League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Oct. 24th, 2003 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenWell, Ratboy insisted we go and see LoEG. I'd heard some bad things about it, but faced with the insistence of an eleven-year-old I agreed to give it a chance. I must say, it rather surprised me.
You must all go and see it. Now. Why are you still here? Go and watch it NOW, then come back here.
That way, when I go calling on Sean Connery with a chainsaw and a couple of gallons of drain cleaner, I will have no shortage of witnesses prepared to testify that I was a thousand miles away at the time.
Before I get back to the rest of the movie, let's talk about Sean Connery a moment.
First off, imagine you have a dog. Once he was a beautiful, strong animal, a loyal companion who strode through life beside you with his head held high.
But that was a long time ago.
Now, the dog is old and blind and arthritic. And incontinent. A shattered wreck, a sad caricature of the proud animal you once knew. He spends his days in decrepit senility, and the only glory that remains to him is peeing on the floor when he hears his name.
Now imagine you didn't really like the dog that much in the first place, and you're pretty close to how I feel about Sean Connery.
It may be that I'm being unduly harsh in singling Connery out for blame here. From what I've heard the film's flaws have a lot to do with his involvement, but it's hard to believe one man could make a film suck this badly. Still, for simplicity's sake, I will designate Connery as the culprit for this movie's awfulness.
[In case any of you were wondering, BTW - I'm not a diehard Alan Moore fan. I've read a few of his comics, including the first few episodes of LoEG, and I quite liked them, but that's as far as it goes. So I'm not attacking the film out of loyalty to the original version here, and I won't comment on changes from the comic - although I understand them to be numerous, and not for the better.]
Let's talk about the good points first.
Stuart Townsend. There, done.
No, I'm not kidding. Stuart Townsend actually puts in a convincing performance as Dorian Gray. Haughty, elegantly bored, disillusioned and contemptuous. (Though now I think about it, there may not have been much acting involved.)
As for the rest of the movie... it's a lot like a bad caricature of a Bond film. The supervillain, the high-tech vehicles, the diabolical city-destroying plot, the secret fortress in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't quite have the mandatory Romantic Interest, but the Quatermain/Sawyer father-son business serves much the same purpose, i.e. a lameassed attempt to give the movie some sort of emotional depth.
I'd give a spoiler warning here, but it's not really an issue, because the Grey/Skinner "plot twist" is one of those ones that's so obvious you're likely to spend about half an hour thinking "no, there has to be more than that, it can't really be THAT predictable," only to discover that indeed it is.
The dialogue... well, near the beginning, recruiter-whose-name-I-forget tells Quatermain without a trace of irony that they're recruiting a team of "unique gentlemen, like yourself". From there it just meanders along, not particularly awful, but it knows very well that it's not particularly important to the film, and it doesn't try.
The effects are expensive, but not particularly good. The Nautilus magically grows and shrinks depending on where it is - out in the open sea, the portion above the water is about 80 feet high, and yet it can navigate the canals of Venice without running aground or crushing buildings. (And, apparently, without being detected.)
Mr. Skinner is the invisible man. (Why they didn't go with Griffin, I'm not sure - maybe somebody else owns the cinematic rights to the character?) When he wants to be seen, he applies white makeup to himself. Except, he still has black stubble, and here and there you can see pink flesh tones in his ears where the CGI Fairy forgot what it was supposed to be doing.
At one point near the end, the gang - having navigated the Ridiculous Growing Shrinking Submarine several hundred miles up a river and into a frozen lake - are hiding out in a cave while Skinner scouts out the Sekrit HQ of Evil. All this in thick snow. I leant over to my beloved![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
reynardo and whispered to her, "What's the bet Skinner surprises Quatermain by coming up to the cave invisible, even though that would require him to be wandering around stark naked in deep snow and not leaving footprints as he passes?"
I am sad to say that this is exactly what happened.
Oh, and Jekyll and Hyde. At one point Moriarty and Grey sabotage the Nautilus. Despite having the opportunity to place numerous bombs all over the vessel, all of which detonate, the only significant damage is of the sort that can be dealt with by swimming underwater and pulling one lever. J/H does this, as Hyde, after which all Hyde's evil urges mysteriously vanish, and from then on the Hyde form becomes Jekyll-with-muscle and no apparent psychological drawbacks. Gah.
People laugh at Ed Wood's movies, but at least when you watch Ed's movies you can tell he was passionate about what he was doing, and that sort of love excuses a lot. This was just pure bland soulless drivel. I thought Jerry Bruckheimer made bad movies, but at least he knows how to explode a helicopter. LoEG can't even do mindless special effects right.
