The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (film)
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| The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen | |
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| Directed by | Stephen Norrington |
| Produced by | Trevor Albert Rick Benattar Sean Connery Mark Gordon Don Murphy Michael Nelson |
| Written by | Comic Book: Alan Moore Kevin O'Neill Screenplay: James Robinson |
| Starring | Sean Connery Naseeruddin Shah Peta Wilson Tony Curran Stuart Townsend Shane West Jason Flemyng Richard Roxburgh Max Ryan |
| Music by | Trevor Jones |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | July 11, 2003 |
| Running time | 110 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a 2003 film adaption of the comic book limited series. It was released on July 11, 2003 in the United States.
Contents |
[edit] The Plot
[edit] The Beginning of a War
The film opens in 1899 with dramatic thefts and outrages taking place in both London and Berlin. A WW1-style tank breaks into the Bank of England to steal Leonardo Da Vinci's plans for the foundations of Venice, while shortly afterwards in Berlin scientists are abducted and a zeppelin hangar is destroyed. The governments of each country then promptly blame the other. In actuality, a masked and scarred figure in a hairy greatcoat with a Eastern European accent - The Fantom - is shown as the force behind each crime.
An emissary of the British Queen, Sanderson Reed, arrives in a Gentlemen’s Club in Africa to recruit the legendary, but now aged, hunter and adventurer Allan Quatermain. We first see Quatermain sitting in the shadows reading what appears from the back to be a copy of The Strand magazine.
Quatermain has no great patriotic concerns and is not interested, but then a group of armor-plated assassins appear at just that moment and - mistaking him for Quatermain, because he had been posing for story-seekers - kill his friend Nigel before Quatermain’s eyes, spurring him to action. We then see Quatermain defeat the attackers almost single-handedly, but not before a bomb is left behind destroying the Club. Quatermain is then ready to do his patriotic duty.
[edit] The League
Quatermain arrives in London, quipping that his voyage wasn’t as quick as that of Phileas Fogg, and is taken into the bowels of an impressive Whitehall building. There, in a darkened underground meeting room, he meets the mysterious "M".
His plan is to round up a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to combat the threat of The Fantom and ensure world peace, by stopping him from destroying Venice. "M" has his roster planned and we first meet the legendary Captain Nemo, followed by the invisible thief Rodney Skinner and finally Mrs. Mina Harker who is, we are told, a chemist of some note. It is then stated that Skinner stole the invisibility formula and is now helping the government so they will search for an antidote.
Before they can set off to save the world, two more members must be rounded up, so they climb into Nemo’s six-wheeled "automobile" driven by Nemo's first mate (“Call me Ishmael”) and set off to London’s East End to the home of Dorian Gray.
Once inside Gray’s dockland home Quatermain points out that a painting is conspicuously absent on one wall and we learn that Mina Harker and Gray have some sexual history together and that Gray was chosen for his "experience". Just as Gray turns down their request to join them in their efforts, The Fantom and a dozen of his men show up from nowhere. A momentary stand-off takes place, during which Quatermain notices one of the henchmen giving him a wink. The whole room erupts in a blazing gunfight when the winking henchman shoots another of The Fantom’s men.
Nemo utilizes a lightning fast form of martial arts to vanquish his foe. Gray simply takes a burst of automatic weapons fire in the chest, reveals his already dissipating wounds to his amazed attacker, who asks “What are you?” to which Gray responds in a bored manner “I am complicated” before driving a sword point through him.
The Fantom escapes (for the first of many times) and the sequence ends with Mina being held, knife at her throat, by the last remaining thug. Out of the shadows steps the winking gunman, whom we learn is American Secret Service Agent Sawyer, ready to come to her aid. Mina remarks that she needs no help, which becomes obvious when her eyes suddenly turn completely red and she rips the throat from her assailant and feeds from his neck, while her rather stunned teammates look on. In a minor comic moment, Sawyer indicates that she has a bit of blood on her lip and she turns with suitable embarrassment to clean it off. Mina then explains something of her background in the Dracula affair and reveals her scarred neck. The previously reluctant Dorian agrees to join the League when the other members suggest that Agent Sawyer would be a good replacement for him.
At the nearby docks Nemo unveils his submarine – Nautilus. Looking like a giant scimitar as it rises from the depths; the group is stunned by the extraordinary vessel. A panel opens, a plank is lowered and Nemo’s first mate welcomes them aboard before they head off to France to round-up the League’s last recruit.
