aptly named Rex (John Goodman) – who is in the middle of a game of golf in 1990s New York. Rex then narrates the rest of the film to the bird, since it kind of/sort of relates to the bird’s situation.

Rex reveals that he does indeed come from prehistoric times. But upon being abducted by the time-traveling Professor Neweyes (Walter Cronkite) and his Jay Leno-voiced alien sidekick, Vorb, Rex is fed a breakfast cereal that evolves his brain, turning him into the sweet, cartoony dinosaur he is now. It turns out that Neweyes has evolved a few other dinosaurs as well, with the intention of taking them to the Museum of Natural History in New York City in the 1990s, as his “wish radio” reveals that children in the 1990s wish to see real dinosaurs. Neweyes plans for the dinosaurs to rendezvous with the museum curator in the 90s, and warns them to stay away from his sinister brother, Professor Screweyes, who travels through time to cause mischief, with his only reason being that he “went mad at the loss of his eye.”

The sheer absurdity of these opening moments may elicit some good laughter, whether intentional or not. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there, really. The dinosaurs miss their rendezvous with the curator, and end up befriending a couple of kids, Louie and Cecilia, who have run away from home to join the circus (hence the connection with the bird bit). But the circus is run by Professor Screweyes, who uses the big top as a means to frighten people, and possesses a drug that counteracts the evolutionary properties of his brother’s breakfast cereal.

Okay, what else is there to say about this plot? There’s also a clown voiced by Martin Short, and an entirely forgettable musical number in which Rex rides a Spider-Man balloon during a Thanksgiving parade. Need I go on?

The big problems with the film in terms of story are the rapid, cluttered pacing and an utter lack of character development. We’re Back’s overall runtime barely passes the hour mark, and much of the story just seems to kind of fall over itself. With more time to develop the scenes, maybe, just maybe, it could have had something of an emotional resonance. As it is, the scenes just come off as though they’re barely off the conceptual stage.

As for the characters, well, there’s not much to say. Rex can be summed up as a friendly dinosaur and not much else (though Goodman provides some good vocal work, as he later would for much better animated films and characters, such as Monsters, Inc’s Sully). The rest of the dinosaurs are…kind of there. The professors are professors, and the plucky kids are plucky kids.

The animation is decent enough, with a style that’s similar to Don Bluth’s films but not as good. It’s not bad animation, but it certainly doesn’t compare with many other animated films of the time.

There’s not exactly a whole lot else to it. Aside from the presence of John Goodman, the initial absurdity and a quick nostalgia fix, We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story is lacking in quality and substance in basically every area. Even younger audiences might quickly grow bored with it. Watch We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story only for the memories, if at all.