As Christmas approaches, so too do the launches of some the biggest blockbusters of 2011.  The long awaited Tintin movie is directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and voiced by Daniel Craig and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot). And Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. So who will win out of Tom and Tintin?

I directly compared searches for ‘tintin‘ and ‘mission impossible‘ to find out where Australians’ interests lie. The chart below shows that Aussies’ curiosity around the 3D cartoon Adventures of Tintin increased around 22nd October, the date the movie was launched in Brussels. Tintin activity has remained strong ever since, leading up to its Australian release next Monday.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol hasn’t seen the same prolonged interest – search activity around the film didn’t pick up until the end of November. However, there’s been a dramatic increase in interest in the action-packed blockbuster in the week of its Australian release, and Tom has tipped Tintin from the top. Looks like our mission, should we choose to accept it, will be to watch Ethan Hunt jump all guns blazing off the top of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building in Dubai. Let’s put this in perspective. The Hangover II was released in Australia on 26th May 2011, the follow up to the well received original. The movie broke box-office records, pulling in over over $105 million in its opening weekend.

Looking back over 2011, we see a huge peak for ‘hangover‘ related terms at the end of May/start of June, coinciding with the release of the film. We also see an increase in the last four weeks – that’s related to Taio Cruz’ song ‘Hangover‘ ; it’s number five in the Aria charts, was released initially via digital download, and has nothing to do with people indulging in silly season excess… Comparing the week before the release of both films, it looks like Australians are more interested in impossible missions than feeling seedy from a night of imbibing.

It will be interesting to see if search traffic can be directly related to sales of movie tickets – by next week, we’ll know the answer to this, and Tom Cruise will presumably be a few million dollars richer.

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