Tintin (no spoilers)

I was having an interesting discussion the other day as to whether it was a bad thing that Tintin (the movie) had no female main characters.  Having read and re-read Tintin the comics a great deal when I was young (though not for years), I knew that there was very little room in the existing story for a main female role.  The entire series of books only has one memorable female character and, like most characters in Tintin books, she's a broadly drawn exaggeration of a creature.  For a female to go adventuring with Tintin, she would need to be wholly created and given some role in a plotline which never considered her.  I particularly would have hated a female character added purely to be the love interest.

Having seen the movie, I still don't think that it would have been a good idea to add a main female character (unless they gender-switched everyone, which would have been AWESOME), but the absence of females does underline what a strange, sexless creature Tintin is, running around with his pet, interested only in chasing whatever story has caught his curiosity.  The comparisons to Indiana Jones particularly underlines a certain lack of emotional resonance.  The growing friendship with Haddock works, and lets us see Haddock's development, but also gives us a particularly unconvincing scene where Tintin reacts to a set-back which reminded me so clearly that Tintin has little motive in this story.  He's only in this for the curiosity (and nice-chap-ness), and despite all the cool action, that starts to tell.

On the whole it was a fun movie, but it will never get anywhere near re-watch material for me.