In the streets of Paris at night where Quatermain and Sawyer are stalking a beast leaping from building to building up on the rooftops overlooking the Rue Morgue. The beast is knocked from a roof and dragged back to the Nautilus in a net, where we find the huge beast is actually Mr. Hyde who quickly reverts to the meek and haunted Dr. Jekyll. He is happy to help when he learns that the Queen will allow his return to London if he does so.
[edit] Venice
The team is now complete so the Nautilus sets off for Venice. Some character development is injected along the way as Quatermain bonds with young Sawyer while teaching him to shoot effectively rather than in "the American style" and we learn that Quatermain is haunted by the loss of his son. Sawyer hits on Mina, but his clumsy advance is quickly rebuffed by the very non-Victorian vampiress. Mina and Dorian then reveal a bit of their past as the anxious Jekyll looks on, taunted by the voice and image (visible to Jekyll in any reflective surface) of Hyde all the while. Seeds of a traitor in their midst are planted when flash powder is found in the wheel room of the Nautilus and a vial of Jekyll’s serum is determined to be missing. Naturally, all think that invisible thief Skinner is the culprit, but nothing can be done about it since Skinner is nowhere to be found.
Later a carnival in the Piazza San Marco is fully underway as the impossibly huge Nautilus sails up the narrow canals of Venice, apparently with no trouble until it comes to a stop under a bridge where it can go no further. We are shown that a series of bombs are somewhere under the city, the League's members have no idea where, until they start to detonate and begin toppling buildings in a domino effect, one explosion after another. To stop the total destruction of Venice, they decide that knocking one of the buildings out of the sequence is the only way to stop the chain of explosions. To achieve this, Nemo has a missile that can be fired from the Nautilus at the building in question, but only if a beacon can be set in place. So, since Nemo can track his "automobile", the League piles in with Sawyer at the wheel and go racing along the streets of Venice (although primitive cars existed at this period, they would not be as fast or as maneuverable as Nemo's car).
Dozens of The Fantom’s gunmen appear out of nowhere along the rooftops and start firing on the speeding vehicle. Dorian drops out of the car to fight the gunmen and disappears. Moments later, Mina too takes her leave by turning into a swarm of bats, which provide cover from the gun shots overhead. She materializes from time to time, feeding on the snipers, then she also lets out a super-sonic scream that is silenced in the movie because no one can hear it.
[edit] The Villains
Quatermain too bails from the vehicle to give chase to The Fantom on foot. The two fight in a graveyard where Quatermain dislodges The Fantom’s mask who, before he makes his escape, is now revealed to be none other than the mysterious "M". At the same time, we see Sawyer crash the car into the target building, while firing a flare, which signals Nemo to launch his missile. The building is destroyed, the chain of explosions stops and Venice is saved. Meanwhile, back at the Nautilus, the first mate is met by Dorian Gray and blames Skinner for their troubles, but is quickly proven wrong when Gray shoots him.
The League regroups at the Nautilus, where Quatermain reveals that "M" is behind the whole thing, when the near-dead Ishmael reveals that Gray is the traitor, not Skinner. At that moment, a small submersible vessel breaks from the Nautilus and Dorian makes good his escape with a smile and wave to the assembled team.
Nemo sets the Nautilus in pursuit, but moments later, a record is found and played on a gramophone. The voice of "M" floods the room, and we see the recording session as black and white footage in flashback, while he reveals the scope of his plans. Everything leading up to this moment is revealed as a ruse so that "M" could steal elements from each of the League members to construct an army of super-powered soldiers. He also explains that he needed Quatermain only to capture Mr. Hyde. Dorian Gray managed to photograph the Nautilus and to get a piece of invisible skin, a bit of vampire blood and one of Jekyll's potions.
While the record plays on, Jekyll sees his Hyde persona reflected in a porthole, the beast has his hands clamped over his ears and pleads with Jekyll to stop the record, just as 'M' discloses that another track has been playing on the record at a frequency outside human hearing which is set to trigger the bombs planted by Gray. Already too late, Nemo smashes the gramophone and bombs go off in the bowels of the submarine.
Chaos ensues as lower decks flood, with Nemo’s crewman trapped by the water. To release the water, Jekyll takes his formula and dives into the flooded chamber. Jekyll transforms into Hyde who then uses his massive strength to save the vessel. Once again in pursuit of Gray, a Morse code message is received from Skinner, who has stowed away on Gray’s escape vessel, revealing the coordinates of M’s hideout somewhere in a remote and frozen Mongolian sea.
