FAQ

The Adventures of Tintin is an adaptation of the Belgian comic book series The Adventures of Tintin created by the Belgian artist Georges Rémi, who wrote under the pen name of Hergé. Specifically, it's based on three particular entries in the series: The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham's Treasure. Steven Spielberg had planned on doing an adaptation of the Tintin series in the early 1980s, as both he and Hergé were fans of each others' work. After the death of Hergé, however, the project fell out of development until it was recently revived. The script was co-written by British screenwriters Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish.

Many had expected from the trailers that both parts of the treasure hunt tale, "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure" respectively, would be covered in the film. Once the film was out, however, this quite obviously turned out to be false. "Red Rackham's Treasure" is not in this film and, since professor Calculus is first introduced in that half of the tale, he fittingly doesn't appear. It then stands to reason that he will make an appearance in a sequel, should there be one. The film is actually a combination of "Crab with the Golden Claws" and "The Secret of the Unicorn", especially since the film depicts Tintin and Haddock's first encounter. Possibly the only scene taken from "Red Rackham's Treasure" is the ending, when they do find the actual treasure in its location.

The original Tintin comic series spanned the years 1929 to 1976. While most of the series has aged well, some of the earlier entries in the series (specifically Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America) might appear controversial to modern audiences, due to stereotyped portrayals of other cultures. However, these depictions were not supposed to be intentionally malicious, but were rather the result of the cultural values at the time of their creation. The Tintin comics actually became well known for their accurate and tolerant portrayals of other cultures. During the creation of the fifth comic in the series The Blue Lotus, Hergé met a Chinese man named Zhang Chongren with whom he became lifelong friends. Because of this friendship, Hergé decide that from then on, the creation of all the Tintin comics would involve meticulous research into creating accurate depictions of other cultures.

No, there's nothing after the credits.

In the beginning of the movie, a newspaper stating that Tintin uncovered a tribe of gangsters in Africa has the date Wednesday, January 29th, 1930. The book on which the movie is based places the story in 1943. Right after the agent is killed at Tintin's frontdoor, we see some Citroën 2CV's parked outside, and when Tintin looks at the bloodstained newspaper, we see it is dated December 12th, 1944, but the 2CV is produced between 1948 and 1990. When the detectives leave Tintin's place, you see a yellow Renault 4cv parked at the other side of the street. This car was first introduced at the 33rd Paris Motor Show on October 3rd, 1946. In The Art of The Adventures of Tintin, a book which chronicles the making of the film, Weta Digital VFX Art Director Kim Sinclair was quoted: It was decided to set the film in 1949 but we cheated a little because no new cars were being developed during the war. We really wanted to use vehicles like 2CV Citroëns and all the cool cars seen in the original books. So the year 1953 became the absolute cut off point for objects and vehicles. Past 1953 and it starts looking like the 1950s and not like the source books anymore.

No. In the original book Sakharine is a mysterious—but harmless—model ship collector who persistently irritates Tintin by trying to buy the Unicorn model off of him. The Bird Brothers were Tintin's enemies in the original story.

Yes and no. While Haddock was an alcoholic in the original book, he was much more violent and quite scary when he got drunk. At one point he even broke a bottle over Tintin's head. In the film his alcoholism is toned down greatly, becoming more comic than violent.