3D Movie Reviews

The Adventures of Tintin

The Story: (4 out of 5)

Being an avid Tintin fan since childhood and having read The Secret of The Unicorn book tens of times, I immediately noticed two major differences between the original book and its adaptation in the form of The Adventures of Tintin movies: the extra details in the scenes throughout the movies and noticeable deviations from the story. The director decided to move away from the abstract style of Hergé's early books to create a more immersive environment for 21st century viewers, who demand such details in modern movies. After the initial minute-long disappointment, however, I found these changes to be more welcome than not. Details such as Tintin's apartment or Marlene Pike's storage room, where Sakharine kept the second copy of the Unicorn, were interesting. However, some of the smaller details did not introduce a significant added value to the story and, as discussed below, were sometimes visually unpleasant in the 3D version.

An interesting aspect of this movie was the realism of representations of the characters. It was sometimes difficult to tell whether Tintin was an actor or an animation. Such techniques re-iterate the notion that in the near future many movies may not have real actors anymore as Hollywood can soon create fictional characters that are indistinguishable from real ones. Our favorite future characters may not be humans, but rather animated creations with certain physical and emotional characteristics. The degree of improvement between the characters in Tintin when compared to the ones in The Polar Express is amazing.

3D Effects: (4 out of 5)

The 3D effects of this movie were meticulously planned and executed. Unlike many other 3D "animations", there were very little, if any, old 3D gimmicks such as throwing an object toward the audience. In some scenes, the depth and perspective were slightly exaggerated, but this did not take away from the beauty of the 3D execution. Negative parallax (objects coming out from the screen) was sometimes present on the edges of the frames, which can be visually disturbing. Some of the smaller 3D effects that are not commonly seen in animations, although ambitious, were not necessary and were sometimes quite distracting. For example, the reflection of one of the characters in a window, the simulated lens flare, and the dust particles in the air that were flying too far off the screen were all hard to resolve and mostly distracting, especially in the close-up scene where Tintin and Captain Haddock were talking. However, the idea of having dust in the path of a flashlight was very interesting and welcome, since it not only made the scene more realistic, but it made resolving the light coming out of the flashlight easier.

It is no secret that action scenes are much harder to resolve in 3D, and this movie was no exception. The fast fighting scenes on the deck of the Unicorn along with the raging sea water were slightly difficult to see in 3D when the objects were close to the viewers. In general, the water streams were not handled as well as other moving objects. Even the slightly calmer sea toward the end of the battle scene was discomforting and unrealistic, so were the closeup scenes of the water fountain at the Sheikh's palace. It may have been better to keep the action scenes deeper inside the screen (with less negative parallax) to avoid some of the discomfort, although in general the fast moving scenes were handled relatively better compared to most other 3D animations out there.

The 3D transitions were among the most creative and visually appealing parts of the 3D effects of the movie. Although using a simple crossfade transition between the desert scene (which had a large difference in depth between the top and bottom of the scene) and the night sky (which was mostly flat) was not the best idea, some other more creative transitions that mostly involved bubbles were quite interesting. Most specifically, the transition between the Unicorn scene on the sea and the puddle on the street was something unique and very pleasant to watch.

Overall the 3D quality of this movie was very good. In my opinion, the movie deserves 4 out of 5 stars for maintaining good quality 3D throughout a wide variety of scenes, and for using creative 3D effects and transitions. It should be noted that the 3D production process is quite different between animated and non-animated movies. In animated movies, producers have much better control in creating proper 3D, whereas in non-animated titles the production process is more challenging, since it requires 3D cameras as well as the right setup.

Rating: 4 stars

Comments

There are no comments on this article. Be the first to post a comment by using the form below.

Leave a Comment

Your Name:
Your Email Address (it won't be made public):
Title of Your Comment:
Your Comment(s):
Notify me of new comments to this page:
Enter the security code below to help us prevent spam:

3DMedia Newsletter

Sign up below to receive news from 3DMedia including special offers and information about product releases and updates.