My husband and I got roped into seeing it last night with some friends. The people that we were with came away thinking it was a great flick. I liked the first half or so. Once things started actually happening I could feel my brian cells dying. during the action sequences I had to unfocus my eyes, since the camera work was so frenetic. Ouch.
I knew it was a dud when they were using quotes from totally obscure critics at radio stations, for crying out loud, in the ads. That’s the best they can do??!!
They even resorted to a trick I’m not sure I’d heard before (paraphrased): “The movie that critics are raving about. It’s the best movie of the summer. You’ll stand up and cheer! Sean Connery is explosive.”
Notice that they never actually said they were quoting anyone. There was no attribution at the end of the unquote.
That’s what I suspected, although I didn’t want to say it without being sure. After looking up your user name, I think I’ll trust your knowledge of vampire lore.
I agree with the sentiment, but since Moore turned Edward Hyde into the Incredible Hulk, I won’t shed any tears over people being untrue to his characters, especially since he, unlike R.L. Stephenson, had a choice in the matter.
I’m not sure if should laugh, cry, or just go :eek:
Okay, I’ll say it: I went to see LXG today and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It’s not anything like the comics but I found it to be a lot of fun – of the actors, Jason Flemying in his dual role of Jekyll and Hyde was the standout. There are several fun allusions to Victoriana (“Call me Ishmael”; Reichenbach Falls, etc.) and the special effects are top-notch, especially those for Mr. Hyde’s monstrous form. It’s not equal to its graphic novel but on its own it’s a perfectly enjoyable movie.
You know exactly how this movie got made. A studio accountant noticed that Spiderman was making good money. He suggested that the studio make more comic book movies. A studio executive said that was a good idea and all the people around him told him it was a good idea and he was a genius.
Unfortunately none of the studio people had ever read a comic book. They didn’t have anything against comic books in particular; they just don’t read any kind of books as a matter of principle. But a quick visit to a local comic book gave them the information that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a “hot” property (although they’d have to fix the title). The rights were quickly bought and a scriptwriter was assigned.
Up to now, no one had felt the need to actually read any of the books they were planning on basing a movie on. After all, everyone knows what comic books are about; big men and large breasted women in spandex and capes flying around and beating up bad guys. So everyone was a little put out when the script arrived. What was this crap? This script is full of people nobody’s ever heard of. And they’re all from back in Shakespeare’s time or something. And none of the characters are castable; they’re like in their thirties or something. This script is going to need a lot of work.
And another thing that annoyed me. I was reading a review of this movie today by Jack Garner. He basically said this was a big action movie with lots of special effects. But what was annoying was his comment that “occasionally the movie shows its comic book origins” and then listed a number of stupid ideas in the plot. Naturally, none of them were from the comic book; they’d all been invented for the movie. I suppose it would’ve been too much to expect Garner to write “occasionally this movie shows its Hollywood origins”.
I thought the same thing when I saw the previews but it turns out it’s Captain Nemo’s ride. If you can buy a solar powered Nautilus as long as a modern aircraft carrier, you can buy an automobile.
DesertRoomie and I saw it this evening in lieu of Pirates but mainly because we expect it will be disappearing from the theaters Real Soon Now. We got in on passes so selling out $8 apiece was not a factor. It wasn’t as bad as the reviews are making out, but the story line was awfully jumbled and the fight scenes were edited into a nearly-incomprehensible mess. Wait to rent it or, if you must see it on the big screen, go to a matinee.
One point of interest was comparing and contrasting Mr. Hyde with the Hulk. Especially since he is more ‘human’ and less ape like than in the graphic novel, it would have been so easy to have them indistinguishable – except for the green. Instead, about the only thing they had in common was that they were muscular, and wore X-pand-a-pants™ in their manic phase.
DD
My biggest problem with the film (which I haven’t seen, but probably will since I enjoy bad films) is that Tom Sawyer is a government agent.
I just got back from seeing it, and it was worth the matinee price. Even with a vampire and Dorian Gray in the film, what my friend and I both thought was the most magical part was the submarine. It could completely submerge in the Thames, the Seine, and the other river, and fit in the canals of Venice. We were both waiting to see how it handled a corner in the city.
Baldwin, while the back part of the Nautilus was cylindrical, it came to a point and was flat sided for most of its length. This was especially noticable when it shot out of the water.
Hmm… I may have to check out the comic? graphic novel? both? Real Soon Now. I already decided to give the movie a pass, but if the source material is good…
Dang it, here I’ve been trying to AVOID a comics addiction! ::sigh::
I agree. My husband and I would have both liked this movie better had it not been such a special effects explode-o-rama! The idea of a comic book set in Victorian times was intriguing, and I enjoyed myself at first. I didn’t hate the movie, but it could have been better. I may check out the actual comic book, though, based on the comments here.
