If you grew up with an eye for cartoon adventures then you probably liked Jamie and the Magic Torch, Galaxy High, Mask, Thunder Cats and Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin. Sadly only one of these classics was made into a big budget film in 2011 (fingers crossed for the rest though). The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is the first of Hergé’s brilliant cartoons creations to be made into a film in the 21st Century, bringing together an amalgamation of a few of the Belgian cartoonist’s books.
Jamie Bell took the starring role of Tintin, with Andy Serkis (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) portraying the legendary Captain Haddock.
The story picks up with Tintin in an adaptation of three of Hergé’s comic books published in the 1940s, The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure. Starting out with Tintin’s first meeting with Captain Haddock the story is a globe trotting adventure. In a dash to get to Haddock’s ancestral treasure they must piece together the aftermath of pirate, Red Racham’s, sinking of Sir Francis Haddock’s ship the Unicorn.
However, things are made difficult with the nefarious presence of Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine, played by Daniel Craig (Skyfall) to content with, as he’s on a mission to secure the treasure too. Craig also voices the character of Red Racham, but there’s a lot more to that when you watch the film.
Tintin favourites, twin detectives, Thomson and Thomson, are also heavily involved in the storyline, played by Simon Pegg & Nick Frost (Paul DVD). Combined with the directorial power of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s production skills and Weta Digital to provide the motion capture 3D animation, the film was an impressive first outing for the young detective.
The Adventures of Tintin Secret of the Unicorn was released in the cinema on the 26th October 2011 with the DVD hitting the shelves on the 19th March 2012. The script has amazingly been written by Steven Moffatt, who also wrote Sherlock as well as a fair few of the newer Dr Who episodes, Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs the World) and Joe Cornish (Attack the Block), so it had a lot of clout behind it.
