Tintin Forums

Good thinking! That'd explain the earlier reports. And I can see how the film-makers might have borrowed/adapted the idea of Red Rackham having descendents with a claim to the treasure from that comedic scene in Red Rackham's treasure.

More generally, it seems a shame that they've made Sakharine into a baddie. I like the way that when you read the book for the first time, you think he's going to be a baddie, but he turns out to be completely innocent. It would have been easy in the early 1940s for Hergé to make this archetypal Russian and Jewish-looking character into a sinister baddie, and it would no doubt have pleased Belgium's Nazi rulers if he had, but Hergé, with a subtlety that's typical of his best work, does something less obvious and more interesting.

BlackIsland, there's just not enough story in one Tintin adventure for a 2 hour movie. I'm curious to see what they do.

Sounds familiar indeed. Took me a moment to remember where I've read that, until I realised it's my own guess from this post!

Don't want to spoil your fun, but I'd like to remind you that I have no proper knowledge whatsoever, instead I have an impressive record in guessing things wrong... ;-)

Although it would indeed explain many things, that's why it sounds plausible.


That's something I've also wondered. Animations from the 90's were about half an hour for one book, and they pretty much contained everything that's in the books, right? (I've only seen few episodes, so someone can maybe clarify if needed?)

There's plenty of red herring flying about. And my gut feeling is that Spielberg & co are doing this on purpose, just to keep the audiences guessing and guarantee them a few surprises when the movie comes out. For example there's been plenty of information and misinformation about the actors and who's playing who.

Therefore I don't see it entirely impossible that they've just managed to keep the appearance of Calculus a secret so far. And that the movie will indeed contain Crab/Unicorn/Rackham, with the emphasis on two latter ones.

ps. Shouldn't this thread have spoiler-warning in the title as well? Although I think every thread discussing the movie should have them, and if someone wants to stay blindfolded, it would be silly to read anything or watch the trailer at all.

It's certainly possible. Actually the French Canadian adaptation of Tintin had 39 episodes covering 21 adventures. Most adventures took 2 episodes to tell (around 45mins). Still they left some things out of the comics.

I am still "on the fence" when it comes to this Tintin movie, and learning about this doesn't raise my hopes. Spielberg and Jackson don't have to make a 100% faithful adaptation, but not having a prominent character like Calculus in Secret Of The Unicorn seems rather dumb. I don't see why they couldn't adapt Secret Of The Unicorn & Red Rackham's Treasure into one movie and use some elements of Crab With The Golden Claws as an introduction. That would make sense; suddenly, this movie seems like kind of a mess, at least storywise. Let's hope Mondrian is right!

Thanks for correcting that. Though your original point still stands, one (or even two) book won't make a feature-length movie.

And good job on adding the spoiler tags, Jock (or whoever it was). However, I just realised that the title itself is a spoiler, how do we correct that? Actually the whole site is one massive spoiler, but it's your own fault really if you can't stay out...

It was the only way I could think of rendering it that conveyed any sort of meaning - there's only so far we can go!


Hergé doesn't have Calculus in Unicorn either, come to that, so it can't be that odd!
Until we know how much - Jackson has said that they have only put in a little - of Rackham there is, it seems unfair to be critical of a lack of Calculus, and (as some have done) also decrying changes to source material.

Nor did Hergé choose to introduce all the main characters in one story either - he brought them to us gradually, and we were able to appreciate them all the better.

I think that being able to foreground the wonderful world of Calculus in the second movie, and give him the attention he should have, is both sensible and desirable, certainly better than just giving him a cursory hello and shoe-horning him in amongst everything else going on.