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[Locked] "Unicorn" Movie: News and general discussion

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jock123
Moderator
#611 · Posted: 14 Oct 2011 10:22
Ladybird:
does anyone else find it odd that the writers felt the need to turn a fairly minor red herring character into the main bad guy

Not really: they will ultimately be creating a dramatic structure of their own to suit a cinema presentation, and it could be it helps them to unify the separate pieces they wish to stitch together in some way.

Itâ's not unusual when writing movies - even supposedly true story, or historical ones - to make composite characters; that is to give one character on screen a rôle based on what might have been two or three subsidiary character in a book.

You have to give people more to do on stage or screen than on the printed page - if nothing else it means using one actor where you might have had to pay three, and gives that actor a better part, but also reduces the number of characters appearing and disappearing, which can lead to confusion (you only needed to sit in the screening of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy I went to, a movie which has a large number of people introduced quite rapidly, to see - or rather hear - a demonstration of this, as two lots of audience members kept up a running commentary of "Who was he again?", and "Why are they there?")
Laurence Olivier made his film of Hamlet and was happy to dispense with Hamlet's friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern entirely, although at least one play-write has seen them as significant enough to write a play just about them; if Olivier can do that to Shakespeare, I'd say let Spielberg tinker with Tintin.
shangas
Member
#612 · Posted: 14 Oct 2011 11:00
I've never known Spielberg to produce a bad film. I am extremely excited about the upcoming movie. I know it's been in the works for years, and I hope that it's a blockbuster.

The Tintin series deserves to be made into a movie-series.
Bordurian Thug
Member
#613 · Posted: 14 Oct 2011 11:11
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are extremely minor characters in Hamlet though; literally blink and you miss them. Stoppard's play is predicated upon their insignificance.

I find Calculus's omission the most surprising and disappointing actually. He's obviously too passive a character for the writers to work into their action-packed shoot 'em up. Red Rackham's Treasure is after all the album in which he first appears.

And as I mentioned in my earlier post, what's with this 'four hundred year old power that could have changed the course of history'? Clearly that's not simply a treasure chest. I expect it's a nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie but I expect that it will sacrifice Herge's realism upon the altar of sensationalism. That's why Haddock brandishing a rocket launcher is so galling. Yes, of course he often uses a weapon in the books but a rocket launcher?????
Richard
UK Correspondent
#614 · Posted: 14 Oct 2011 18:02
Spoiler ahead!

Ladybird:
There are only three movies so it seems like this one could do with appearances from the Professor or Bianca.

According to the soundtrack listing (available here, amongst other places) the Milanese Nightingale will make an appearance in the film.
jock123
Moderator
#615 · Posted: 14 Oct 2011 18:29
Bordurian Thug:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are extremely minor characters in Hamlet though; literally blink and you miss them.

Quite pivotal in their way, though, and a presence, on and off stage from Act II onward - a bit like Haddock in Land of Black Gold… ;-)

Bordurian Thug:
I find Calculus's omission the most surprising and disappointing actually.

Is it so surprising, when he’s not actually in Unicorn? We don’t know what the outcome of this movie will be, and how much of Rackham is involved, so perhaps he’s just not part of this story?

Again, I’d put this down to dramatic balance. As I mentioned elsewhere, the possibility is that he will be a central, pivotal figure in the next film (whatever it is), and the delay is to give him his due with a decent introduction, rather than just shoe-horning in another introduction into this film.

Bordurian Thug:
I expect that it will sacrifice Herge's realism upon the altar of sensationalism.

Interesting, because whilst I see that there’s a truth to the way in which Hergé created the world his stories, I (personally) see them as largely fanciful, mostly escapist, and in their own way as sensational as Edgar Rice Burroughs or Rider-Haggard. Inca cults! Telepathic fakirs! Ancient astronauts! Giant human snowballs! Amazing hirsute bubble-blowing detectives! All the fun of the fair! ;-)

What politics he has in them is mostly for plot, and not in any real sense insightful; he uses magic and pseudoscience as much, if not more than hard science, etc. The beauty of what he does is that he draws and writes with an authority which makes the story work, and which imbues truth to what he is telling you, but he makes an atomic rocket which is ultimately no more real to me than a levitating monk, or a divining pendulum.

Bordurian Thug:
of course he often uses a weapon in the books but a rocket launcher?????

But from what we see he treats it in due Haddock fashion - he’s not a cool action hero; he’s our favourite sailor, slightly out of his depth but having a go (and getting it wrong). If anything, it’s a more traditional Haddock-y moment than the image of him on the cover of 714, with his sub-machine gun at the ready.
mct16
Member
#616 · Posted: 14 Oct 2011 19:19
jock123:
If anything, it’s a more traditional Haddock-y moment than the image of him on the cover of 714, with his sub-machine gun at the ready.

I don't have the book on me at the moment, but in "Land of Black Gold" when he calls Tintin at his flat, isn't it to announce that he's been summoned to serve on a ship as part of the mobilization for war? That would indicate that he does have some military experience and as part of that he would have been trained in the use of things like machine-guns.

But I tend to agree with the view that a bazooka is going a bit far.
Bordurian Thug
Member
#617 · Posted: 15 Oct 2011 11:50
jock123:
Interesting, because whilst I see that there's a truth to the way in which Hergé created the world his stories, I (personally) see them as largely fanciful, mostly escapist, and in their own way as sensational as Edgar Rice Burroughs or Rider-Haggard. Inca cults! Telepathic fakirs! Ancient astronauts! Giant human snowballs! Amazing hirsute bubble-blowing detectives! All the fun of the fair! ;-)

What politics he has in them is mostly for plot, and not in any real sense insightful; he uses magic and pseudoscience as much, if not more than hard science, etc. The beauty of what he does is that he draws and writes with an authority which makes the story work, and which imbues truth to what he is telling you, but he makes an atomic rocket which is ultimately no more real to me than a levitating monk, or a divining pendulum.

I'm no admirer of the fascism of Dawkinsian rationality because after all most of our universe is composed of dark matter but Herge's sensationalism is always balanced by the 'real' world in which his characters function. Therefore the Yeti may or may not exist but what it symbolises in the album is man's relationship with the external world; similarly the balance in Prisoners of the Sun between the imaginative world of the Incas and the rational expedience of the eclipse.

The genius of the Tintin adventures for me (more so as I have grown older) is that they offer a genuine history of the twentieth century in the most beautifully constructed comic book world. If one takes that out then one is left with Jo, Zette, and Jocko. That's why the removal of the rational (for all his buffoonery) Calculus is so troubling, particularly when I see a trailer that seems to aggrandise the spectacular (the holy grail?) at the expense of the relatively humdrum (a treasure chest).

I'll wager they won't be making The Castafoire Emerald any time soon.
Tintinrulz
Member
#618 · Posted: 15 Oct 2011 15:55
As jock already mentioned, this movie will not include much of Red Rackham's Treasure at all. That will be left for the following movie.
Ladybird
Member
#619 · Posted: 16 Oct 2011 17:15
jock123
You're right it makes total sense to cut characters or compound them. It just seemed to me like it would make more sense to take a canonical villain and simply give him an extended role. However it might turn out that they had a wonderful reason for doing it.
I'm not opposed to a little messing around (after all they can't film the series just as it is) but I often wonder what the point of some changes are.

Richard:
According to the soundtrack listing (available here, amongst other places) the Milanese Nightingale will make an appearance in the film.

Thanks Richard! You're obviously a better detective than I am.
luinivierge2010
Member
#620 · Posted: 17 Oct 2011 10:52
Several more clues are revealed in this book, The Art of The Adventures of Tintin, now available.

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