So, Tintin... (No real spoilers in this review)

[smurasaki]

You know the saying that once you've seen something, you can't ever unsee it?  Well, I've seen the lack of women in adventure movies, and I can't unsee it.

Tintin was fun, once I got past the slightly uncanny valley animation.  I still think a slightly more cartoony style would've been better, since, even once I stopped being a little off put by it

Comments

[skjam]

Yeah, Madame Castafiore is the only female character of any importance in the Tintin canon, and yes, she is mostly used for humor in the original comics. Herge very deliberately excluded female characters around Tintin's age, because he did not want even a hint of romance in the stories. So in this very limited circumstance, adding an important female character to have an important female character really would be adaptation decay.

Since I'd read many of the original comics and learned about Herge's life, I knew this going in, so it wasn't as big a deal for me.

Non-white characters: Herge was very progressive...for the 1940s, but only after his first couple of books were total racefail, and he got called on it.

[smurasaki]

Part of me wants to snarkily respond "So include a lesbian." I know, it would still be adaptation decay (though it would preserve the lack of romance). But maybe this is a case of something that shouldn't have been adapted. My irritation isn't really at Herge, who was writing in very much not now, but at the fact that Hollywood decided we needed yet another adventure story with no women. Because there are so very few of those.

And Hollywood spends plenty of time turning them out all on their own. Maybe its time to look for adventure stories with women and adapt those. Or make them up.

[skjam]

With any luck, "Brave" will do well.

[smurasaki]

I hope so.

I do have to say that, if adventure movies normally represented men and women in equivalent numbers, the occasional all or mostly guy movie wouldn't bother me. It's that they don't that it does.

[aesmael]

I actually found myself relieved there were no women in the film, because that meant there was no shoe-horned romance or other woman-related fail in it. (although they still managed to have Captain Haddock in a nightgown for laughs for 30 seconds, worst part of the whole movie ~.~)

But the situation is pretty dire when the audience is actively relieved at an absence of women because of how badly they get presented. While I'm quite fine with this specific film being woman-free, and wouldn't want it otherwise, this ought to be an exception.

(Tintin could have been a woman, and nothing else changed and that would go pretty well I think. except with most fans presumably.)