Tintin Forums

Moderator Note: This thread has been spun off from the main general discussion of the new movie so that you can discuss the possible plot of the film.

Doing it here will mean that those who wish to wait to see the film without knowing about the plot won't have to see details which might spoil a surprise for them, as they can avoid this thread.

So please keep your story theories and ideas to this thread, and keep the original one for non-spoiler material!

The International Trailer is here and the U.S. Trailer is here.

The Happy Tintinologist Team

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Good looking trailer, thanks for the link Rianna Lauren.

Indeed looks like they've altered the plot somewhat. Few guesses:

Opium smuggling from Crab has been left out. Instead Tintin finds one or two Unicorns by himself (one from an attic somewhere) and figures one of them must belong to a descendant of de Hadoque. Tintin then goes in search for one and finds Haddock (possibly after already visiting the attic of his flat) on Karaboudjan.

Man with Allan looks very much like Sakharine. I'd suppose he's the main villain and Allan is working for him? Sakharine is probably a descendant of Red Rackham.

Dupondts/Thom(p)sons are introduced as they were in Cigars: not knowing Tintin and suspecting him. The guy one of them is chasing is the pickpocket/wallet collector.

Maybe, though I wouldn't necessarily assume that he finds the one in the attic before he finds the one in the street market just because that's the order those scenes come in the trailer. Trailers like this one are often made by re-editing a fast-cut montage of scenes to give an exciting impression, without any regard for the order they come in the actual movie.


He does look a bit like Sakharine, but my guess is that this man may be a thinned down "redraw" of Ben Salaad, who appears in the cast list we've seen for the film (if I'm remembering that correctly). My completely speculative guess is that he's been made the overall baddie-mastermind of the Unicorn plot as well as the Crab plot.

On the subject of the two books, it looks as if they're really mashing up elements of the Crab and the Unicorn into one coherent new story, rather than having a linear progression of the Crab into the Unicorn.

Also, that cabin where Tintin and Snowy are fighting off the baddie with the gun looks a lot like Tintin's radio-officer's cabin from Land of Black Gold. (If you pause the trailer there and look at the desk and the radio equipment, you'll see what I mean.) This, combined with that Mecanno kit of the red Jeep we've seen advertised, makes me think the movie might be incorporating quite a bit from Black Gold as well.

As others have said, there's no hint in this trailer of Calculus and his shark sub, nor of any Caribbean treasure hunt at all. Maybe the Unicorn in the film will have been wrecked off the coast of North Africa. That said, the movie poster with Tintin walking on a big globe ( a nice reference to one of Hergé's own publicity drawings) does suggest a proper globe-trotting adventure, rather than a film set only in Belgium and Morocco, so there may be a whole range of locations and plot threads that haven't been included in this trailer.

I've had so many thoughts about the possible movie plot. This thread is perfectly what I need. 8D

So it's possible that the Crabs storyline doesn't happen straight before Unicorn, but they were both fully blended in? May be a creative success, may be a way-off-from-the-canon disaster. I hope they don't mess it up too much, but, I have faith in Spielberg and Jackson.

I realized the scene with the Unicorn sailing by was at the sea... in a desert? Must be part of the blending in. Perhaps Haddock was telling the flashback while they were stranded in the desert?

I'm very intrigued with how they will introduce the Marlinspike Hall to us. I know they've only shown one part of it, but the dark, mysterious portrayal of it gets me.

As far as I remember, we haven't heard anything about the casting of the Bird Brothers. I was convinced back then that they were not going to be in the movie, until I saw the scene where Barnaby lies unconscious and a blue car zooms away. Unless that wasn't the Bird Brothers who shot him. That'll be a major plot change.

I really don't think they're leaving out the opium smuggling. We have an Omar Ben Salaad for the movie.

I do find the Sakharine-meets-Allan scene in the trailer rather surprising. It's the most major plot change they've let us seen in the trailer so far. But Sakharine was a good guy in the album, wasn't he? They can't just give him an evil profile like that, can they?

And I was kind of hoping that they introduce the Thompsons as friends to Tintin already, but I guess that's not too much of a deal, as long as they are friends with each other in the end.

Maybe Calculus isn't going to appear in the movie at all. We have an actress announced for the lady in the phonebox in the Unicorn storyline but not him. I don't know how much portion of Red Rackham's Treasure storyline they can put in without him - that is, if we're getting those portions at all.

EDIT:
Oh gosh, yes! Of course! Allan DID work for Salaad in the albums, right? How come I didn't think of that before?

Interesting that the ads in the Thompsons' newspaper have prices in dollars.

