Tintin Casting Rumors Confirmed, People! Stop Worrying About It and Go Back to Work!

My ten year old self and my thirty-seven year old self are high fiving each other right now.

According to the really, really reliable Ain't It Cool News (really!), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have been cast as the bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson in the upcoming Tintin film.  With Steven Spielberg as the director, Peter Jackson producing, and Steven Moffat (Coupling, Jekyll, Doctor Who) writing the script, this looks to be a Tintin that even the staunch anti-Tintin League can get behind.

I know, right? You've been waiting for Tintin news too, haven't you? Haven't you? Hello?

I grew up in a village on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, well beyond the reach of cable TV and even movie theatres, so my childhood was spent with a couple of fuzzy television channels and a towering pile of books.

At some point I began to make my way through the Tintin books – graphic novels that existed long before the term 'graphic novel' appeared to dignify superhero comics.  Although not too well-known in the United States, Tintin has entertained millions of children around the world for the last eighty years (just to give you a sense of perspective, the first Tintin serial, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, appeared in 1929).  In every installment, intrepid journalist Tintin and his loyal terrier Snowy become embroiled in bizarre mysteries.  Along with characters such as the irascible Captain Haddock and the absent-minded Professor Calculus, Tintin has travelled to Latin America, to central Africa, and even as far as the moon.

The only bad news? The Tintin feature is going to be done in performance capture animation, which means that it will end up looking like the nightmare-inducing Polar Express at best, and at worst, Beowulf.  Did anyone see Beowulf? Remember that scene where a naked Ray Winstone fights Grendel in the mead hall? God that was awful.  I hope Robert Zemeckis bought something nice with my ten dollars.  Like a bunch of fresh daisies, or a pack of gourmet chewing gum, or a mallet.  Then he could smell good and enjoy fresh breath while he whacks himself repeatedly in the head.

Comments

[alex]

Never was my 8 year old self so excited as the days when the French teacher would wheel in the TV/VCR for some Tintin en francais.

[Marmite Breath]

Pegg, Frost and Moffat.....squee, squee and squee.

Tin Tin.....Meh!

[deirdre]

Why??? WHHHYYYYYYY? I hate that animated crap, and the actors have to do the acting ANYWAY, so WHHHHYYYYYYYY??????

I've always thought David Caruso would make an excellent Tintin, seeing as how he looks EXACTLY like him.

[palinode]

Alex - I don't think my French teachers ever showed us any Tintin. Now I'm angry at Mme MacDonald.

Marmite Breath - Meh? MEH? That's a fighting 'meh'. I'm with you on the squee, though. I'm pretty sure that Spielberg and Jackson will make a complete mockery of the subject, but the Axis of Awesome (Pegg/Frost/Moffat) will go some distance towards shoring up the piece.

Deirdre - I've always thought that David Caruso looks like a cancerous walnut with a wig, but I can see the Tintin resemblance. The only thing is that Tintin is eternally young, whereas Caruso is like human jerky.

[JennyM]

Umm... Yes, yes I have been following this. I completed my hardbound Tintin collection last Christmas, thank you. Am giant dork? Perhaps, but I do love me some Tintin.

[palinode]

JennyM - Hardbound? More like HARDCORE.

I didn't know how badly I wanted to write down those sentences until I just wrote them. Thank you Jenny.

[anna]

I know next to nothing about Tintin, but Pegg, Frost, AND Moffat? And also Jackson and Spielberg, that's great too, but PEGG, FROST, AND MOFFAT?

The only way you'd get me to it faster is if you said Catherine Tate was in it too.

[anna]

Oh, and Deidre- as to why? Beowulf is the best example I can come up with off the top of my head: look at Beowulf's muscles. Then look at Ray Winstone.

[Marmite Breath]

Palinode, I hate to tell you this, but I could take you down. In fact, I could take you down to Chinatown. Don't heckle a bitch who only gets 18 Weight Watcher points a day and is OUT OF POINTS! SUCK IT, TIN TIN!!!!11!

(I adore you really, lovely Palinode)

Nat
xo

[Lisa]

My eight-year-old will be thrilled when this comes out, and I guess we can assume they will leave out most of the racist bits. That's the only problem with TinTin - it's one of those old favorite classic texts that presents kind of a skewed view of the world... as a lame compromise, I allow the kid to check them out of the library and enjoy them, but don't buy them ourselves. I know, this is lame and does not actually address the underlying problems at all. Oh, well.