The title sequence is superb. Done along 60s retro style lines (think Catch Me If You Can), it takes in the entire canon of Tintin stories, blending them seamlessly and elegantly. Anyone acquainted with Tintin would have spotted their favourite moment, and newcomers could have marvelled at the breadth of Hergé’s imagination.

In a cruel twist, this perfection is responsible for the undoing of the entire movie. For whilst an intro lends itself to montage, two-hour long films rarely do. Spielberg has ruined Tintin.

Gone is the subtle humour of the books, gone have the carefully crafted characters. Worst of all, gone has the story. The Secret of the Unicorn, on which the movie is generously based, has kidnapping, car chases, door-step shootings, gunfights, leaps of intuition, humour and a fight to the death with a pirate on the historical high seas.

But this evidently wasn’t enough for writers Stephen Moffat (Sherlock, Dr Who) and Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz et al), who take the plot and then casually throw it out the window.

Instead, they shamelessly pilfer at least six other books to satisfy Spielberg’s insatiable need for action, forcing them together in an ugly polyamorous marriage, tying the knot with some truly terrible dialogue. Not content with bastardization, the two rewrite a minor character (who appears for all of two pages) as a plotting, viscious super-villain.

Such a glut of Tintin memorabilia was horrifying, but gripping: I sat there wondering which story would crop up next on the Generation Game conveyor belt: will it be the fluffy toy? No, its Land of Black Gold, and now The Calculus Affair.

To give Spielberg some credit, it was very pretty. Hergé’s pastel palette is retained to great effect, and a few scene-changes were a joy. But 3D film doesn’t bring characters to life on its own. Hergé did that effortlessly and beautifully – I’d go and read those if I were you.