This is what I noticed, and was left wondering to myself if it counted as a spoiler, so I'll dive in and say that the paper is particularly interesting as an indicator of approach used in the film.

The prices are indeed in dollars, but the content is in a curious mixture of French and English - there are sections in French (an obituary, I think), adverts in English but for Belgian shops, and an advert for milk in French and English (the product is in French, but it's a two for the price of one offer in English), and there's something about activities in Brussels written in English.

My guess is that they are establishing a Tintiniverse, which sort of exists not in a real Belgium, or indeed in a re-located England/ Marlinspike Hall or America/ Hudson Manor: it's a side-step away from our world, in which a composite Tintin-land occupies a space similar to our Belgium, but in which utilizes a melange of bits which might be familiar to people from all over the place.

If carried through well, this could be a nice touch!

I took that to be a visual recreation of page 18 of Crab where Tintin & Haddock overpower the crew of the Karaboudjan & escape in the lifeboat, but thinking further I wonder whether Tintin will use a different excuse to be on the ship, such as applying for a position as radio officer?

My guess is if Haddock is telling the Unicorn story whilst in the desert, the writers could be looking to use the mirages to physically engage Tintin with the action, hence the ship rolling over the sand dunes & turning to waves.

My thoughts exactly.


Me neither, especially as Tintin recognises the ship as Unicorn. Either he's bought one from the market already (pickpocket/wallet collector seems to be in the movie so probably), or he's read/heard about it from somewhere. Not from Haddock I'm almost sure, he'd be with Tintin if that was the case.


Hadn't noticed the contents of the newspaper at all, well spotted! And I hope Tintiniverse will be the setting. Personally I'd be happier if Tintin spoke French but can accept English. If Tintin lived in England or America, I'd be irate. And I'd suppose the Belgian elements must be part of the fascination for English and American fans as well?



That's interesting indeed. Leaving Calculus & shark sub completely out is not an option I presume? If they're going to appear at some point, it's either in the next film, or then the producers have managed to keep his appearance in this film a secret.

I hope for latter, though I'm not sure if that would be at all possible nowadays. Maybe with some creative pr, or shall I say incomplete information? According to http://www.imdb.com/ the next movie is currently titled The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun, aka "The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure". Can't be both, so which one is it? Third film is yet unnamed.

Also, apart from Calculus, Sakharine is missing from the cast list for the Unicorn. I still maintain that the man in the trailer looks like Sakharine. He wasn't a baddie in the book, but not much was told about him. Though Balthazar's suggestion that he could be Ben Salaad is plausible. We'll see.

If this doesn't actually come to pass now, I'll be bitterly disappointed...! What a fantastic image!!


Not only would I not rely on the chronology of the trailer, most of the dialogue actually comes as voice over, without showing lip-synching, so I wouldn't even guarantee we hear the lines with the images they are meant to be with.

Not having the Professor in the first movie would be a pity, as many will know I have always had a soft spot for the antics of our favourite academic, but perhaps he is being saved as treat for a later movie, so he can be introduced properly.

I for one can appreciate this, as while it would be nice for those in the know if he appeared, perhaps it was just getting too hard to introduce yet another main character without bogging down the pace of the film.

Getting him in at the start of a Prisoners film would possibly allow a sequence with the shark sub to finish off the first adventure, and then have him in place for shenanigans with the bracelet and his kidnapping. Or perhaps he'll be introduced as being involved with the other scientists and academics of the expedition?

Or maybe they are saving him for his own movie franchise (like Captain America and Iron Man) and then they will do a team-up movie with him and the rest of the gang, like Marvel's The Avengers... ;-)

This has also made me think that if a drawn Inca mummy scooting about in the night is scary enough on paper, what is Rascar Capac going to be like in HD fully-rendered 3D CGI...???

True. Difficult to put my finger on the exact reason, but the general feeling of the scene is that Tintin knows what he's looking for. Plus I'd say that accidentally finding the ship from the attic while fetching mittens for the winter wouldn't be the most exciting scriptwriting... (or maybe it would be the cleverest ever, I'd be fooled...)

As for Calculus, maybe it's possible to have the treasure hunt/shark sub sequence at the start of the Prisoners, but I can't think of a solution that could sew those adventures together seamlessly. And original introduction of Calculus is very funny and effective, not exactly burdening for the reader (or film goer).

But then again mr. Spielberg has graduated from film school and has shown some early promise of talent, so maybe we'll just have to trust him, he probably has some ideas...

According to this article, Omar Ben Salaad is the bad guy boss who owns Marlinspike. So it is most likely that he was after the treasure and he was the one who was with Allan in the trailer and said, "How could you let them escape?"

There goes the Bird Brothers. ;_;