An occasional writer's journal

It’s likely that Steven Spielberg in his search for a new action hero will remain true to the spirit of the Belgian boy reporter Tintin, one of Europe’s most enduring comic strip characters.

But the production schedule for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn starring Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig — due for release in December 2011 — is proving as epic and mysterious as the movie’s subject matter.

All we are told is that “Tintin 1″ is in post-production, to be followed by a sequel directed by Peter Jackson who apparently hasn’t even decided which of Hergé’s classic adventures will be the starting point for Tintin’s second screen adventure. My guess is a combination of material, and Jackson in an interview for French newspaper Le Monde has referred to The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun, a two-parter set in South America. [source: JoBlo]

The year 2009 marked the 80th birthday of Tintin, whose adventures have been translated into 100 languages with sales of 200 million comic books. He first appeared in a Belgian magazine supplement on January 10, 1929.

The movies by Spielberg and Jackson will use digital “performance capture” technology to create a hybrid between animation and live action, which explains the lengthy production time span. Spielberg has told the BBC that live action filming for Tintin 1 is in the can, but now begins the painstaking process of rendering the film as a 3D groundbreaker.

The concern of many Tintinologists, as summarised in an excellent article in a December 2008 edition of The Economist, is that perhaps Americans are not ready for this most European of cultural icons.

I grew up with the print and (school holiday morning) televised versions of Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, but only now am I discovering a notebook’s worth of Tintin facts. Did you know, for instance, that Hergé is the pronunciation in French of the reversed initials of Tintin creator Georges Remi? There is also a new museum dedicated to his work in Brussels.

It’s a curious fact that in 1949, France banned children’s books and comic strips from presenting cowardice in a “favourable” light, in a bid to limit publications “liable to undermine morality” among young people. Errant publishers could be jailed for a year. In this context Tintin was considered a role model in seeking the truth, protecting the weak and standing up to bullies.

You might argue that Spiderman and Superman, the alter egos of fictional newspaper reporters Peter Parker and Clark Kent, already more than satisfy the need for a comic book character transformed into Hollywood superstar. Yet they are wholly American, whereas Tintin cannot be anything other than European. He’s quirky, likeable, and immediately identifiable with one of the continent’s smallest countries. And unlike the great Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, he doesn’t spend half of his adventures having to explain that he’s not French.

We must be optimistic that Spielberg will faithfully interpret the essence of Tintin, having secured the rights to a film adaptation shortly before Hergé’s death as long ago as 1983. Hergé reportedly approved of Spielberg’s vision of an “Indiana Jones for kids”, but died before meeting the director.

The Economist article makes a key point, that “perhaps Anglo-Saxon audiences want something more from their fictional heroes: they want them imbued with the power to change events, and inflict total defeat on the wicked. Tintin cannot offer something so unrealistic. In that, he is a very European hero.”