Tintin Forums

The movie was really good. I think it was well done.

TomicaLover, "Muray brothers?" "Red Willys?" I don't know what you're talking about!

Red Willys is the type of jeep you see in the film (and famously on the cover of Destination Moon!) See this link.

As for "Muray brothers", I assume TomicaLover is referring to the Bird Brothers (I don't know, but perhaps they're called Muray brothers in another language?)


I assume you mean that it's an anachronism? Meaning it's out of time, a Red Willys jeep appearing in a story that was (originally) set in the early 1940s.

Well, that would be true for the book, but the film is (I'm reliably informed) set at a later period in the 1950s. I'm sure another of m'learned Tintinologist colleagues will be able to shed more light on this...

I would say the film was set in the late forties at the earliest, what with such "modern" inventions as a bazooka being used... Yet it feels, with the device of fictional Arab nation states and hidden treasure, that it really belongs in a never-never fantasy 1930's Europe.

I've not heard that, so I can't shed any light on the film-makers' intentions. However, the film had more of a 1940s look to me. The cars in the street scenes looked a bit more 40s than 50s to my eyes, but I suppose my perception may have been affected by my preconceptions from the books and my assumption that they were following the same date setting. Also, the early 1950s can look a lot like the late 1940s. When we think of the 1940s, we tend to think of iconic stuff from the early-to-mid 40s, ie: stuff associated with the Second World War, whereas things we associate with the 1950s - rock-and-roll music, teddy-boy fashions, iconically 50s cars, etc - tend to come from the mid 50s onwards. So the late 1940s and early 1950s are perhaps a bit less fixed in our minds in terms of iconic styles.

The specific red Willy's Jeep in the Tintin film is, of course, borrowed from the 1948 book, Land of Black Gold, and is probably based on one of the civillian versions of Willys Jeep produced from 1946 onwards (though I suppose it could be an early-to-mid 1940s military model that's been customised and painted red).

It's true the books on which the film is mostly based were drawn in the early 1940s, though that means of course that they're set in a version of early 1940s Brussels that didn't actually exist historically, given that the real 1940s Brussels would have been swarming with Nazi soldiers. I was assuming that the film-makers were going for a vague and unspecified 1940s look, aimed at capturing what they see as the nostalgic appeal of the Tintin books without pinning it down too much. (Not that Hergé himself was into nostalgic settings, of course. Being something of a modernist, his books tend to be very much contemporary with the time in which they were drawn.)

To be honest, if the Tintin-book fan in me was going to be annoyed by anything whilst watching that scene, the fact that the Jeep's being driven by a character who's a dumbed-down villianised version of one of Hergé's more interesting minor characters, and who's been motivated by a ludicrous ancestor-avengement complex to steal a parchment using the unbelievable contrivance of an opera-singer's voice, would come much higher on my list of objections (along with many of the other objections many of us have listed) than the fact that the Jeep is possibly four or five years too late for the original setting of the books! ;)

Given that I'd mostly managed to suspend these objections in order to enjoy the film as a non-Hergéan Speilberg movie (helped, as I said in an earlier post, by the fact that my 10-year-old son and his friend were enjoying it), I actually enjoyed seeing the red Jeep shoe-horned into the film and thought it made quite a cool baddie getaway vehicle.

In the scene where Tintin holds the blood-smeared Le Petit Vingtimème newspaper, the date at the top appears to say "Dinsdag 12 Decem 1944". Dinsdag is Dutch for Tuesday, and this tallies with the 1944 calendar for the 12th of December.

Aha! That's interesting. I can't recall exactly how the newspaper fits into the plot though, or how old a copy it's meant to be relative to the
action of the film. (I should buy the DVD at some point.)

I thought the movie was amazing! It was better than I thought it would be! I made my friend watch it (who didn't like Tintin at all!) and then she actully liked after watching it!

My "review" is simply summed up by a little something I put together.

I see by the poll the vast majority of members are more than happy with the movie. All I can say is that it has come and gone like any other mainstream fad, they had the chance to create a classic and they missed it. I wonder if it is a generational thing?

Moderator's note: I'm afraid we can't allow fan-art or links to unofficial material, so your link was removed.

The Law-abiding, Legally-conscious Tintinologist Team

Indeed, and I've been keeping an eye on the poll since the movie was released a few months ago. It's stayed pretty consistent throughout, currently showing (just short of 3,000 votes) that 69% thought it was 'excellent' and a further 19% 'good' (incidentally, it's not just open to members, anyone can vote). Only 4% thought it was 'poor'. It bothered me a bit some months ago when there were some news sites suggesting that Tintin fans were 'divided' as to whether they liked the film, basing this on some of the posts in this very thread. I think the poll and general opinion doesn't bear this out. But of course, everyone's entitled to their opinion, I'm not suggesting people must like it!


How easy is it to just 'create a classic'? And what makes a classic film? They made a fairly successful film that received good reviews and was generally liked by Tintin fans and non-fans alike. A lot of people regard the books as classic, but other people aren't interested in them.

Personally, although I have a few niggles, I thought it was an excellent film overall (and I'm quite critical usually!)