We could learn a lot about finding our life’s purpose from a boy detective and a woman who refused to let someone else define her. These are the palpable lessons of Tintin and Katniss, the protegonists at the centers of the book The Adventures of Tintin and The Hunger Games, respectively. What’s perhaps more subtle is what the movie versions of these stories teach us about creativity and the relentless pursuit of growth, transformation, and continuous improvement.
It would be easy to say that the animation of movies like Monsters Inc., Toy Story, or The Polar Express were the penultimate testament to the reach of the art. Many movie critics repeatedly made this declaration, as did many artists and engineers who work in the field. It would also be easy to say J K Rowling will always be the reigning queen of the young adult novel series. How could anyone ever create a story as compelling to young adults (and all adults for that matter!) as Harry Potter? These are simply just not goals worth having because they aren’t achievable. Many agents and publishers have criticized new and would-be authors for even attempting to create new young adult series for this very reason.
Steve Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and Suzanne Collins ignored the critics and pushed on into their own sense of creativity. The results? Spielberg and Jackson built an animated movie that frame by frame left viewers wondering if they were really watching an animated movie. There are moments when the animated quality of the film The Adventures of Tintin is clear, but for most of the time the art comes to life with such authenticity that I caught myself lost in the story as if it were a live action picture.
The Hunger Games just celebrated a stellar global opening weekend of $214.3 million, far more than any of the Harry Potter films. Its Friday-Saturday take was the third largest in Hollywood history in a month when blockbusters are typically not released. And like Harry Potter, surveys show that 56% of all movie goers this past weekend were 25 or older despite the fact that Collins wrote these books for young adults.
Katniss, Tintin, and the creative minds behind their adventures have shown us that there really is no limit to our creativity, to our abilities to generate new stories and ways of telling stories that bring an ever-wider audience into our embrace.
