The New Movie of the Week: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

In 1899, the Bank of England is broken into by what appears to be German soldiers and the blueprints of Venice by Leonardo da Vinci are stolen.  Later it appears that British soldiers kidnap several German scientists and blow up a Zeppelin factory.  These two events results in the two Empires to be at odds with each other which could lead to a world war.  “M” (Richard Roxburgh), the head of the British secret service puts devises to assemble the latest generation of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  The team consists of Alan Quatermain (Sean Connery) an adventurer and big game hunter who retired after the death of his son; Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), an amazing swordsman and the captain of the Natalius a technologically advanced submarine he designed; Dr. Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) a chemist who is immortal with vampiric abilities acquired by her encounters with Count Dracula; Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran) a thief who was turned invisible after stealing the original creater’s serum; Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Mina’s ex-lover and given immortal life through a cursed painting, he too is a gifted swordsman; Dr. Henry Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) who developed a potion that transforms him into Mr. Hyde giving him enhanced strength, but also a penchant for extreme violence; and finally Tom Sawyer (Shane West) an American secret service agent who joins the team when their missions cross paths. “M” explains that the terrorist leader known as the Fantom is behind the attacks with the objective of starting a World War for profit. The first goal of the team is to prevent an attack on Venice where a summit is taking place with many of the world leaders in attendance.  They arrive just as the attack begins and the team ultimately saves Venice, but realizes that there is a traitor within their midst.  As the story progresses, it is revealed that the real objective was to obtain the teams secrets to their abilities and replicate and sell them to the highest bidder creating super powered armies. This leads to the final showdown between the Fantom and the League.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LXG) is a 2003 film loosely based on the DC comic book series of the same name created by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. The film was released on July 11, 2003 by 20^th Century Fox and was directed by Stephen Norrington with a screenplay by James Dale Robinson. The movie was not a critical success but was a financial one grossing over $179 million worldwide in theater sales on a $78 million budget, not to mention the $48.6 million in rental revenue and $36.4 million in DVD sales (as of 2003).  Kevin O’Neil, the illustrator of the comic book source material believed the film to be a failure due to not being respectful of the source material, siting both Norrington and Connery for no cooperating.  Alan Moore was dissatisfied with the film but thought that the reputation of the comic would not be affected by the film stating, “As long as I could distance myself by not seeing them, enough to keep them separate, take the option money, I could be assured no one would confuse the two. This was probably naïve on my part.”.  The film was nominated for two Saturn Awards for “Best Fantasy Film” and for “Best Supporting Actress” but both lost.

The filming of the movie also did not go smoothly.  The studio was pushing for a summer release movie and delays due to special effects malfunctions delayed production.  Connery and Norrington did not get along and this is the film that caused Sean Connery to permanently retire from making films.  He told The Times “It was a nightmare. The experience had a great influence on me, it made me think about showbiz. I get fed up dealing with idiots”.  In addition to the production issues, the studio also had a lawsuit brought against it for plagiarizing the Larry Cohen and Marin Poll script Cast of Characters, which they pitched to the studio years before.  The lawsuit concerned the public-domain characters that were used in the film but were not part of the original source material.  A female centric reboot was being planned in 2015, but the 2019 Disney-Fox merger scrapped those plans, but in 2022 a possible reboot was announced to be released on Hulu.

I am going to disagree with most of the critics’ opinions of this film as I really enjoyed it.  I love the characters they brought in and what they did with them having been a fan of many of these characters from their literary incarnations.  I have not read the source material, so I had nothing to compare it to and went into the film with no expectations, which is probably why I was able to enjoy it more than some.  Don’t get me wrong, the film didn’t affect me in such a way that it changed my life, but it was a fun, enjoyable, action-adventure romp done in a steampunk / dieselpunk style with some great horror and science fiction elements.