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thatcrazycajunLast night saw the resumption of autographedcat and kitanzi's weekly Movie Night—although they are now considering reducing its frequency to monthly, given that I was the only one who showed up and that turnout has been small most weeks so far. We watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 20th Century-Fox's shameless bastardization adaptation of the 1999-2000 limited-series comic book by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.
autographedcat and kitanzi's weekly Movie Night—although they are now considering reducing its frequency to monthly, given that I was the only one who showed up and that turnout has been small most weeks so far. We watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 20th Century-Fox's ACat and Kit loaned me a copy of the original's first trade paperback collection, which I have still to read, so I won't be able to really see just how far the movie strayed from the source material until later. All the reviews and comments I have heard, however, including those of my hosts, indicate that what happened here is what usually happens when Hollywood gets its grimy mitts on a truly excellent, intelligent and original work and tries making it into a salable mass-market film.
One does not need to have read the source material, however, to see the egregious errors in history and physics, poor plotting and lack of real characterization this movie contains. For example, Tom Sawyer, Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens' most famous creation, whose involvement in the League only amounts to a brief cameo in the comic book, is made a major character in the movie, a Secret Service agent who claims to have been sent to join the League by his boss, President Theodore Roosevelt. Given that the film is set in 1899, this poses a bit of a problem: history records that William McKinley was actually President at the time (1897-1901), which a quick check of Wikipedia would have told the writers. Teddy was Vice President at the time, and didn't get the top job until McKinley was assassinated—two years later!
And the legendary submarine of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, the Nautilus, is shown as being far too large to have successfully navigated the canals of Venice, Italy, but is depicted doing just that nonetheless. (They couldn't have had Nemo anchor it offshore in the Mediterranean and just send the gang to Venice in a launch? Jeeze.) The whole film is full of crap like this. Suspension of disbelief is one thing; dangling it off a cliff and cutting the rope is quite another.
I'm glad I finally got to see it....and also glad I didn't have to shell out any money to see it in a theater or on pay-per-view. I strongly suspect I'll be even gladder once I've finished reading the comic.
One does not need to have read the source material, however, to see the egregious errors in history and physics, poor plotting and lack of real characterization this movie contains. For example, Tom Sawyer, Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens' most famous creation, whose involvement in the League only amounts to a brief cameo in the comic book, is made a major character in the movie, a Secret Service agent who claims to have been sent to join the League by his boss, President Theodore Roosevelt. Given that the film is set in 1899, this poses a bit of a problem: history records that William McKinley was actually President at the time (1897-1901), which a quick check of Wikipedia would have told the writers. Teddy was Vice President at the time, and didn't get the top job until McKinley was assassinated—two years later!
And the legendary submarine of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, the Nautilus, is shown as being far too large to have successfully navigated the canals of Venice, Italy, but is depicted doing just that nonetheless. (They couldn't have had Nemo anchor it offshore in the Mediterranean and just send the gang to Venice in a launch? Jeeze.) The whole film is full of crap like this. Suspension of disbelief is one thing; dangling it off a cliff and cutting the rope is quite another.
I'm glad I finally got to see it....and also glad I didn't have to shell out any money to see it in a theater or on pay-per-view. I strongly suspect I'll be even gladder once I've finished reading the comic.
