The 2011 film "The Adventures of Tintin" is an animated film based on the long-running Belgian comic strip The Adventures of Tintin by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The comic series first appeared in a Belgian newspaper in 1929 and has become well-known all over Europe, but not in the United States. Tintin is a young newspaper reporter who gets into all kinds of adventures. The film is based on one particular adventure, The Secret of the Unicorn, published in 1943. The story is about Tintin and a sea captain searching for treasure that the captain's seventeenth century ancestor dumped into the ocean to keep pirates from getting it. The search takes Tintin and the captain to various exotic locations. The pair finally find part of the treasure, a container of gold coins and jewels.

Tintin (Jamie Bell) lives in a Brussels, Belgium apartment with a white dog, Snowy, and a Siamese cat. Snowy accompanies Tintin just about everywhere and sometimes gets him out of trouble. Tintin visits a local market where he is entranced by the model of the sailing ship Unicorn. He purchases the ship for one pound (in Belgium) and is immediately approached by a man named Barnaby.

Barnaby offers to buy the ship but Tintin refuses. Another man, Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig) approaches Tintin.

Tintin rejects this offer and takes the ship to his apartment where he pulls out a book and reads about the actual seventeenth century ship.

Sakharine sends men to search Tintin's apartment. They steal the ship but do not find a piece of paper which fell out of the ship model. Tintin reads the paper which describes three brothers named Haddock who ran a shipping company in the seventeenth century. Tintin learns that there are three ship models all containing clues to the location of the treasure. Besides Tintin's ship Sakharine has his own ship and the Sultan of Bagghar has the third.

Snowy rides a car. Tintin is eventually captured by Sakharine's men who put him on a cargo ship, the Karaboudjan. Sakharine's men have locked the Karaboudjan's captain, also named Haddock, in his cabin.

Captain Haddock is a descendant of the Unicorn's captain but has forgotten the details of the treasure story due to drinking. Tintin manages to get the captain off the ship and into a lifeboat.

They capture an airplane and Tintin flies it towards Bhaggar but it crashes in the desert. The two walk to the city and Captain Haddock remembers some of his ancestor's story. The ancestor, Captain Sir Francis Haddock, is sailing his ship which is attacked by pirates led by Red Rackham, Sakharine's ancestor, who take over the ship.

Rackham sees the treasure in the hold.

Piles of jewels and coins of course. Sir Francis sets a fire and leaves the ship.

The Unicorn explodes forcing the treasure into the air. Some of the coins rain down on Sir Francis.

Sir Francis collects the coins in his hat.

The film did not need prop coins as they were produced by animation.

In the present, Tintin and Captain Haddock arrive in the fictional Moroccan port of Bagghar where the third ship model is kept. Sakharine is there also and manages to steal the ship model's treasure paper. A vehicle chase follows between Tintin and Sakharine.

He is well-armed for a chase. Sakharine acquires all three treasure papers and takes the Karaboudjan to Brussels, followed by Tintin and the captain. Captain Haddock and Sakharine fight on the ship.

Tintin manages to get Sakharine arrested and he and the captain put the three papers together which give the location of the treasure which is the old Haddock family estate known as "Marlinspike Hall."

The pair search the house and find a globe which Captain Haddock manages to open.

Tintin pours the usual jewels and coins into a bowl.

They realize that the have only what Sir Francis brought back in his hat and that the rest of the treasure is at the bottom of the ocean.

The pair agree to hunt for the remaining treasure.

Jamie Bell as Tintin
Joe Starr as Barnaby
Daniel Craig as Ivan Sakharine
Andy Serkis as Haddock
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish
Based on the Belgian comic strip The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé