Pioneering New Style of Filmmaking

Rating: 10/10 (9 July 2012)

Tin Tin is nothing more nor less than the eventual new prototype of motion pictures. Just like Citizen Kane it represents a watershed, a turning point. Let us compare the film to what it will replace in Spielberg's bag of tricks; The Indiana Jones series. Sad fact is Harrison Ford has, like all human beings, grown old. Not so with Tin Tin. He will be forever young, forever a youth at the threshold of all his adult power; forever fresh faced, no grey to sully the bright red cowlick, no wrinkles will ever spoil the pink smooth skin. Like John Henry vs the Steam Hammer mere flesh is bound to lose. Harrison Ford is mere inferior flesh. Tin Tin will never enter rehab. Perhaps his voice actor or his motion capture double will but they are mere company men on salary or contract & easily replaced. No pique, no fits of ego, ALL the weakness & sins of the flesh ended at a stroke. NO PRIOR COMMITMENTS. He will always OK the script and he works cheap. NO 50% of the gross for his services; The whole persona package a mere fraction of a star in his or her prime. As long as a backup of the computer models exists somewhere in any computer, anywhere even a hundred years hence there can be a Tin Tin revival whenever the public is willing to watch & be entertained by one.
Back to comparing The assumed retired Indiana Jones epics. Do you realize what the bill would have been to wrangle the cars, ships, planes & other assorted vehicles that added such variety & interest to the movie? ASTRONOMICAL. Many would have to be cheated out of less valuable cars etc & NOWHERE near the realism of the street traffic could be generated at ANY COST. Could any production company afford to crush a classic Rolls Royce Limousine such as the villain's? Crash land a Bellanca in a howling storm? The Indiana Jones movies must have allowed legions of studio carpenters & prop-makers to acquire a tidy retirement. Ditto for the costumers & make up artists.
The movie has a vast sweep of period cities & exotic locales. The bill for Security Alone in let's say, Tangier as a close guess for the sultan's palace sequence would cover the CGI for ALL the locales in the movie. Boys & girls the game is over. Movie making is a money making business & when a world class action adventure movie with non stop camera movement & virtually no limits on ANY & ALL production values can be knocked together for a mere $130,000,000 & post an immediate gross of $371,940,071 well then the writing is on the wall. Bear in mind that this film pioneered the new production style. It will be even cheaper once this is routine. The film is way outside the traditional fairy tale or fantasy realm; That is the essential difference. This new sort of photo realistic CGI might not appeal to older film audiences & a few might even reject the look but almost everyone else will be vastly entertained & THAT is the object of the exercise, to entertain. This, due to the business parameters that it shatters is the future of film.
As for the film content itself; Vastly amusing & exciting entertainment. A worthy successor to the Indiana Jones series. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
As an after thought I feel I should credit Zack Snyder's "300" as the forerunner of the new style & technology. The term 'Virtual Back Lot' has been bandied about; seems to me an apt name. However; It takes a Spielberg with his massive administrative talent to truly turn the corner & that would be "Tintin".