The Adventures of Tintin was a comic series created in 1929 by Belgium cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name, Hergé. The story of the young Belgian reporter and adventurer travelling the world with his faithful dog Snowy and several other colorful characters was a name that, while not as infamous in comic strip history as names like Garfield and Peanuts, proved to be one of the most successful European comics in the 20th Century, which led to several outings in different media forms like radio, TV, theatre, film, etc, and getting the attention of several famous movie-makers, specifically Steven Spielberg. Being a fan of Hergé’s work and with Raiders of the Lost Ark being compared to Tintin by a critic at the time, this led to him being gifted the film rights in 1984 after Hergé’s death. The film would go through a long development hell lasting until 2011 when Paramount, along with their subsidiary Nickelodeon Movies, offered to produce the movie which finally led to its release. It proved to be commercial successful and got pretty positive reviews, yet no one really remembers it after all these years, and unfortunately there’s a pretty good reason why. Young journalist Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) purchases a miniature model ship, but soon discovers that this has put him on the hit list of Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (voiced by Daniel Craig), a ship collector who seems to want the model to find a hidden message that will lead to buried treasure. After being kidnapped for the information, Tintin, his dog snowy and a drunk ship captain called Archibald Haddock (voiced by Andy Serkis) have to discover the mystery behind the hidden treasure before Sakharine finds it first. Since the sequel is still in development hell to this day, its safe to say that Tintin won’t make a comeback anytime soon, and this movie didn’t do much to get newcomers wanting more in the first place.

The story seems to splice together elements from two Tintin stories, The Crab with the Golden Claws and The Secret of the Unicorn. Both of these stories tie into each other enough that combining them into a feature length film isn’t a terrible idea as focusing solely on one would have resulted in a lot of needless padding to stretch it to a correct running time. Unfortunately, the biggest plot grievance with the movie isn’t with how its portrayed, but rather what its portraying. The source material is incredibly generic for the genre its attached to, with mysteries and adventures so generic and simplistic that it truly does feel like it existed in the early 30s. This was acceptable during its creation not just because of the time period, but also because Hergé wrote Tintin during the Nazi regime; a time of repression and censorship. It wouldn’t have been allowed to be creative and adventurously exciting, so its material was incredibly vanilla and kept remarkably safe. When this franchise is reintroduced in 2011, it needed some updates to expand upon its bare-bones concepts. Adventure stories were done a lot more interesting after this point, so it needed something to give it its own identity and this didn’t come through with its ridiculously generic plot, characters, and writing. Since Spielberg had a lot of love for Hergé work, it makes sense to want to keep true to the comics roots, but other comic characters like Garfield and Peanuts have stayed relevant throughout the years because they adapted to the new time period; not losing their true spirit (outside of an awkward Garfield outing starring Bill Murray), and never felt outdated and lost in a new time period, this movie does.

Transitioning the story from the page to the screen would work fine enough despite the needed update but bringing these character designs to cinema would prove a bit more difficult. The designs of the characters work nicely within a 2D comic-stripe style environment with their exaggerated facial features and simple dot eyes, but within the world of live action, it wouldn’t be as smooth. The characters themselves are treated like how typical comic stripe characters are; they have pretty basic personalities that aren’t meant for long-length stories or any strong level of emotional depth, just faces that exists to be models for these vignette style stories to suck people into. Because of this, none of the characters are interesting enough to hold a movie even for only an hour and a half, mainly because none of the characters were written like movie characters. For example, Tintin is an awful lead character because he’s overly perfect. He never faces any real trouble, he never goes through an arc, he always knows what to do, and he never feels like he’s in danger so its hard to stay invested in him. He’s like a younger Sherlock Holmes if you remove any flaws or characteristics from him that make him distinct. He’s just boring to watch and none of the other side characters are engaging enough to make up for it, despite them existing as nothing but jokes. The villain is incredibly stock, and its pretty bad when the dog is the most interesting player in this movie. The sad thing is that the voice cast for the movie is actually pretty good and features some pretty enjoyably fun people; Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Daniel Craig, the movie wasn’t without talent and even to its credit, the chemistry the actors have when bouncing off each other is pretty decent (mainly between Serkis, Bell, Frost and Pegg).

One of the key visual distinctions this movie has is its 3D motion-capture style visuals, taking place completely in a CG environment. This is in itself an extension of the original concept as the models of the characters are created to look realistic while still featuring those specific facial oddities that helped them stand out a bit more. This choice in style always feels like its both a pro and a con for the movie. The pro is that it can lead to some pleasant looking imagery; the backgrounds look nice, colorful and have a slight realness to them, the character designs have a bit of the uncanny valley but it’s a decent enough transition, and it has enough of a balance between reality and fiction that it can feature goofy antics while also trying to be realistic. With that said, the mishandling of tones makes it feel like it was a style settled because it wouldn’t fit into the other extremes; the movie isn’t silly and cartoonishly obvious enough to be straight-forward live action, but it eventually features some crazy situations which wouldn’t have worked in live-action either. It felt like this was what was chosen so they could feature parts of both elements, but it damages the film’s identity and tone, never feeling like it exists in a real world or a cartoon world. The first half is largely boring and presented in a pretty down-to-earth way, but the climax of the movie features a chaotic chase scene lifted right out of an Uncharted game, and crane fencing which definitely helps give the movie more personality, but doesn’t excuse the blandness of the earlier scenes. The camera work is always super obsessed with moving in moments where it isn’t required. This movie had a ton of famous directors attached to it; Peter Jackson, Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron, Peter Fincher, Guillermo-del Toro, Stephen Daldry, and each one felt a need to include something important to the project. The frantic camera work feels fine in the action and leads to some good angles but feels intrusive and pandering in the quiet moments; feeling like its afraid to lose the kids attention so it never lets a moment just sit. The writing for the movie is also pretty generic and safe, despite feeling like a comedy aimed towards kids, and having Edgar Wright attached to your movie’s writing team feels like a massive waste. Once and a while, a visual gag can work but otherwise no laughs all around.

The Adventures of Tintin feels like it produced exactly what the director wanted to deliver; it feels like it captures the spirit and pace of what the original Tintin comics stood for. The problem is that those stories are ages old now and would require a update to effectively exist in the new era. Keeping it a timeless tale of adventuring is good and wanting represent the work of someone Spielberg knew and liked in life is nice, but other comic stripes and even other adventuring stories have updated themselves to exist in the 21st century without having to lose their timeless edge. Its hard to say that Tintin would even work as a movie franchise nowadays, but the pieces are all here to make one work. The cast is good, the visuals are a bit bland but work fine for the required look, the director is clearly good at this style of movie and another comic stripe icon becoming a famous name to young children would be a nice new addition. The movie is watchable, but don’t expect it to leave an impact on them in any way. When your catchphrase for your main character is ‘’Great Snakes!’’, maybe its time to rethink some things.