The Adventures of Tintin - Page 5

I never stated that an animated Indy would be as visually convincing as a filmed Indy. Just that this kind of technology could be used to produce compelling stories that would could still feature Ford as a non-geriatric Indiana Jones.


Psst. . . this may come as a bit of a shock, but Indiana Jones isn't a real person either. Neither is Marion, Sallah, Marcus, Belloq, Toht, Short Round, Donovan, Henry Jones Sr., Elsa. . .

They're all just made up! Sorry if I've spoiled it for you.

Both are fantasy franchises.

And, just like Indiana Jones, Toy Story is set in a universe remarkably similar to ours. It's filled with toys that really exist, but just happen to have lives of their own. If someone wanted to create a live-action version, they very well could. But why would making the toys, sets, environments, and people "real" necessarily trump an animated version?

Scott

We agree that it wouldn't be. That's why people would say it's a step down (just as Star Trek fans hardly stopped wanting more when the animated series came out).


But the personification of him, in the form of Harrison Ford, IS a real person. Buzz Lightyear or Pinocchio CANNOT be real people.

By that logic, any genre film could work as an animated film -- but we all know that's not the case.

The problem with that Jones film wasn't that Ford was too old in my eyes. More that the script was awful, the pacing lethargic, the direction indifferent and the reliance on CGI a stark contrast from all of the earlier films.

TINTIN to me felt like an animated Indiana Jones film -- but without any emotional or dramatic content. Technically it looked great, and I mildly enjoyed it, but 100+ minutes of chase after chase without the human dimension (or a story that engaged beyond a group of frenetically designed action scenes) wore me out. Making an animated Indiana Jones film would lose the very thing that separates it from something like TINTIN. Maybe it would work for kids, but it wouldn't engage vast audiences the way the live-action films would.

That would be the first thing that would brake or make an animated Indy movie. The only problem with Fords age is that you cant have the Nazi bad guys. The Russians were lame.


That it didnt have any emotional and dramatic content did destroy most of the Indy feel. It also destroyed most of the Tintin feel.


It all comes down to how good you actually make the movie. Once a good movie grabs its audience they wont care anymore. Of course making a good movie is a bit of a challange. And im not so sure after Indy 4 and Tintin that Spielberg would pull it of. He certainly has the talent, but the hunger isnt there.

But imagine the first minutes of Raiders, you basicly could pull of the entire sequense with animation before anyone would notice that its animated. Because you dont reveal Indys face until you have hooked the audience.

The problem with Tintin is that it didnt have the magic of Spielberg. It feelt like someone that tries to mimic a Spielberg movie. But the heart and soul wasnt there.

Most real Star Trek fans quit with the exit of Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Ahoura, etc. The rest may as well have been animated by monkeys, couldn't have been worse.

The personification of a character in a lousy script is hardly iconic...and certainly they're all characters, just different, no reason not to equate them with Buzz, Mrs Potatohead or Woody...Pinocchio was actually real, though.

Meaning that Snow White is more an animated character in people's mind. Which is my point from the beginning: some characters are made (so to speak...) for animation, others for live action. Again, I didn't say it wasn't possible to make these new versions of them, just that it doesn't work very well.


I think Equilibrium is an excellent film, but it certainly wasn't successful. In art in general, I think quality has nothing to do with 'success'. Yes to me success in more 'money-related' than anything. Arstistic value is something else. I'd also say that any artist wants to be successful.


I agree, but Pixar movies (which to me aren't pure Disney movies) are an exception, the Cars franchise being their weakest imo. That sequence you mention is amazing.


Not really. Disney made a fine film and it was very successful. But to me, Cocteau's Beauty And The Beast is unmatched when it comes to artistic value. In that case I wasn't particularly referring to the film's financial success, but to the film as an artistic entity (I refuse to say product)

No but personally I don't care much for it. I prefer his live action and comic book iterations.


Batman is meant to be a comic book character.

...as for the movie versions, I prefer the live action ones without hesitation.


The comic book fantasy world these characters are living in in the first place translates better in live action OR animation. The world of Tintin is more animated than live action in my mind. The world of Indiana Jones is more live action. That's really the only point I'm making from the beginning.

Our mind instantly tells us something is off, because we know how old Jeff Bridges really is. That's the problem with CGI, there's probably a zone in our brain that constantly reminds us "wait...that's not possible" as we watch a movie ....In animated films, anything is possible, cause we know it's not supposed to feel real. Does it prevent us from being emotionally connected to these characters? no - but it can be more difficult. Even if Tintin is technically irreproachable, we know all the time we're in an animated movie, so the little details that would seem off in the real world can get a pass.

Again I'm not saying one is better than the other, they're both different mediums and some stories, some characters work better in one or another.

That was my major issue with Tin Tin: I didn't give a damn about any of the characters. I didn't root for them. I also didn't feel any sense of danger when they were supposed to be in danger.

I felt the same thing about Indy 4 with all the frenetic chase scenes augmented by CGI (the jungle vine scene was hogwash). Had they stuck to the principles of the 1st movie, where we saw him physically run from a big giant rolling ball or get dragged by a truck or he takes out his gun and shoots the swordsman, it would have been a much better movie.

The physical aspects of the movie combined with Indiana looking physically tired out by it was something that was only vaguely touched on in Indy 4. In Raiders, it felt like it was a real guy doing the stuff he did.

