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Reviews
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Wasted potential
After watching 'The League of Extra-ordinary Gentlemen' I watched an old Jacky Chan movie. The Jacky Chan movie actually had more believable action and story to it. The main problem with TLoEOG is that it had the potential to be really good (a varied bunch of old-fashioned superheroes, Sean Connery, Peta Wilson, and most of all a steam punk setting) but they turned it into another low-brow Hollywood movie. The characters never got really developed as they remained stuck in their archetypes, and the action..well there was too much action for a decent story to develop. The all-guns-blazin', characters dying & explosions-everywhere type ending has gotten really stale by now. Where movies like the Mummy and The Scorpion King have low-brow action as their main feature, this movie tried to be more than that and just failed. And the thing is, it should have been more. It's one thing to have some campy elements, but another to have over-cheesy dialogue. I'm not bothered in the least bit by the fact Captain Nemo's huge Nautilus-submarine (decorated like a palace on the interior) is hardly credible; that's part of Captain Nemo's charm. For example of this see the campy but fun 'The Amazing Captain Nemo', with Jose Ferrer in a fantastic over-acted role as the captain. When the Nautilus in TLoEOG cruises through Venice, I'm willing to put in a bit of effort to suspend my disbelief, but when they however start using cruise missiles and advanced radar in a convoluted plan to stop the city from being entirely blown up, my ability to disbelieve starts to falter.
The fun aspect of old-fashioned superheroes was that in the old days, they all had admirable characters, and unbelievable story-arcs that still managed to immerse the reader/viewer. The filmmakers made an effort to give the characters in TLoEOG some depth and sense of history, but those efforts are half-hearted and cut short. What are we supposed to do with the knowledge Captain Nemo was a pirate? Or that he worships Kali, 'The Goddess of Death'? What more do we get from the fact that Mina Harker (vampiress, who incidentally can stand sunlight) and Dorian Grey (some kind of indestructible hero) once had a love-affair, other than the laboriously cheesy dialogue? The people in this film seem to want to capture some of 'the old flair' but for a large part, they fall into non-interesting stereotypes. Even Sean Connery, who single-handedly saved Highlander 2 from being completely worthless, didn't manage to add anything interesting to his character of Allan Quatermain, even in spite of all efforts from the scenarists to let it seem he has a very deep character after the death of his son. And what's with Peta Wilson? She plays the stars in the Nikita-series, and here, it's obviously over-acted. I blame the script, but perhaps she shouldn't have taken the role.
Lacking convincingly charming characters, there's always the story of course, but the basic formula is typical Hollywood-fare. Despite having a minor sense of rapport with the characters (as they're not totally worthless, and have at least some saving graces) there's a distinct lack of real tension-buildup. There's little doubt our heroes will save the day from the start. The impossible odds heroes of old faced are semi-doable odds in TLoEOG.
And the problem with the action is is that it's completely chaotic and unforeseeable. At several points in the movie, I didn't have a clue as to what was going on, sometimes for minutes at a time. The opening scenes of Gladiator were chaotic, but it was inspired spectacle nonetheless. Here, it's just chaotic.
If you really don't care about real character development, real story development or tension-buildups, one might watch this movie when drinking and with friends, as the scenery and the basic premises are novel enough to semi-entertain; other than that, this is just a huge waste of potential.
The Return of Captain Nemo (1978)
Camp fun
The Amazing Captain Nemo is a movie not worth searching out, but definitely worth watching if it's on TV late at night, when you don't take everything that is shown very seriously anymore. The movie has a deliciously nonsensical story about 2 Navy-commando's who accidentally find Captain Nemo and free him from stasis. After a 100 years, the Nautilus is still light years ahead of other submarines in terms of technology. When a mad scientist threatens the world in exchange for a ransom, Captain Nemo's help gets asked, even though he really wants to continue his search for Atlantis.
The movie is full of over-wrought cheesy dialogue, over-acting, and unbelievable technology, but that's really the movie's charm. The mad scientist's dialogue could be used, line-for-line, as samples in techno-songs; that's how campy it is. Jose Ferrer is really the right man for the role. Although I know him more for his serious roles in secret intelligence movies, he plays the role of the larger-than-life Nemo fantastically. A fun movie to watch on a bored Friday night.