Continuing the horrible track record of one of the most over-rated actors ever, this one is a bomb- ruining its great source material. As he is the executive producer, there is nobody else to blame. Highlander 2 anyone? Enjoy the trainwreck:
One star out of five:
Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40989-2003Jul10.html
Ebert gives it one star as well:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-league11f.html
In the words of Jay Sherman “It stinks!”
:mad:
Well that sucks. I also checked Rotten Tomatoes and saw that it’s currently at 9 fresh, 34 rotten. I guess I can scratch that off my summer blockbuster list. I’ll wait until it reaches Netflix.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! We got a babysitter for tonight just to see it! RottenTomatoes.com seems to agree.
I guess we’ll be seeing Pirates of the Caribbean instead.
This just makes me want to see it even more!
Hey! I paid money to see these clunkers… MARS ATTACKS!; COOL WORLD; ROBIN HOOD-MEN IN TIGHTS; JURASSIC PARK 2; HANGING UP; and of course, HIGHLANDER 2. LXG should be a picnic in comparison.
Actually, Johnny Depp’s performance alone makes POTC worth watching; it’s the perfect summer movie–big, loud, exciting, and visually enthralling.
I’ll be giving LXG a big miss. Pity, one would think that The Avengers and Highlander 2would have been enough humiliation for one lifetime.
Well, I don’t think any informed LOEG fan had any hopes at all for the movie, so it’s no real disappointment.
Geez, do you think sometime someone could make a movie from an intelligent book or novel and not screw with the source material!!!
…sorry, got a little carried away there…
What’s funny, gobear, is everytime I saw a commercial for The League I tell my hubby it’d better not be another damn Avengers.
I’m looking forward to seeing Pirates.
The minute I saw teh roadster and heard Tom Sawyer was joining the league… I knew it was to be avoided at all costs.
FriarTed: You actually paid to see Highlander 2? :eek:
Oh, the humanity, the humanity…
Barry
I figured it would likely be a dud when I saw how terrible the advertising was. They did nothing to stress the Victorian literary aspect of it and yet I’d have thought that was it’s strongest selling point. Maybe they figured Americans aren’t into reading…
Unfortunately, the ads simply don’t tell us much of anything other than it’s an X-Men-ish type flick with Sean Connery and loads of CGI.
Anyway, I’m seeing Pirates this weekend and am very much looking forward to it. Ghost pirates, Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush & Orlando Bloom! How cool can you get?! Hoping Pirates winds up being a huge blockbuster – I already have faith in it and I haven’t even seen it yet! 
I, too, paid to see Highlander 2 on opening weekend. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I heard Connery knew this was going to be a clunker. He fought daily on the set with the director and producers and felt it was a dog. The only reason he stuck with it was because they repeatedly told him after the post production team added the CGI and other effects it would be a whole new movie. He half-heartedly took a chance and seems like he lost out.
I’m finding it incredibly weird that Pirates is shaping up to be good and LXG is sucking, considering the comparative source material.
It’s just dissonant to me, somehow. Still…
When there is nowhere to go but up, one can go very far up. When there is nowhere to go but down, count on Hollywood’s crop of morons to drive it as low as possible.
I’ve not read the comics, though that’s only because learning about them coincided with a dip in my finances and they sound right up my alley, but why is there a Cord in a movie set during Victoria’s reign? Is it supposed to represent some futuristic car like the Batmobile?
Well… I had kinda wondered.
I mean, the comic was incredibly literate, and jammed with in-jokes that you’d never get unless you were familiar with the genre and/or pulp literature in general.
A movie, on the other hand, needs to be accessible, no matter WHAT you’ve read. Or haven’t.
And why they stuck Tom Sawyer in there is beyond me. The idea of Dorian Gray as a kind of Victorian-era Terminator is kind of fun, but Tom Sawyer?
The Salon Review is bizarre.
The writer obviously read a different graphic novel than I did or one of us really didn’t get it at all.
Sounds like spin control from Connery- he was the executive producer-- its his bomb as much as anyones:
BTW, Connery Bomb fans don’t forget Medicine Man :Shudder: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0104839
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/MedicineMan-1038176/reviews.php 20% rating. Ouch!
I just came back from seeing it (Friday afternoon show).
It’s bad.
Badly written. Badly directed. Badly edited. Badly acted (except Jason Flemyng and Sean Connery do what they can with their roles). Thudding soundtrack. I didn’t even like the set design, which is the most complemented aspect of the film in the reviews.
And I’m not even bitter about it being unfaithful to the source material. Though I’m a fan of the comic, I am completely open to a reinterpretation of the material, if done well.
Not even close to being done well.
The screenplay is at the level of a first-year cinema-school student. The dialogue is atrocious. There are so many gaps in logic – from the motorcar that smashes through stone columns, to the vampire that tropes around in the African daytime sun, to the regular human beings that somehow survive physical traumas unscathed – it taxes the most open-minded suspender of disbelief. There are some allusions to the comic, and to other works of literature of the era, each dropped in with the subtlety of a boot to the ear.
Truly, it gives me hope that I can be a screenwriter some day.
The direction is careless, actions scenes are mechanical, laughable, or banal; editing is of the rapid-fire method that leaves you wonding if you can catch ADD from watching it; the soundtrack is thudding.
Sean Connery does what he can. Jason Flemyng gives both Jekyll and Hyde some depth, as much as can be given in the time limitations attributed to each character. Petra Wilson is miscast as Mina. You never believe she’s a haunted British woman. Tony Curran is irritating as the replacement Griffin. Stuart Townsend is awful as Dorian Gray. Shane West has no clue as how to play Tom Sawyer. The guy who plays Nemo (N…something Shah) is occasionally wooden, occasionally respectable. Richard Roxburg is much to young to play…who he’s playing.
They might have been helped with a competent director, one more interested in character development or atmosphere rather than slam-bang kung fu, gun-fire, CGI effects and car chases.
I guess that’s my review.
I’ve only seen the previews, but the change from the comic that bugs me the most is the transformation of Mina into a hypersexual overt vampire. She was an amazing character in the books, strong, sensible and forcefully intelligent- the real leader of the league, forget that junky Quartermain!
When I figured out her identity a few issues into the first volume, I re-read Dracula and was blown away by the new light Moore threw on it for me!
I have no intention of paying to see this film, and whether I see it once its on cable will depend on how bored I am the twentieth time it comes up in the guide.