The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Directed by: Stephen Norrington
Starring: Sean Connery, Peta Wilson, Naseeruddin Shah, Tony Curran, Stuart Townsend, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, and Richard Roxburgh.
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of fantasy violence, language and innuendo.
Parental Notes: Although preteens may find some of the fight sequences too intense, teens will doubtless enjoy the special effects and intriguing characters.
It seems like a great idea: take a handful of Victorian-era characters, mostly anti-heroes or outright villains, and bring them together to battle evil. It certainly works in the comic book “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, which features an excellent selection of main characters and some delightful cameos, as well as excellent storytelling and a compelling plot. Unfortunately, the movie of the same title, based loosely on the comic books, succeeds only in bringing its characters to life, not in actually doing anything particularly interesting with them.
The plot is fairly straightforward: a madman known as Phantom wants to start a world war so he can profit from the sale of new, high-tech weaponry. He plans to do this by terrorizing nations and finally blowing up a peace conference of world leaders. A mysterious figure calling himself “M” (Richard Roxburgh) assembles a team of “extraordinary gentlemen” to battle Phantom.
The team consists of characters roughly familiar to anyone who’s read much Victorian adventure, horror, or fantasy literature. Alan Quatermain (Sean Connery) heads the team, in a major alteration from the comics. Former Dracula victim Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), invisible man Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), scientist and submariner Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), decadent immortal Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Doctor Jekyll and his alter-ego Mister Hyde (Jason Flemyng), and American Tom Sawyer (Shane West) make up the rest of the League.
It’s a lot of fun to watch these famous characters interact, particularly since only Sawyer and Quatermain of them are out-and-out heroes. The rest are sufficiently villainous to be suspicious of each other and thoroughly entertaining in that edgy way most antiheroes and villains have. Townsend’s Dorian Gray in particular is decadently wicked and as charming as he is dangerous.
Unfortunately, the plot is only mediocre, and a number of large alterations have been made both to the comics and to the characters’ original stories. Both Sawyer and Gray are additions; the League in the comics consisted only of the other five. Further, in a major change from the comics, Allan Quatermain rather than Mina Harker (who is a divorcee and goes by her maiden name of Murray in the comics) is the leader of the League. Neither point will disturb those who aren’t familiar with the comics, but for fans these two and a hundred other, only somewhat smaller changes will be distracting and annoying.
Fans of the original source material may find themselves surprised by the new rules of Dorian Gray’s immortality and the sheer size of Nemo’s submarine, not to mention Mina’s scientific knowledge and vampiric status. Even those completely unfamiliar with both the comics and the novels may be distracted by a number of plot and practicality errors. Nemo’s submarine, for example, is immensely tall, but still supposedly able to navigate the canals of Venice.
That aside, it’s a great deal of fun to watch this uneasy alliance of reluctant heroes battling seemingly hopeless odds. There are a number of jokes about Sawyer’s “American” shooting style (Quatermain complains that Americans think they can hit anything if they use enough bullets) and The incoherency of the plot is a disappointment, but the ending is left wide open for sequels and one can only hope that the inevitable “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen II” will have a better script.