Tom Sawyer just did not really fit in the movie. It was painfully obvious that his character was pasted in…and I was not familiar with the comic book at all!
The movie certainly had its own…internal logic…which I actually kind of enjoyed. Perhaps I was just in that sort of mood.
The source material is damn good.
Damn.
It really looked like it was going to be a good movie. I might still go anyway, just for the action.
The Salon review sounded pretty spot-on to me in its assessment of the first series of the comic (Mina assembles team, tracks down stolen Cavorite, battles Fu Manchu).
Are you perhaps thinking of the second series?
Things that bothered me during the movie:
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Incompetant editting - One of my biggest beefs with about 90% of action films in the past decade is that any action scene consists of shots that lasts on average about a second and a half (and in LXG, that’s not even an exageration) which then jump cuts to a completely unrelated shot. It’s impossible to follow what’s going on other than someone was hitting someone. LXG has to be the worst film for this I’ve seen in some time and it reached the point that I was getting motion sickness from the editting.
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Incompetant direction - I couldn’t believe how much dead space there was in many of the shots. The worst being the Quatermain teaching Sawyer to shoot scene where in many of the shots about a quarter of the screen was the actor’s face and the rest was sky. A father with a camcorder taping his son’s soccer game composes better shots than you’ll find in this movie.
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Random Inconsistancies - Okay, so Jeckyl just has to jump into the pool, change into Hyde on his own and flip the “don’t sink the ship switch”. No potion needed, he just changes and when he needs to he changes back. Oh, but the other guy who guzzles the potion is going to “burn it out”. So, how does that work then? And hey, the Invisible Man gets third degree burns over half his body but it’s okay because he’s up an invisible a week later after having the film forget about him. What kind of technology does Nemo possess that the Nautilus changes size depending on the shot? It’s giant cruise ship sized when it rises out of the Thames (which I’m pretty sure isn’t that deep) and about half that size when it’s cruising through Venice (which I’m positive isn’t that deep).
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Too much and too little exposition - Everyone here may know that in the original novel Dracula wasn’t bothered by sunlight but everyone I saw the film with was wondering why Mina didn’t burst into flames. (I’m also sorry to say that I had to explain who Dorian Grey was, but that’s a failing of our educational system.
) Why look, the villain has a Freemason ring and M has the same thing on his door! I wonder if they could be any more blatant. That whole slab of exposition from the record was especially awful. The whole sequence in Venice made absolutely no sense to me; for some reason the bomb instead of radiating damage outward is knocking over buildings (and for some reason wasn’t set under whatever target he really wanted). So they need to drive a car so a cruise missile can be fired to knock down a building it’s path? Won’t the ground still be collapsing? Aren’t the buildings close enough together that knocking one down isn’t going to help?
Finally, “I call it an ‘automobile’”. What a coincidence, so does everyone else since the first internal combustion one was invented fifteen years before the point where the movie was set. Well, except the people calling them horseless carriages. There were a lot of historical pricklers like that which for the most part I was more flexible about but that one bothered me since all of them should at least know what an automobile is even if Nemo’s was a bit fancier than the ones they’ve seen.
I’ll second that! 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula… They’re slow in parts by today’s standards, but highly atmospheric and imaginative and have had huge influence on pop culture.
I was dragged to this against my will by my wife. What a turkey (the film, not my wife). I could tolerate the mindless fight scenes and hokey dialogue were it not for the incredible lapses in logic:
Nemo’s ship has no difficulty in navigating into the shallow canals of Venice
The car has streets in Venice to race through, and casually clips concrete columns as if they were papier mache.
People who have never seen an automobile exit the car and close the doors as if they have done it all their lives.
You can build a massive factory in the tundra with no transportation infrastructure to bring in iron ore and coal or oil.
Nemo’s ship carries a full wardrobe for crew and passengers for any weather condition.
You can stop a succession of building collapses by collapsing one with a rocket, similar to a firebreak in the forest. Of course, you can only do this just ahead of the collapsing dominos.
A modern car racing through the streets of London in the 1890s would not draw throngs of curious onlookers.
Too bad Los Hermanos Medved aren’t still writing The Golden Turkey Awards books. Sounds like this flick merits (if that’s the word) its own chapter.
So, not to hijack, but the comics–have they been collected, are they widely available, are they ridiculously expensive, is the series still being written? I now have a burning desire to read the original.
Volume One is a softbound collection currently selling for $14.95 at Amazon.com. Shop around to compare prices. I bought my copy at my local comic book store.
Volume Two is not available yet.