Back in June of 2021, I reviewed the 2011 Steven Spielberg movie, The Adventures of Tintin. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, in fact I'd probably rank it rather high on the list of movies I watched for this blog. While some parts of it were utterly stupid, I still quite enjoyed the movie for what it was, and thought that it was a good movie for fans and newcomers. Being a Tintin fan myself, I figured it was about time I crossed that movie off of my list. Now originally I was going to leave it at that, but around November of that same year I looked at the 2017 DuckTales series, having just finished watching it with my folks. So, now that I am experimenting with reviewing animated television shows on this blog, I thought this show would be a good entry for this sub-series.
I believe I have stated before that this show was my introduction to Tintin. Amazing how I get into comics through cartoons. So I have a special attachment to this show, however I will say that finally going through the entire series, I do have a few issues with it.
Now, I've mentioned that this series has the voice cast that I am most familiar with, which is why I had trouble getting accustomed to Jamie Bell's performance as Tintin in the movie. Not that it was bad, but I was used to Colin O'Meara's voice. It's weird that these two would be the voices people would associate with the character, because isn't he supposed to be Belgian? I don't really have a problem with the voice cast,I think they all did a great job, and there are surprisingly little recognizable names, unless you're Canadian and know who Maureen Forrester or Wayne Robson are. Either way, I think the voice cast did well for their roles.
I think my first real issue with the series is how it fiddles around with continuity. Now they did not adapt the first or second Tintin adventures, those being Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Thintin in the Congo, though Tintin in the Congo has kind of been disowned by everyone involved. However, they did adapt the third book, Tintin in America. The third book in the series becomes the final episode of the cartoon. The order they ran this series in is strange, while stories that directly follow the events of the ones that precede them (Such as "Red Rackham's Treasure" and "Prisoners of the Sun") are in their proper order, the rest of the adapted episodes are in a strange order. For example, because the first adapted adventure is "The Crab with the Golden Claws", Captain Haddock is introduced very early in the series, which makes sense because he is a main character afterwards. However, because of the shuffling of episodes, he just does not appear in some episodes, because there were eight comics prior to Haddock's introduction. This mostly becomes a problem with the placement of the story "Tintin and the Picaros", which was the last comic of the series, with the exception of "Tintin in Alph-Art". This story, feels like a finale, it brings a lot of our favourite characters together, puts them in one big plot, and pretty much closes the story on one of Tintin's rivals. In this series, "Tintin and the Picaros" makes up the twenty-first and twenty-second episodes of the series. Not even close to the final episode of the series.
That is another thing to mention, most of the episodes are two parters. With the exception of "Red Rackham's Treasure", "The Shooting Star", and "Tintin in America", every episode is split into two. That being said, these are rather long books for comics, most of the books are about sixty-two pages long, so it was probably more of a creative decision to put more of the original books into each episode as possible. All in all I'd say it was a good decision.
Disregarding the episode shuffling, most of the stories remain pretty accurate to the original comics. They do have some minor changes here and there, but very few things that alter the story significantly. You can find lists of all the changes online, but most of them seem to have been cut for time or to make the plot run a bit more smoothly. I think the 2011 movie made changes that made sense for the story it was trying to tell, it was most likely trying to be it's own Tintin story on some level. However, as these are trying to be more accurate retellings of the comics, the minimal changes work to its favour.
So, do I prefer the show or the movie? I think it really is going to depend on what you're in the mood for. I will say that on a technical level, the movie is better. I noticed some animation errors in the TV show, but overall I think it was animated well. Definitely has that 1980s feel to the animation. However, I did have some issues with the movie's plot, so if you want a more accurate depiction of these comics, I would have to recommend the show. Just a quick word of warning though, this cartoon was made in the 1990s, and was based off of comics that originated in the 1930s, they aren't exactly perfectly-PC by today's standards. That being said, they aren't as bad as you might think. One episode deals with a group of Roma, and Tintin and Haddock are remarkably kind to them, even giving them the benefit of the doubt when they're thought to have stolen an emerald. I don't think this series has aged too badly, but it has aged, kind of like the original DuckTales. If you can get past that, then I do recommend this series, and if your only experience with Tintin has been the 2011 movie, I'd say this is a good place to continue. Not a fantastic series by any means, but worth watching if it's available.
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