[edit] The Final Fight
The Nautilus breaks up from under the ice and our heroes travel across the frozen wastes to a cave overlooking M’s flame and smoke industrial fortress. Skinner appears and tells them that "M" has a number of scientists and their families held as hostages and slave labor in his munitions factory. The workers are constructing Nautili (from the Latin plural of Nautilus) while the scientists are working on an army of Hyde-like brutes, invisible spies and vampire assassins.
Splitting into teams, the league infiltrates the factory and battle against various threats. Nemo and Hyde attempt to free the scientists and their families while Sawyer and Quatermain go after "M", Mina goes for Dorian, while Skinner sets off to plant some explosives.
Sawyer, thinking that he’s met up with the invisible Skinner, breaks from Quatermain, only to discover that it is one of M’s men who has become invisible (although not revealed in the movie, this man is actually Sanderson Reed, who recruited Quatermain to M’s LXG at the beginning of the movie.) To further complicate matters, an armored soldier with a flamethrower also turns up and nearly fries the American agent, but is saved by Skinner who becomes partially visible when his skin is badly burned in the conflagration.
Meanwhile, Nemo and Hyde run up against M's right-hand man, Dante, leading yet another group of armoured machine-gun wielding men. When the gunmen are quickly beaten by Hyde and Nemo, Dante desperately downs a full beaker of Jekyll's serum that quickly turns him into a massive and powerful monster several times bigger than Hyde at which Hyde moans, "Not all of it.". The heroes make their escape from the factory moments before it explodes, the crash finally destroying the beast that Dante had become. Simultaneously, Mina has her showdown with Dorian, who decays before her eyes when she shows him his portrait.
Quatermain confronts M in his lair (he has now shaved off his moustache) and reveals his deduction that "M" is none other than the supposedly dead Professor James Moriarty, at which he declares himself the "Napoleon of Crime", who did not perish at Reichenbach as the world believed, and seeks to profit from a starting a world war by selling the powers of the League to the highest bidding country. Quatermain, holding Moriarty at gunpoint, sees in a reflection that an invisible man has Sawyer held at knifepoint behind him; he turns and shoots Sanderson Reed, the invisible villain, only to be stabbed in the back by Moriarty just before making another escape and fleeing across the ice. This is the point where Sawyer has to use what Quatermain had taught him and shoot Moriarty before he can get into the submersible vessel with a suitcase containing all he needs to rebuild his empire. In a similar way that Quatermain shot a gunman at the beginning of the film, Sawyer kills Moriarty with a bullet to the back of the head just before he reaches the vessel. Moriarty's box containing the items Gray stole from the League falls into the ocean.
[edit] The Ending
The final sequence of the film takes place in Africa, where the group has assembled to bury Quatermain. After the group departs a tribal witch doctor appears and performs a ritual at the grave. Viewers paying attention earlier in the film will recall that Quatermain had explained Africa would not let him die because of a witch doctor’s blessing (for the unattentive, Skinner throws this out as an idle remark during the scene). After everyone leaves, the witch doctor grabs the dirt that was over Quatermain's grave and begins a ritual chant which (according to the DVD commentary) translates to "awaken, arise". The entire earth shakes violently, making the rifle (that Sawyer had left on the grave) shake. Lightning strikes Quatermain's grave right before the screen cuts to black.
[edit] Cast
[edit] The Characters
[edit] Allan Quatermain
Allan Quatermain is the elephant hunter and African explorer of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its various sequels and prequels. In the film, he is the leader of the League and is not recovering from an opium addiction as he is in the comic book. The character matches with his original storyline as we are informed that he had two wives and a son. Although he does die in the movie, the final sequence with the shaman indicates that Africa "won't let [him] die," and that he is being resurrected. Allan describes himself as "an old tiger sensing his end" who wants to "go down fighting".
[edit] Tom Sawyer
The Tom Sawyer character is taken from the novels by Mark Twain and was not part of the comic book version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The film anachronistically portrays Sawyer as a young man (although Twain published a Tom Sawyer, Detective story in 1896, the story was set in pre-Civil War 1840s). In the film, Sawyer is an American secret service agent sent by Theodore Roosevelt. Tom Sawyer is never directly mentioned by name in the film, instead referring to himself as "Agent Sawyer". In a deleted scene, it is revealed that "Agent Sawyer" had a partner in the Secret Service, someone he said was a "childhood friend". This fellow agent was killed on a mission, and Sawyer volunteered for the LXG assignment to avenge him. This is a reference to Huckleberry Finn, Tom's friend in the Mark Twain novels. This is also the only scene where he is called "Tom".
