http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1358
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1184
Andrew Cusack
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1593’s creation is brilliant in the original comic books, acceptable in the 1990’s television cartoon version, but has produced only some thoroughly suspicious live-action film versions. (Namely, the 1961 “Tintin and the Golden Fleece” — not that Golden Fleece — and the 1964 “Tintin and the Blue Oranges”; neither of them based on books).
There was mention in the Economist some years ago of Spielberg doing a Tintin film and casting Leonardo diCaprio (!?!) in the lead role. I happened to cut it out of the Economist and so I have it somewhere amongst my clippings, but Hogarth claims his rheumatism and the current climate (”with respect, sir, wasn’t this humid before the war”) prevent him from classifying and filing my gigantic collection of clippings.Word now comes, via the Guardian, that Herr Spielberg, fresh from his fourth and presumably final Indiana Jones adventure, is indeed to embark upon a Tintin film, and that he will cast the 17-year-old Briton Thomas Sangster as the heroic reporter.
Unfortunately, my first reaction is that young Sangster is ill-suited for the role of Tintin. Firstly, he’s too young. I have always thought Tintin was permanently about 21, whereas Sangster will have just reach 18 when the film is in production. At a mere age of 18, can we really expect him to be undermining Bolshevism in the early Soviet Union? Or saving the ancient Syldavian monarchy from the threat of the dreaded Iron Guard? Or helping his pal General Alcazar regain the dictatorship of San Theodoros? I think not. But at 21, it seems much more possible.
(Of course, there are several more questions that any earnest Tintinophile feels compelled to ask. Will it be an adaptation or an original script? If an adaptation, of which book? Having a particular love of Scotland, I hope it’s The Black Island. Being a monarchist, I hope it’s the splendidly mitteleuropan King Ottokar’s Sceptre. But then perhaps, somewhat topically, they will choose Tintin in Tibet. And who will the rest of the cast be? Captain Haddock? Professor Calculus? Thompson and Thomson? Oh my…)
Well, we will just have to wait and see. After Herr Spielberg finishes his Tintin film, it appears that Peter Jackson (of “The Lord of the Rings” fame) will have a go at directing one himself. And there’s nothing to say he’ll use the same cast. Spielberg’s film is due in late 2009.