I just saw this movie last night. I read the comic book (graphic novel) a couple of years ago. I remember it being episodic and a bit confusing, but somewhat interesting in untangling all the literary allusions. Maybe I don’t remember it well, but it seems to me that the story in the movie bore barely a passing resemblance to the story in the comic. True?
Unless you remember the comic book version of Mina Murray going by the name Mina Harker and being a buxom vampire, yes there are MAJOR differences.
Alan Moore, one of the all time great comic writers, wrote The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic. The script for the movie was adapted by James Robinson, a good comic book writer (especially in Starman) but a pretty poor screenwriter.
Because of all of the references Moore builds into his work, and the complex story structure he often employs, I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to adapt most of his work into any kind of a decent movie. Watchmen is in the process, but I’m not hopeful. I don’t think that it could be done in less than a lengthy miniseries, and I don’t think the achronological structure will be kept, or would even work in a movie. However David Hayter, who wrote the X-Men movies, is writing the script, so it may have a chance. If they don’t screw up the ending, it may actually turn out well.
I don’t think the Watchmen can be converted from comic to the small or large screen and retain anything closer than a passing similarity.
I was terribly disappointed in James Robinson for LXG. I loved his Starman and will periodically reread the entire run. It was the first book I’d read the week it came out. While the final story arc was… disappointing… still, I miss Jack Knight and the book as a whole.
I put off watching LoEG (–oops, the movie abbreviation is the ‘hip’ LXG isn’t it?) for as long as I could – but I’m a big Moore fan and decided to give it a chance… I finally broke down and watched some of a DiVX version I downloaded a few weeks back… couldn’t stomach it…at all… EVERYTHING was wrong, wrong… simply the barest adaptation of the original comic book series… James Robinson dropped the ball… can’t understand the reasoning behind some omissions unless there was a problem with movie rights… everything interesting gutted…awful direction, too… couldn’t even enjoy the special effects… reached a personal limit when the movie sequence turned to the Venice… at the first scene of the gargantuan Nautilus rising from the depths of the tiny-ass canals I turned off the movie… couldn’t suspend disbelief anymore… deleted it to the trashbin and performed an exorcism on my hard drive. 'Orrible, 'orrible movie.
I own the six part original series as well as the two volume collected oversized edition, the one that includes the Alan Moore scripts, which I was lucky enough to get for about $30 bucks this past Christmas. The comic is great. The movie is swill. It takes a special sensibility to adapt any comic book well and I’m not sure the director is working yet that can do it justice.
Interesting discussion. Yes, the movie was swill, but my question really is was the plot even remotely similar to the comic? I never read “a series” of the comic, just a single book. There was recruitment of extraordinary people and some idea of a mission. Other than that, I can’t remember a single thing that happened in the movie happening in the comic. Attack in Venice, relationship of AQ and TS, TS at all, perfidy of DG, DG at all, stealing of potions and secrets, final showdown in the snow. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers there.) Are they things that happened in other parts of the series?
Greg Charles. See where I wrote… “Everything was wrong, wrong”, etc.?
I was referring to the original League comics, which was a six issue limited series later collected and bound in a trade paperback. You sound as if you may have read that. Volume two is an extropolation of the League’s role in HG Wells War of the Worlds. The movie was intended to be an adaptation of the first series and as we both noted, failed fairly spectacularly at it. Adding Tom Saywer and wasting time on Dorian Gray was a serious mistake, compounded by the elimination of Sherlockian elements (The Reichenbach Falls flashback and the treachery of Professor Moriarity)
Writer Alan Moore is planning other volumes to be be published in the future, expanding the League’s adventures to other locales and early 20th century literary characters. He has also made plans for a 1950s version of the League, which I cnnot wait to read. (Assuming Mssr. Moore actually does it!)
If you want a Skeleton Key to the comic series (forgive me – graphic novel) TLOEG, see here:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/7160/league1.html
I only saw the movie, and I was disappointed. What a dream it could have been! It sounded like a really, really great idea…the problem I have with films in our society is it’s very difficult to have a “serial” thing. Let me 'splain.
In Indian cinema, they have serials which are like soap operas but still have a concurrent story running through them, deeper than soaps. Comics are a great example in print. We don’t have anything like that…if it goes to TV, it has a completely different feel. There’s a new plot every episode, because they have to make it stand independently. I feel like it gets really dumbed down. I don’t know if I’m explaining this right, but…
I would have loved to see LXG in this sort of running “drama”. Same with lots of other things, so we don’t have to squeeze the entire story into a two-hour movie. i don’t know why we don’t have comparable dramas in American cinema except maybe the average American watcher doesn’t have time/patience. Indian movies start at 3 hours, usually, so to watch an hour-long *serious * serial every week seems like nothing. 
There are tv series that have ongoing storylines that develop plots and characters over a long period of time. They are, however, rare, and usually don’t fare well. Part of the reason is syndication. The big money in American television isn’t in getting your show on prime time; the big money is in getting enough episodes on during the primetime run, with enough popularity to sell it thoroughly in a syndication package. Seinfeld and Friends make a lot more money this way than they did when originally aired.
Hour long shows are more difficult to package for syndication, and hour long serials are still more difficult.
But, as you said, part of the problem is the American attention span.
Comics aren’t always long term stories, though a great many are. Modern comics are often written for republication as trade paperbacks, so they typically must tie up the loose ends of a story every four to six issues before starting a new one.
Movies also sometimes have ongoine elements. The first five Bond movies typically had important elements in one movie used to set up elements in the next. The recent X-Men and Spider-Man movies have done the same thing. They aren’t true serials, but are more than just episodes.
I rather like the movie. I love the comics. I don’t expect that movies made from comics will be faithful to them, although I am pleased when they are. If I were to judge it as an adaptation of the comic, it’s an abysmal failure. Apart from some overlap of the characters, there’s nothing left of the League that I love. But when I judge it on its merits as a movie, I like it. Yeah, it requires me to suspend a truckload of disbelief, but I can do that. Daredevil, on the other hand, is utter swill.
My track record thus far with (recent) comic movies, off the top of my head:
Superman – pretty good.
Superman II – pretty good.
Superman 3 – swill.
Batman – pretty good.
Batman Returns – pretty bad.
Batman & Robin – terrible.
Batman Forever – scarring.
Daredevil – awful.
X-Men – great.
X2 – Even better.
Spider-Man – great.
Spider-Man 2 – even better.