While in some of the long shots everything looks suitably cartoony, with a nice flavour of the comic strip upon which it is based, the close ups of the characters, particularly the lingering shot of the eponymous hero at the trailer’s close has the familiar uncanny valley problem that all near photo-realistic CGI human creations have.
Motion capture, where an actor (usually Andy Serkis) acts out the role before being replaced by a computer generated creation, works well for non-human creations, King Kong, Gollum etc, but the problem with human recreations is they always look slightly off, destroying the illusion. And despite the high calibre team behind this, it appears Tintin will be no exception. They may not be going to true photo-realism, but it’s just too close to it to not be a distraction.
It would be a shame if the film, scripted by a trio of hugely talented Brits in Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, was ruined by not quite right human recreations. It leaves me a tad baffled why they didn’t just go live action – surely there’s nothing in Tintin which prohibits this given what today’s technology is capable of? I for one remain to be convinced the decision to go all CGI won’t be a massive error. But make up your own mind by watching the trailer here.
