Tintin Forums

I don't mind the cuts so much, except Red Racham's Treasure. Why in the world did they cut the story into 20 minutes, why, why , why?? the episode is so rushed it's annoying. Why couldn't they have had it 42 minutes like the most of the episodes, why cut almost every part that was funny? After all these years I can still get myself worked up about this horrible over-edited script. Any one else agree? Even the Belvision release was better...

Muller
Why in the world did they cut the story into 20 minutes, why, why , why??

Well, while I sympathise with you, and agree that the hatchet job does not show the story to best advantage, I think we have to look at the cold reality that they had a finite amount of money to produce the episodes, and also had to get the correct number of shows to fill the schedules - 39 episodes being a multiple of 13 will be easier to fit in to a 52 week year than 40 would have been (that’s TV production think, not necessarily that I personally think it’s a good a idea). You could also probably fill a slot on commercial TV by running the three episodes together as a “movie”, where 4 episodes might have been thought too long.

Ok it was then Now everything has changed.there are more tintin fans atleast now something can be done about this and not even a single strip from comic should be missed and reproduced as it is in the form of video by ellipse nelavana?

Sadly there are probably no more Tintin fans now then there are then. To be honest since E-N did a halfway competent job of making the series I strongly doubt we'll ever see another attempt at a series

Rik

jockosjungle
Sadly there are probably no more Tintin fans now then there are then. To be honest since E-N did a halfway competent job of making the series I strongly doubt we'll ever see another attempt at a series
Maybe another studio that's better equipped, such as Rainbow Srl in Italy or Cinar could do it. It could be slated to premiere in two years instead of only one, like the Ellipse-Nelvana one was.

Courtney

I wonder why they chose Red Racham's Treasure to be 20 minutes, why not The Broken Ear or Castafiore Emerald?

Yes. Although The Castafiore Emerald is one of my favourite albums, I found the TV version a bit samey and draggy. Over the space of 62 pages the everlasting tripping down steps and La Castafiore going into hysterics were amusing leitmotivs; here it's merely tiresome.

I have to say, when making a cartoon based on a comic book, there are always going to be cuts. Some things that are funny in the comic book can't be funny in a cartoon. Like the plaster in Calculus Affair, hilarious in the book but would never have worked out on TV, that's why there are a lot of things they had to cut out. Also, having the cartoon too much like the book is no fun. It's ok to make changes, even if it's not the way Hergé would have done it, doesn't mean it's all bad. I for one love reading books and then seeing how the story has been changed for the screen. it's fun not to have it too faithful to the original some times. Faithful doesn't always mean better. That's why in some ways (only some ways though :) the Belvision series is better than The Ellipse-Nelvana series. Don't get me wrong, I love the Ellips-Nelvana series (with the exception of the heavy edited Red Rackham's Treasure) but I like the Belvision series alot too cause they explored the characters and the adventures they had and took the characters to another place. I have been a fan of Hergé and his work for many years and I adore him, but still I can't understand why fans hate changes in adaptions so much. Why does screen adaptions have to be exactly like the book. I mean thats no fun, if you wan't originality, read the book and stay away from the cartoon. In conclusion, I am not against cutting out bits from the books, just I think Ellipse-Nelvana could have put more thought into which bits to cut out. Agree?

I think the cartoons are reasonably well done. Whilst they are not as deep or as entertaining as the comics themselves they are (unlike the majority of television) enjoyable to watch.
Also, the boys at Ellipse-Nelvana must be praised for keeping Tintin's plus-fours in Picaros. A wise move.

I can't compare the Belvisions, as I haven't seen them and didn't even know they existed until I came on here about a month ago ^_^ All we have is the Ellipse-Nelvana, which is usually a great company but not in the case of the Tintin series they did. I think Cinar would have done a much better job, to be honest, and if another company was to do it in the future, I'd back them first. The E/N series was good when I was 10 or so, but I wasn't as media-savvy as I am now (darned college degree!)
Courtney