Tintin and Snowy do some research in the upcoming 'The Adventures Of Tintin'

Credit: Paramount/Nickelodeon

Uhhhh… if you still need convincing after this one, then you might as well just decide you're not seeing "The Adventures Of Tintin: Secret Of The Unicorn" at all, because this trailer has me positively giddy.

As I've said before, the entire twenty years I've lived in Los Angeles, I've been hearing rumors of a Steven Spielberg "Tintin" film.  This has been one of the big guiding passions for him, and for many American audiences, that probably seems puzzling since they don't know the character.

But over the years, he's found himself repeatedly frustrated by those attempts, and I think part of it has been trying to figure out a way to make the sort of film he wants to make, an athletic adventure film set in an international landscape like the one that Herge created in his books, while still maintaining the stylistic approach that drew him to the material in the first place.

I know that the entire subject of performance capture is almost as controversial as the subject of 3D these days, and "Tintin" appears to have embraced both things with open arms.  I don't see any other way Spielberg could have done this, though.  And as much as I liked the teaser trailer where we got our first look at the world, I LOVE this new trailer.  This is the Tintin I read when I was growing up, and the exaggerated nature of the action is something that would have been almost impossible to make work in live-action, especially if making a film for younger audiences as well as older.  By pushing everything one degree past cartoony, there's a kick to the action, and the characters here look exactly like the characters that have delighted audiences around the world for so long now.

This is just one of the new trailers we'll be seeing this week, and I'm sure more people are anticipating the one we'll see for "The Dark Knight Rises," but this excites me precisely because of what it promises.  I'm not remotely worried about this one now, and I look forward to the US release date.  It makes sense that we get it after much of the rest of the world, but I hope America surprises everyone by finally embracing this character who has been a cult favorite here for so long.  The script is by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, currently rocking the geek world with "Attack The Block," as well as Stephen Moffat, whose "Sherlock" and "Doctor Who" work has been so enjoyable the last few years, and the cast includes Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Daniel Craig, and Jamie Bell as Tintin.  I'll be honest... I can't wait.

"The Adventures Of Tintin: Secret Of The Unicorn" opens December 23, 2011.