My movie watch on 11 April 2023 was yet another of those long-promised but never-till-now-fulfilled film viewings – this time it was the early 2000s big-budget fantasy movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (plus one lady, as it turns out).
Directed by Stephen Norrington, and released in 2003 by 20th Century Fox, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is set in 1899, but within an alternate, steampunk-themed Victorian universe, and the League's membership is as eclectic as it is exclusive (played, moreover, by a glittering host of acting stars).
Namely: legendary explorer Allan Quatermain (played by top-billed Sean Connery in his last on-screen film appearance), the picture-phobic Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Dr Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) (and Mr Hyde, natch!), Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) aboard his Nautilus, an invisible Cockney pickpocket/thief named Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), and very seductive Dracula-acquainted vampire Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), plus American Secret Service Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West). In short, the League is a kind of Victorian precursor to today's super-hero clans.
They have been assembled by the British government's representative, M, to save the world from an impending World War – the grandiose, insane plan of a cryptic super-villain known only as The Fantom (Richard Roxburgh), but with innumerable high-tech war machinery at his disposal, having captured a team of top scientists to do his bidding (otherwise their kidnapped, imprisoned families will all be killed). But this is just the beginning...
The movie is a masterpiece of subtle misdirection and sleight of hand, with the League discovering almost too late that it has a traitor in its midst, a double agent working for the Fantom – but who is that masked Fantom?
If not Michael Crawford, might it be none other than the Napoleon of Crime himself, the nemesis of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes, and who happens to share his surname with one of my FB friends? Now that would be telling, but do keep a sharp lookout for a slew of subtle identity-revealing inferences along the way!
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is loosely based upon Volume 1 of the eponymous graphic novel/comic-book series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (I use the word 'loosely' because it diverges extensively from the characterisations and plots in this series, which in turn antagonised some comic-book purists). And as revealed above, it incorporates many famous literary characters and works from a number of eminent Victorian writers.
These include the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Gaston Leroux, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Oscar Wilde. In addition, Sax Rohmer's fiendish Fu Manchu was originally intended to appear, but was subsequently dropped, and at the studio's own request the Twain character of Tom Sawyer was added in order to attract American audiences, bearing in mind that most of the other lead characters were derived from British or French literary works. I've also been informed that Dorian Gray was not in the original source material, but as I haven't read any of that yet, I can't confirm this myself – does anyone know for sure? If so, please post details below this review – thanks!
As you'd expect from such a no-expenses-spared blockbuster as this one, the special effects on display in one form or another throughout The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (including a CGI-enhanced Mr Hyde) are mind-blowing (not to mention Venice-obliterating!) – this ain't no Asylum or SyFy Channel offering, that's for sure! Also well worthy of praise is its spectacular steampunk-influenced design and set decoration (most notably that of Nemo's incredible Nautilus ship), with painstaking attention to even the most minute details.
Needless to say, therefore, the film critics hated it on principle, but it did big business at the box office and especially via subsequent rentals and DVD sales.
So if you're happy to suspend disbelief from the word go, and just run with the pyrotechnics rather than the plot, you'll have a great time in the company of this league of truly extraordinary gentlemen (plus lady). I know I did!
If you'd like pay a brief visit to the League yourself and experience a tumultuous taster of the veritable rollercoaster ride awaiting you in the full movie, be sure to click here and here to watch a couple of official trailers for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on YouTube. But after the wholesale destruction wrought in it by the battle between good and evil, I certainly don’t envy whoever is tasked with reassembling Dorian Gray's library – just sayin'…
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