[edit] Captain Nemo
Captain Nemo is the Indian submariner from Jules Verne's 1870 novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island and Journey Through the Impossible. In the film, he has some minor martial arts skills and an ill-defined code of honor; otherwise, he is little more than a supporting character whose only real contribution to the League is his submarine. In a deleted scene, it is mentioned that he agreed to join the League in return for the British considering giving India independence.
He is very different from his comic-book counterpart, who is portrayed as a snobbish, world-weary, retired underwater terrorist with undertones of sexism, xenophobia and misanthropy. In the comics he is also far more important to the League, realizing before the rest that their superiors cannot be trusted, and deducing both their identities and their plans. In the movie, the Nautilus does not bear any resemblance to the comic (which has tentacles).
[edit] Mina Harker
Mina Harker is the character from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula but this time a vampire. Here, Jonathan Harker has been dead for years, although it's unknown if he was killed by his wife's vampiric instincts. Unlike in the comic book, Mina Harker did not change her name back to Murray after her husband's death and is no longer the leader. Mina is a radically different breed of vampire than Dracula, lacking many of the traditional strengths and weaknesses.
She can stand in the sun (something Dracula too could do, but his powers were vastly diminished), cross the ocean easily, she is never shown to need to sleep in a coffin, and she freely entered Moriarty's lair without invitation. Her powers include rapid healing, immortality (she can survive being stabbed in the chest, though she did say the attacker missed her heart, and says at another point that it's possible she can't die), she can turn (completely or partially) into a flock of bats, flight, she can cling to walls like a bat, and she is strong enough to overpower one of Moriarty's men and jump large heights and distances.
[edit] Rodney Skinner
The filmmakers were unable to obtain the rights to H. G. Wells' original Invisible Man character so they created a new version of him known as Rodney Skinner, a thief who has stolen the invisibility formula from the original Invisible Man, Griffin (in the graphic novel, it is explained that the Invisible Man killed at the end of The Invisible Man was actually a half-wit albino that Griffin made invisible as a guinea pig).
While Dr. Hawley Griffin from the comic is a sociopath and a rapist, Rodney Skinner is merely mischievous, though for a while he is believed to be a villain.
[edit] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dr. Henry Jekyll and/or Mr. Edward Hyde, from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 short novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde appear in the film, but they are portrayed in a more favourable light than they are in the novel or the comics. Differing from the novel, Jekyll must still drink the potion to transform, and his alternate side is shown to be a huge, hulking character, rather than the smaller, evil man of the book.
The film retains the comic's idea of Hyde's size being proportionate to the amount of evil he has done.
[edit] Dorian Gray
Gray is the main character from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. In the graphic novels, it is suggested that he is a member of the previous League.
He possesses an enchanted portrait of himself that ages for him and absorbs all his injuries, rendering him immortal. However, looking at the picture reverses the magic, causing him to disintegrate.
[edit] Other Characters
- In a move reminiscent of the James Bond novels, the League is recruited by a character known as "M".
- The mysterious character that attacks military bases and banks is referred to as the "Fantom" who resembles the Phantom of the Opera or French master villain Fantômas.
- When Quatermain arrives in London he mentions Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg.
- Captain Nemo's first mate is named Ishmael, suggesting the protagonist from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. The character's first line of dialogue is "Call me Ishmael", the first line of Melville's novel.
- The key villain is Professor James Moriarty, enemy of Sherlock Holmes.
[edit] Trivia
- Towards the end of the movie, during "The Final Fight", Mina Harker's hair-style changes from scene to scene. When she is stabbed, and appears to die, she has (very obvious) curls, and when she awakens, she has very long hair. This occurs in other scenes as well.
- During the scene on the London docks just before the appearance of the Nautilus, a poster appears on a wall with a headline describing the sighting of mysterious explosions on the planet Mars, an allusion to H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds, which provided the major backdrop for the second comic series.
- The amount of makeup Skinner wears to make his face visible changes throughout the movie. When he first put it on, he covers only his face and ears. Walking out of the museum ,however, he has covered his whole head. In Gray's home, however, only his face is covered. After the battle and on board the ship, however, his whole head is once again covered. It is also covered when he informs the other members about Moriarty's lair. At the end of the movie he wears no makeup at all. This could be because of the horrible burns he recieved, but none are visible on him.
