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Flight 714: why can't people accept it for what it is?

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snafu
Member
#11 · Posted: 22 Feb 2005 04:23
What is fascinating about The Adventures of Tintin is that it really brings various elements together. Few series of comic strips will base their stories on historical circumstances ("The Blue Lotus", "The Land of Black Gold", etc), fantasy ("The Seven Crystal Balls" and "Prisoners of the Sun"), both science fact and fiction ("Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon"), as well many other things.

"Flight 714", although not the best Tintin work, was not weakened by references to aliens. The very fact that Herge addressed what has captured the attention of so many people (correct me, but I think that even the UN held a conference on UFOs) is what makes the Tintin books something that most people can associate with. Tintin in many ways brings many human experiences together!
rastapopoulos
Member
#12 · Posted: 22 Feb 2005 12:50
I think the Aliens idea in 'Flight 714' was a stoke of genius. I would love to have seen what Herge would have drawn them like. I can imagine the 'Greys' drawn in Herges stlye.
I like the inclusion of world mysteries and the 'Chariots of the Gods' in the book, and its great that in the world of Tintin, Von Dainkens theroies are in fact true.
Does this not mean that Tintin is the ancestor of an Alien/Human Hybrid?????
The alien slant is a facinating angle on the Tintin world, and I would have loved to have seen more explained. Does anyone know if Herge was questioned on it in the Sadoul interviews?
gnolles
Member
#13 · Posted: 22 Feb 2005 13:03
Have a look at "Does Wolff die"!!!
rastapopoulos
Member
#14 · Posted: 22 Feb 2005 13:29
Have a look at "Does Wolff die"!!!

No link? Even I have trouble serching for threads on here.
gnolles
Member
#15 · Posted: 22 Feb 2005 13:34
Tintin books: Does Wolff die?, last reply on Feb.6
or try "search" then "Wolff" to get through!
jock123
Moderator
#16 · Posted: 22 Feb 2005 19:40
rastapopoulos
No link?

Here’s the link, if that makes things easier!

I think the biggest problem is that the whole Chariots of the Gods? thing was a fad, which has become out-dated and discredited; it thus has placed the book in a definite time-period. Whilst many of the other books have period features - cars, ’planes, dress etc. - the themes, such as treasure, exploration and adventure are perhaps timeless.
rastapopoulos
Member
#17 · Posted: 23 Feb 2005 14:34
jock123:
I think the biggest problem is that the whole Chariots of the Gods? thing was a fad,

I may not be old enough to remember when the 'Aliens colonising the ancient Earthlings' was a new fad, but I feel it is still very relevent.
Although we now may think it was a far fetched idea made up by some hippies in post-war times, but the alien conspiracy theories are still relevent.
When I was at school The X Files was massive, and brought these ideas to the masses.
Believeable or not the ideas Von Däniken & Cº reveal are fasinating, and fit with the more fantasy elements of Hergé’s work.
I think Hergé was quite brave to bring these elements into play, and it was nice to see the aliens portayed as peaceful creatures, rather than ray-gun zapping morons.
I am a big fan of the more unusual sides of the Tintin series and Flight 714 certainly has an unusual twist. Quite bizarre.
bashi bazooks
Member
#18 · Posted: 23 Feb 2005 20:31
I remember reading Flight 714 for the first time some 30 odd years ago. I was about ten and I think it had just come out in English. I was a major Tintin fan then and new all his books inside out.
When I got to the alien bit I was totally astonished. I just had to read it over and over again to check that we were really talking about aliens here.
It was like a totally new dimension and I thought it was great. In terms of plot development he had totally upped the ante.
He had done what all narrators continually strive for, he had genuinely surprised his readers. Had he been a sci-fi writer the plot line would have been far more obvious. The fact that he wasn't, was genius. He played his joker and kept us all talking for 30 years.
You can only really do this kind of thing at the end of a series because otherwise it would spoil the narrative for books to come - you would always have been thinking, “I wonder if a friendly alien will turn up...?”
As it was, this was the time of ET and Close Encounters, and Von Daniken was often mentioned by my geography teacher.
Most of my pre-teen generation totally wanted to get abducted by aliens so it was a great story to get into. I'll have to go and have a root around and see if I can still find that copy I had as a kid…
rastapopoulos
Member
#19 · Posted: 24 Feb 2005 13:23
As it was, this was the time of ET and Close Encounters

That line gave me an idea to start a new thread - Was Spielberg inspired by Flight 714?
jock123
Moderator
#20 · Posted: 24 Feb 2005 14:02
bashi bazooks, I do hope your geography teacher was pointing out the lack of evidence, tenuous “reasoning” and just down-right misrepresentation which makes up Von Däniken’s work? I grant you it was fascinating stuff to a young teen at the time, but really didn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Or any sort of scrutiny, come to that.

My personal favourite is his stuff about the Nazca lines.
One photograph he published – he suggests – is of a “runway turning circle for a space-ship”. He also provided a photo of such a feature for conventional aircraft at a contemporary airport as “evidence”, and, as presented, there are definitely similarities.
However, the “turning cirle” is in reality barely a couple of metres across (so isn’t anything like the scale he was implying, which suggestes you could at least turn an airliner – if not indeed a full-sized inter-planetary craft!), it is clearly the knee-joint in an outline of a bird (this fact was easily hidden by cropping out all but the knee in the photo in the book), and the down-draft of a “space ship” would have blown the image to kingdom-come, as it is only scratched in the surface to the depth of a few centimetres, being made by removing a darker surface coating to expose lighter sand beneath. In fact nothing like an airport turning circle, save for a slight coincidence in the shape…

I still think that the largely negative feeling for 714 arises from the fact that appetite for these mysteries peaked and died off; people became more sceptical as the “evidence” was debunked, and most importantly, what you class as Hergé playing his Joker, was in fact a rather too sudden change of direction in an already rather lack-lustre plot.

There were approaching 15 years between 714 and E.T. - The Extraterrestrial, so I’m not sure that U.F.O.s actually represent an overwhelming feature of the age, so much as a constant presence on the edge of recognition.

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