I want those two hours of my life back, please.
You must all go and see it. Now. Why are you still here? Go and watch it NOW, then come back here.
That way, when I go calling on Sean Connery with a chainsaw and a couple of gallons of drain cleaner, I will have no shortage of witnesses prepared to testify that I was a thousand miles away at the time.
Before I get back to the rest of the movie, let's talk about Sean Connery a moment.
First off, imagine you have a dog. Once he was a beautiful, strong animal, a loyal companion who strode through life beside you with his head held high.
But that was a long time ago.
Now, the dog is old and blind and arthritic. And incontinent. A shattered wreck, a sad caricature of the proud animal you once knew. He spends his days in decrepit senility, and the only glory that remains to him is peeing on the floor when he hears his name.
Now imagine you didn't really like the dog that much in the first place, and you're pretty close to how I feel about Sean Connery.
It may be that I'm being unduly harsh in singling Connery out for blame here. From what I've heard the film's flaws have a lot to do with his involvement, but it's hard to believe one man could make a film suck this badly. Still, for simplicity's sake, I will designate Connery as the culprit for this movie's awfulness.
[In case any of you were wondering, BTW - I'm not a diehard Alan Moore fan. I've read a few of his comics, including the first few episodes of LoEG, and I quite liked them, but that's as far as it goes. So I'm not attacking the film out of loyalty to the original version here, and I won't comment on changes from the comic - although I understand them to be numerous, and not for the better.]
Let's talk about the good points first.
Stuart Townsend. There, done.
No, I'm not kidding. Stuart Townsend actually puts in a convincing performance as Dorian Gray. Haughty, elegantly bored, disillusioned and contemptuous. (Though now I think about it, there may not have been much acting involved.)
As for the rest of the movie... it's a lot like a bad caricature of a Bond film. The supervillain, the high-tech vehicles, the diabolical city-destroying plot, the secret fortress in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't quite have the mandatory Romantic Interest, but the Quatermain/Sawyer father-son business serves much the same purpose, i.e. a lameassed attempt to give the movie some sort of emotional depth.
I'd give a spoiler warning here, but it's not really an issue, because the Grey/Skinner "plot twist" is one of those ones that's so obvious you're likely to spend about half an hour thinking "no, there has to be more than that, it can't really be THAT predictable," only to discover that indeed it is.
The dialogue... well, near the beginning, recruiter-whose-name-I-forget tells Quatermain without a trace of irony that they're recruiting a team of "unique gentlemen, like yourself". From there it just meanders along, not particularly awful, but it knows very well that it's not particularly important to the film, and it doesn't try.
The effects are expensive, but not particularly good. The Nautilus magically grows and shrinks depending on where it is - out in the open sea, the portion above the water is about 80 feet high, and yet it can navigate the canals of Venice without running aground or crushing buildings. (And, apparently, without being detected.)
Mr. Skinner is the invisible man. (Why they didn't go with Griffin, I'm not sure - maybe somebody else owns the cinematic rights to the character?) When he wants to be seen, he applies white makeup to himself. Except, he still has black stubble, and here and there you can see pink flesh tones in his ears where the CGI Fairy forgot what it was supposed to be doing.
At one point near the end, the gang - having navigated the Ridiculous Growing Shrinking Submarine several hundred miles up a river and into a frozen lake - are hiding out in a cave while Skinner scouts out the Sekrit HQ of Evil. All this in thick snow. I leant over to my beloved
reynardo and whispered to her, "What's the bet Skinner surprises Quatermain by coming up to the cave invisible, even though that would require him to be wandering around stark naked in deep snow and not leaving footprints as he passes?"I am sad to say that this is exactly what happened.
Oh, and Jekyll and Hyde. At one point Moriarty and Grey sabotage the Nautilus. Despite having the opportunity to place numerous bombs all over the vessel, all of which detonate, the only significant damage is of the sort that can be dealt with by swimming underwater and pulling one lever. J/H does this, as Hyde, after which all Hyde's evil urges mysteriously vanish, and from then on the Hyde form becomes Jekyll-with-muscle and no apparent psychological drawbacks. Gah.
People laugh at Ed Wood's movies, but at least when you watch Ed's movies you can tell he was passionate about what he was doing, and that sort of love excuses a lot. This was just pure bland soulless drivel. I thought Jerry Bruckheimer made bad movies, but at least he knows how to explode a helicopter. LoEG can't even do mindless special effects right.
I want those two hours of my life back, please.
