Review of The Adventures of Tintin (2011) by Colombogermano — 30 Mar 2016

The Adventures of Tintin is a good technical achievement. As a statement of the work of Herge and his characters and motivations, it fails.

If you are a Tintin fan, I mean, of the books, you will a disappointed as how some characters are treated in this movie, even the villain. Spielberg and Jackson take way too many liberties to accommodate the story to their own view.

The secret of the Unicorn, the book this movie is supposed to be based on, is filled with detective work by Tintin, the enemy and its motivations is not clear until the last third of the story. In the movie, Sakharine is the villan and some kind of reincarnated Rackham the Red. That is way too far and fantastic from the plot of the book. While Tintin, as a character, is a perfect ideal of righteousness in the books, Herge never portrayed his adventures as something supernatural. Sakharine, in the book is just a collector; yes, in the beginning he is a suspect, but nothing more. Why deviating so far from the original story is beyond me.

Furthermore, it seems that the directors wanted to put so much of Tintin of other books that it feels distorted. If you are not familiar with Tintin books, maybe you will be fine with this.

All in all, the story is loosely told, without the soul of Tintin. Animations are good and CGI well used. But for a movie that has the name of Tintin on it, is disappoints.