Considering just how central Tintin was to growing up, and the contemptuous view I have always taken of people who either did not or could not appreciate Tintin the same way I (and a whole subculture) did, I thought I’d watch Spielberg’s Tintin film before anyone else. Before anyone’s irritating opinion was allowed space on the forbidding foyer of the Tintin lobe of my brain. Alas, that wasn’t to be. I watched it only today, over a week after it came to cinemas in the country. In the week since its release, I’d heard different things: about how it was downright awful (the Guardian piece on it was hugely entertaining in itself) to being just about ok. Someone else said it was a warm tribute to Tintin, and that any true fan would receive it with amused sensitivity and not brash disregard. It must be said that most Tintin fans, including me, have felt at some point or other, that Spielberg tinkering with the legend of Tintin smacked of an oaf fingering something of eternal beauty that could only be soiled with touch. That Tintin belonged on the page, unmoving, ageless, eerily sexless and pristine in his idealism. Anyone who wanted to transform him into a moving, talking figure risked destroying the collective imaginations of millions of his fans — who imagined his voice a certain way, the sound effects another. What Spielberg was doing was walking a thin line. As someone who didn’t grow up reading Tintin, Spielberg says he was conscious of the great task he had signed up for. It had to be treated with utter sensitivity, and almost surgical regard for what was sacred: most of it subliminal and inexplicable, yet something that any Tintin fan would understand. I decided that I had to watch the film with a clean slate. On the one hand, I was an avowed Tintin fan — one who had pilgrimaged to Brussels to pay homage. So here’s the list of ten things I loved, and ten things I hated about Spielberg’s Tintin film:

LOVED:

1. Background score: Full of pregnant intrigue and darkness, it fit just right. Choosing the music, in my mind, was one of the most important things — the books only have the characters’ voices. Music in a film would a distraction no matter what you did with it. The score they created worked nicely.

2. Tintin’s apartment: It was just the way I imagined it. It made the small snatches of apartment one sees in Unicorn come completely alive. The chest of drawers, the side table, the red armchair.

3. Title sequence: Everyone says this, and there’s a reason. You’ll have to watch it to know why. Spectacular.

4. Ship battle: The ship battle was stunning. It made one of the most dramatic flash-backs in the Tintin series truly rivetting.

5. Zachary as a villain worked well. Transforming a minor character from the books into the central antagonist with an ancestry going back to Francis Haddock’s arch rival was clever and executed well. It could have been trite and forced, but it worked. I was skeptical when I realised where Spielberg/Jackson were going with Zachary, but I think they pulled it off.

1. Haddock’s accent: I’d like the find the idiot who decided to give the Captain a Scottish accent. Unforgivable.

2. Exclamations: The Great Snakes! and Blistering Barnacles! were out of place and sounded foolish. Such stuff, while a core part of the Tintin experience, clearly belongs only on the printed page. Haddock’s Troglodytes! from the capsized boat in that boozy Scottish accent was like a rusted knife in the gut.

3. Choice of story: I wish Spielberg had chosen a different album to begin his films with. The Secret of the Unicorn/Red Rackham’s Treasure are brilliant, but I’d probably have chosen Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun to start. The stuff borrowed from The Crab With The Golden Claws were, to my mind, a criminal waste — I think Crab is a separate film altogether, and hopefully a better one. Throwing Castafiore into the mix was a mistake.

4. Alan wasted!: Villain Alan was completely wasted! Devious ship first mate to Captain Haddock, Alan is a personal favourite character (he is outstanding in Flight 714).

5. Red Rackham's Treasure? The end of this film was the end of Red Rackham's Treasure, with a nudge-nudge comment about more treasure in the seas, which IS Red Rackham's Treasure. WTF. I'm having minor nightmares about which storylines Spielberg will mash into Rackham. Please. Not Red Sea Sharks. That's sacred territory. Don't go there, Mr S.