Disappointing for one reason!

Rating: 5/10 (19 April 2017)

Since seeing the movie, there has been one thing that has continually nagged at me about Spielberg's treatment of Tintin. I have loved Tintin books for around 40 years so you have to bear in mind this is written from a long loved Tintin Fan's perspective. Interestingly, I have also long loved Spielberg's movies with one of my favourites being his first, the haunting masterpiece, Duel. So what did Spielberg get so wrong with the movie? To answer this you have look at what is the book series appeal. It is 3 things. The story lines/scripts, the Ligne claire artwork and the character design. It is the character design that Spielberg fails at for one reason only. In the books, every character, without exception, has a cuteness about them. Every character from the main cast to the most evil villain has a cuteness about their face. Admittedly this cuteness did decrease with the later books(compare Dr Ridgewell from Broken Ear to the same in Picaros)however they were still cute characters. In the movie, it is like Spielberg has gone out of his way to make a lot of the characters ugly and grotesque. The one's that especially come to mind are Haddock and the Thompsons. Compared to their book counterparts they are ugly and command no compassion or empathy especially when in the books their cuteness offsets their character's short comings. Tintin only just escapes the ugly and grotesque label however compared to the book, he is still a lot harsher. This can also be attributed to the dead eyes that Spielberg did not get right. Additionally the storyline and splitting up of story elements was also disappointing but could have been forgiven if the characters had not been destroyed.