"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" has the potential, when it begins, to be one of the years best science fiction fantasy films. There is stark realism, the characters are all taken from great works of fiction, and can therefore be manipulated in many ways by the writer of the script.
I expected this film to be long and filled with great excerpts from the novels being spoken by the characters during interesting parts of the film.
Instead, what do we find? One big "Hollywood" action scene after another... almost no exposition. What little there is can only be described as "thrown away" by the director.
The film, while a fantasy that is unusually implausible, goes far beyond that to being totally impossible!
Take the great submarine, the Nautilis, made famous by Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's novel, "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". The sub is blown up out of proportion into an oceanliner the size of which can only be compared to the Rock of Gibraltar. They then take the sub and run it down the streets of Venice Italy, which streets are no wider than fifteen or twenty feet in most places! Magically, buidlings leap apart for this massive thing. It was at that point, my heart just fell. The film itself began to go downhill from there. A man then drives a car down a Venice street in a chase scene that doesn't even make sense!
BUT VENICE HAS NO STREETS! IT HAS ONLY CANALS!!! It's as if the director had never been to Venice... or up the great Amur River in eastern Russia, which no boat that size could ever sail!
There's fantasy, then there just plain silly! Sorry to disappoint you, but this film falls short in so many places, it was easy to see why it fell so rapidly from the box office charts as well.
I love the actors, I love the premise... I hated the execution.
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