Today legendary director Steven Spielberg made his first ever apperance at Comic Con, and before he talked anything about Tintin, he was presented with the Inkpot Award, which is a Lifetime Achievement award of sorts. They showed a clip of Spielberg’s work, which was exciting, but reduced to mostly explosions and people screaming, and didn’t feature any of the emotional moments that he really excels at.
After that, Speilberg surprised everyone by bringing Peter Jackson out on stage, which was greeted with thunderous applause.
Speilberg talked about when he first learned about Tintin, after reading a French review of Raiders of The Lost Ark in 1981 that compared the Tintin stories to his film. This motivated him to seek out the books, and while he couldn’t read French, he could tell from the pictures that the connection the French critic was making was accurate and that the two properties were “cousins” because both Tintin and Indy have a way of getting themselves wrapped up in the adventure of what they’re often sent out to investigate.
From there, Speilberg bought the rights to Tintin in 1983 and Jackson added that he had been waiting a quarter century for Speilberg to do these films and it was only now that they technology was at a place in which telling the story would not be more difficult because of the technology was finally able to match the vision they had for the film.
Weta was trying to help Spielberg decide whether or not to go full motion capture for Tintin, and the footage featured Peter Jackson playing Captain Haddock with a motion captured Snowy trying to upstage him in the background. This clip, complete with perhaps the cutest motion capture dog I’ve ever seen, convinced him to go full motion capture because he knew that that way he’d really be able to pay tribute to Herge, the author, and embrace his art more fully, rather than having to reinvent the characters to accommodate characters who only sort of looked like Herge’s drawings. With motion capture, they could blend the animated and the realistic in a way that way both convincing and still held true to what Herge had created.
Spielberg then talked about “The Volume” the virtual space he used to shoot all of the actors for the motion capture process and how it was very much akin to the Super 8 movies he used to make as a child because he did a majority of the work with the camera himself, and it helped make the whole thing that much more intimate.
A rather action packed clip was shown after, and after hearing from Spielberg how it had been compared favorably to Raiders, I couldn’t help but see the similarities. The action and the sense of adventure are very much like the Indiana Jones movies, and I think that that’s definitely a good thing.
Much to the excitement of everyone, Spielberg announced that a story for Jurassic Park 4 was already written, a treatment was being worked on, and that the film should be made in two to three years. Beyond that, he didn’t mention what his capacity was with the film, but I’m sure the internet is already on fire with speculation. He said that the reason he works on so many things at once (the moderator mentioned War Horse, Lincoln and Robopocalypse) was that it allowed him to remain objective about each of his projects and not get so invested in them that he becomes blind to their quality. He went on to say that he actually appreciates the criticism that he receives saying that “you (the fans/critics) being honest keeps me honest, so keep doing it”.
Peter Jackson said the reason they chose to do Secret of The Unicorn as the first story of the 23 Tintin stories to tell was that it really established the relationship between Haddock and Tintin and that’s what they wanted at the heart of their film, although he mentioned that Haddock and Tintin actually meet in another story called The Crab with the Golden Claws.
Perhaps the best moment of the panel came at the end, in which a fan came up to the mic with a shirt that read something to the effect of “hello my name is __________, I’d very much like to as Steven Spielberg a question and shake his hand”, and like a moment out of one of his films, he granted the young man’s wish, and not only shook his hand, but invited him on stage to do so, and even had Peter Jackson take the picture. It’s moments like that that make Comic Con really special.
