I invited the kids to join me in watching Tintin in 3D yesterday. (Actually, my son had been waiting for months to see it; my daughter was not so keen, but I refused to take her to the third Chipmunks movie after the dire experience of the second one.)
The big cinema was nearly full, and the audience seemed in a very good mood. They cheered when the 3D filter was belatedly put on a few minutes after the "please put on your 3D glasses" slide had appeared. (This delay happened last time I was at Southbank Cinema a couple of weeks ago when we saw Puss in Boots.) And they seemed to enjoy the movie, as indicated by a smattering of applause at the end.
But me? Sad to report, I was pretty underwhelmed.
On the first issue of whether it demonstrated that motion capture has overcome the "uncanny valley": well, yes, more or less. But the odd consequence of this is that, if you then use it for characters are "cartoony" in appearance such as the Thompson twins, it becomes rather the equivalent of using real actors with ridiculously obvious prosthetic noses, etc. The eyes look pretty real: the rest of the face doesn't.
The other problem in motion capture is still to do with physics. There is scene in the trailer you may have seen where the Thompson twins are running down the street and one hits a lamp post and recoils backwards. You can tell exactly how this was done with a wire on the actor from the mere look of the physics. Motion capture, it seems to me, is an unhappy attempted mix of the freewheeling visuals of cartooning but with a continual and unavoidable connection to the physics of the real world that acts as a restraint on what it can do. I mean, I was more impressed with the imaginative action in The Incredibles than with anything I have seen in motion capture.
I also have a problem with getting any sense of danger in this technique. I haven't really worked out why this should be so - perhaps it is simply an inability to stop being aware of how it was made - but I feel more capable of feeling completely animated characters as being in danger than I do with motion capture ones. There is one scene in particular in Tintin which is meant to evoke an Indian Jones style of encroaching danger to the hormonally challenged title character; but for me, it just did nothing.
So colour me unconvinced: I am really having trouble envisaging ever liking this way of making films.
I also didn't think the 3-D added much, which surprised me, because I thought Spielberg might have novel ideas for its use. In fact, unless it was just the cinema I was seeing it in, I felt for the first time that it was making the screen darker than it should. This is a problem that some people have noted about the current technology, but perhaps it is because I have only ever seen computer animated films in it that I haven't noticed any issue with the brightness of the image. (Yes, Tintin is animated too, but still, it seemed to be murkier looking that I expected.)
Another issue I had with the film is with the screenplay: I just didn't think it was so clever. Some of the exposition (with Tintin working out various connections) just seemed clumsy and capable of being done better. But part of the problem may be with the source material: I have never read the comics in detail but they have always struck me as sort of dull. Sure, they are colourful, and their appeal to many boys is undeniable, but I grew up on Scrooge McDuck adventures in the classic Carl Barks period, and they seem to me to have a more continual element of wit and humour which I couldn't really see happening enough in Tintin.
I wonder if my problem with the screenplay lies with the involvement of Steven Moffat. Last night, the family watched the Dr Who Christmas Special written by him, and I thought it was awful.
I usually enjoy these specials - even last year's with the flying shark pulling a sleigh had a kind of inspired madness, I thought.
But last night's was just terrible in nearly every respect, except for the fact that Matt Smith does fine with the role. I mean, the very first few minutes were a warning sign, with the Doctor shown to have an ability to survive and shout for minutes in the vacuum of space. (There are some breaches of physics in films I am loathe to forgive, even in Dr Who.) I've grown tired of the Moffat returns to the World War II period, the whole "lifeforce" needing to find a strong person to use as a lifeboat, and that being the mother, was just sort of corny and made no real emotional sense to me. I didn't even think the acting by the mother was particularly convincing.
I think the episode is just further evidence that Steven Moffat is burnt out with the show and he needs to leave. (Or even the show needs another break from its current incarnation.) Oddly enough, many Guardian readers say they did feel moved by the episode. But on that blog, there are some people who seem to share my feeling that the show has lost its way, and Moffat is probably at the heart of the problem.
So, that's a cranky sounding Boxing Day report, isn't it? It's not all bad: my son did enjoy Tintin (although he seemed pretty cool on the Christmas episode too), and my daughter perhaps liked the movie more than she expected. Even I would say it's not a terrible movie; just a disappointing one with which I disagree with quite a lot of what critics have said about it.
My hope is that War Horse might be better than Tintin, but it's about a horse. What a worry.
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