Loved the books as a child, the movie pays a fitting tribute

Rating: 9/10 (28 December 2011)

I grew up reading various of the Tintin books as I could find them from our school library. Leading up to this movie coming out, I decided to read the books in chronological order. That said, I found this movie was remarkably close to the books, taking such a large amount of material direct from the stories. In many cases, I knew the scenes frame-by-frame before they came on the screen. In modern Hollywood, where many classic comic books have gone way off base (I think of the X-men and Batman movies, for example), I believe this is the most accurate depiction of a comic I have seen yet. Sure, they replaced Herge's basically nameless bad guy (an art collector) with someone who has more vested interest in the story and they added several stunts that were unrelated to the books (the much maligned crane fight). Sure, they also cut most of the exploration for Red Rackham's treasure, but it would have been unnecessary and the end seems to indicate they may still pursue it in a sequel. But, this is still very accurate and very similar to the writing of Herge. The majority of complaints that I have read seem to surround characters not having enough background and the plot not being very clear, but even that is authentic to Herge. Many of the Tintin books start by Tintin being shot at, kidnapped, attacked or something for no apparent reason. The story just jumps from item-to-item as Tintin discovers the plot and explains it to Snowy, Haddock, etc. There's not a lot of background, Tintin sees a sinister plot and he pursues the bad guys. If you downgraded the movie because of that, you did not know enough about this story going in. I would like to see future adaptations have this same level of authenticity.