Tintin Forums

I watched the Belvision version of Prisoners of the Sun last night and something about it struck me as rather amusing. When Tintin, the Captain, the Thom(p)sons, and Zorrino are on a canoe in the jungle, they are attacked by a group of crocodiles, and Tintin 'leads the charge' (so to speak) as they all start shooting (and killing) a number of crocs. Then when they reach the shore the Captain is about to shoot another one when Tintin stops him and says, get this. 'we need to save our bullets' (or words to that effect).
I just found it amusing, in the light of the brutal treatment of animals in the original versions of Congo, that Tintin would wait until AFTER the entire crocodile population of the Andes was wiped out before telling the Captain to take it easy on the ammo.

In the Congo, Tintin was killing mainly for sport, but in the Andes he and his companions had lost the lamas after the mountain avalanche along with their provisions and thus had to rely on hunting for food. It thus makes sense to save bullets and only use them for food and emergencies like keeping the crocs away from their boat.

I'm more familiar with the original book version of events which sounds very similar. You're making it sound as if Tintin and co. were on a crocodile killing frenzy for fun, but all they were doing was protecting themselves from being eaten while they crossed the river. As it was, Tintin stopped the Captain from killing the crocs out of malice which would have been a waste of ammo.

I checked out the film, and the last croc to be shot by Haddock comes up the bank to attack them, so not sure why Tintin said what he did.

In all I counted 15 crocs shot by Tintin and Haddock.

There was a quite a long scene of Haddock shooting but yet appearing to miss a croc that was coming towards the boat. One croc was bashed about the head by one of the Thompson Twins using his cane.

So a possible 16 croc deaths in all. Mind you you only see roughly 11 crocs get into the water.

I lost count of the amount of shots they took.

On another note I found Zorrino's song a bit odd.

Is it just my posts or do the mods on this site edit every post?

Moderator Note: No – lots of posts are edited, for length, spelling, punctuation, formatting, etc. (which is why we retain the right to do so when you sign up for the forums), but especially when they make reference to where you found an unauthorized copy of a film on-line, which is a strict no-no under posting rules here; it seemed to be quicker to simply regard it as a mistake rather than a deliberate flouting of the forum guide-lines, and to re-jig your post so as not to draw attention to the error. However, if you'd prefer an official warning...? ;-)

Other than that, it was a very interesting post, and deserved the extra space and clarity that putting it into paragraphs allowed - it's only to make the reading experience easier!

The Tintinologist Team

I notice that Tintin becomes far more nature aware and compassionate - probably as Herge did also in a world becoming more nature conservative. As in the Congo, Tintin kills for sport, which is so different to him in the Picaros, for example, where he returns the electric eel into the pond after having slipped down haddock's shirt.I agree with mct16, that the croc situation was an emergancy and their lives were in danger. They did not kill needlessly, otherwise they would have shot the bear as well ... but didnt.