Tintin comes to Hollywood in 3-D

 

"You'll be kids the rest of your lives!" shouted Steven Spielberg to a crowd of more than 6,000 roaring fantasy fans at the Comic-Con International convention here on Friday. "I feel the same way!"

Spielberg has confessed to being a huge fan of J.M. Barrie's "boy who would not grow up."  Catch Me If You Can is filled with allusions to the Peter Pan story, and of course there is also Hook, with Robin Williams playing a grown-up Peter Pan who has become a corporate pirate.  Here's Spielberg on how the idea for the film developed: "Originally, I was going to make a Peter Pan movie based on the novel, a live-action version like the 1924 Peter Pan silent movie. But something happened, my son Max was born and I lost my appetite for the project.  I couldn't be Peter Pan any more. I had to be his father.  Anytime anything flies, whether it's Superman, Batman, or E.T., it's got to be a tip of the hat to Peter Pan.  To me, flying is synonymous with freedom and unlimited imagination but, interestingly enough, I'm afraid to fly."

For more on The Adventures of Tintin, which will be released on December 23, here is a link to the NYT article about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/mov...

Nobody in the giant hall asked Mr. Spielberg or Mr. Jackson about the less savory side of Remi, Tintin's creator, who worked for a pro-German publication, Le Soir, during the Nazi occupation of Belgium. In a period of later repentance, Remi cleaned up "Tintin" panels that were tainted by racist portrayals of black Africans and anti-Semitic allusions to Jews. The closest brush came when Mr. Jackson noted that "serious" themes and issues were embedded in some of the comics, though he did not elaborate.

Recommended reading: Jean-Marie Apostolides's The Metamorphosis of Tintin; or Tintin for Adults.