As you've no doubt heard by now, Steven Spielberg has not one, but two big feature films arriving in American theaters less than a week apart this December. A British trailer released yesterday for the WWI drama War Horse suggested that the movie will be an Oscar-caliber piece of emotional storytelling. Today, a British trailer for The Adventures of Tintin suggests that the movie will be a two-fisted joyride very much in the vein of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Spielberg is widely acknowledged as the the reigning master of exquisite set-up and payoff in his construction of set pieces and even low-key scenes. From the look of this trailer's action, the virtual camera of his first motion-capture feature allows for an even more fluid and inventive sense of action that borders on ludicrous in the best, most glee-inducing way. The way the camera glides effortlessly along with Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis as Tintin and Captain Haddock is just about joyous, and The Adventures of Tintin can't get here soon enough*.
This trailer debuted at MSN UK, and grateful to them we all are for the embed.
The boy reporter created by Belgian illustrator Herge has achieved international fame since his first appearance in 1929, and his first big-budget 3D adventure features a screenplay British creators-of-cool-stuff Edgar Wright, Steven Moffat, and Joe Cornish. If you don't know who any of these gentlemen are, IAR suggests you do a little bit of research on each and enjoy the fruits of their labors post haste.
If The Adventures of Tintin proves to be a moneymaker, then Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson will swap roles for a sequel titled The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun, with Jackson directing and Spielberg producing.
But staying focused on the first film, it stars Bell and Serkis, along with Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Toby Jones, Cary Elwes, Mackenzie Crook, and Tony Curran. While all these actors provided motion capture performances, the highly detailed yet still appropriately cartoonish animation was supplied by Weta Digital, who you know and love based on the work seen in The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
*While The Adventures of Tintin doesn't arrive Stateside until December 21st, it starts dropping in international territories later this month.