The Last Crusade could have easily also been crap had it not been for the genius level of interaction between "junior" and dad...most notably,

The farther away you get from real physicality, the farther away you get from any sense of dramatic verisimilitude. Literally making Indy into a cartoon would severe all ties to that real physicality, therefore severe ties to any sense of real drama.

So nobody cried when Bambi's mother died. Animated. No drama. Right.



Again, animated: no drama. No feelings for these characters at all if I understand you here.

Huh?

Little kids are indeed disturbed by that, but I prefer not to reduce all drama to a child's level. Maybe you do. And I never said animation has ZERO dramatic content, only that the verisimilitude can't be at the level of live action.

UP's drama was nowhere near childish.

It's not that at all.

I worried for the characters in Toy Story when they got into trouble. I felt bad for Carl when his wife died. I rooted for Wall-E and loved his interactions with Eve. Heck, I felt bad for David when he was left in the woods in A.I.

It's not about whether the character is a real person or not or does things that are realistic - it's whether they make a connection that makes the audience care what happens to them.

Certain characters are just so immersive that you forget they are creations that don't really exist.

There's a phrase that comes to mind:

"The machine becomes human when you can't tell the difference."

But it goes further than that:

"The machine becomes human when you don't care that there's a difference."

It was well below the level of great drama with real actors.

I don't think many people think of UP as great drama on any level.

In *your* opinion. Plenty of reviewers cited UP's prologue as one of the best executed sequences of any film that year.

Plenty of animated stories tell far better tales and have far better characters than even well-reviewed & directed live action films.

I think Up is a great example for this discussion because the very "unreality" of the characters in that movie actually contributes substantially to its dramatic heft by way of allowing the audience to subconsciously "universalize" the drama. We can relate more (and more quickly) to the characters precisely because they are not photo-realistic. I have a hard time imagining that opening sequence would have brought as many people to tears (over characters they'd just been introduced to), had it been a live-action film.

This is exactly the kind of advantage that animation has for the realistic display of certain qualities of life and emotional experience that live-action photography can't necessarily match. And it's why the question of visual realism depends upon more than photo-optical verisimilitude and why it can't be objectively stated that any one image-making method is more "realistic" than another.

I could gather zereo interest in this movie, but I happened to catch some of the Blu-Ray playing on at my Friend's last night (they were watching it on the JVC RS20 projector I sold him). It looked amazing in terms of PQ. As a movie, it only confirmed how utterly uncompelling it is to me...not to mention the camera was so busy swishing and zooming that even without 3D I felt almost ill watching it (which virtually never happens to me).

What genre couldn't work as an animated film?

Or, the work Disney did on Snow White was so good that the public will always hold it up as the standard that others will be measured against, not just because it was animated. I'm also not saying that a live action movie couldn't be made or that it couldn't work. It's just that merely being filmed with real people in real environments wouldn't necessarily make it better.


Given that, there were examples in my list that would fit those measures.


The earlier Pixar movies weren't, but that's changing. Disney's movies, even their live-action films, have always tended to target children. But how they make and market their films shouldn't be used as a limiting factor for the potential of the medium. They've just done a really good job in that particular application.


Both films were successful in their own ways. Which is better would depend on the viewer's perspective, but either medium can effectively tell the story.

Scott

The Star Trek Animated Series, like the Lord of the Rings animated movies, were not successful. The animation was cheap-looking, some of the voice acting was weak, and the soundtrack was limited, with lots of stock sounds. Some of the scripts were written by actual Trek scribes, but the series was clearly aimed at children, and suffered for it. The execution is what hurt the show.


He's a fantasy character in fantasy situations, played by a real person. Buzz is a physically object played by a real person. Were it shot as a live action movie, there could be a real actor portraying him. That wouldn't make it a better film, nor would it make it any more relatable or engaging.

Scott

One character is a flesh and blood human being, the other is an 8 inch tall piece of plastic. That summarizes precisely why one should be played by a human being and the other should be animated.


A bigger budget and better animation would NOT have quelled the desire for a live action renewal.

Have you sampled much of the animated series? Many have felt that it was the truest to the spirit of the comic books.


Again, this comes down to personal preference.


But the world of Tintin and the world of Indiana Jones are remarkably similar. At the core, they're both PG-type adventure stories, set in the same time periods and some of the same locales.

What is it about each that makes one medium more suitable than the other?

Scott

The insight density of this comment is very high indeed.

Up was not meant to be a drama.

However, that opening montage is as touching as anything you'll find in a live action movie. The medium does not prevent the audience from connecting to the characters, feeling their love and heartbreak. Filming it with "real" actors would not have enhanced it.

Scott

While pondering this discussion, one actually occurred to me. Indiana Jones. He was animated in Temple of Doom, along with Willie and Short Round. I'm sure there are viewers who had no idea that they were watching stop-motion animation during the mine car chase scene.

Scott

Hey- who you callin' dense?!

I just wanted to comment that the discussions we've had over the past few days have been thought-provoking and insightful. Thanks to all that have participated, whether we've agreed or not.

As to the possibility of seeing a classic Indy again, Spielberg seems to have squashed that idea months ago in this article from the NY Daily News:


It's too bad. I think they could have made some fun and interesting movies.

Scott

So the best you could come up with is a brief long distance shot.

I'm glad Spielberg won't use CGI gimmicks with Ford.