Not A Rollercoaster. A Bullet Train.
There's one distinct way adapting a comic to film differs from other forms of adaptation (plays, novels, short stories, etc.). Namely comics have action that moves at the speed of the reader. When reading say, a novel, the events happen with a certain rhythm, and at a certain time span decided by the author; whether an author devotes 5 words or 50 words to the events of a minute, it's still the events of one minute. Not so with comics. With comics, the action happens between the panels and as such could happen in slow-motion, or the blink of an eye, depending on how the reader perceives that action to be happening.
The reason I mention this is that that gets at the heart of the flaw in The Adventures of Tintin. Here we have a beloved character brought to the screen by two masters of cinema - Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson. It's great, because it's non-stop action! It's also terrible - because it's non-stop action. Think about a comic strip - one that might be in the Sunday funnies of a newspaper. You basically have about four or five panels that tell an installment of a story, and they have to grab the readers' attention, so at least a few of, if not all, the panels feature action. Great, because you can read it at your own speed - and it's going to be a whole week before the next action 'scene'. Now imagine all those strips strung together end-to-end as one non-stop action adventure strip... O.K., still not terrible, you can still read and imagine events taking less or more time. Now imagine all those comic strips' scenes strung end-to-end passing by at a regular speed: that is The Adventures of Tintin.
I liked it because it was fun and rollicking, but I also didn't like it because there is never any silence; no moments of reflection, no tender moments, or time to absorb anything meaningful - just on from one crazy 'stunt' or action sequence to the next. It wasn't a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, it was a bullet train speeding from first frame to last with the viewer just strapped in for the ride. Too bad - it could have been so much more.
