La liga extraordinaria

One of the biggest complaints people seem to make about movies is it's unbelievability. I am a huge movie buff, and I can't help but to critique a movie while I am watching it. Now if I am watching a movie that is supposed to be based on a true story or is meant to depict real situations.. or really anything that is meant to be taken seriously, I will be very picky about details and how it was done. However, I understand that there are movies that are made strictly to be fun. L.O.E.G. is not Schindler's List, it is meant to be entertaining.. (eye candy as some would put it), so to say that you didn't like it because the plot or simply the things they did or had were unbelievable seems very strange to me considering that it is based on some of the most unbelievable but well liked fictional characters we have known. So it is believable that an invisible man, a vampire, a man that can suddenly change physical form to become a giant beast joining forces with a few other people included is believable,... but giving them extraordinary technology and putting them in extraordinary situations is going to far? If you don't like these kind of movies then don't watch them.... I however do enjoy watching movies with cool special effects, as well as the more serious and artistic films. The movie delivered what it was meant to deliver, and that is some very stunning visuals,... come on really,.. what did you expect? League is a fun movie to watch, it's not going to be nominated for Best Picture or anything like that, but if your looking to escape reality and experience a quite stunning fantasy world with some pretty cool characters then you might rent it. Not too bad.

I've been reading the comments page in a somewhat bemused fashion. It seems to be divided between people who don't like the movie because it's not enough like the original graphic novel and people who don't like it because they've never heard of half of the characters that are members of the League. The latter seems to me to be an unutterably silly reason for disliking a film. Does nobody read the classics anymore? Nobody reads Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? I find that difficult to believe. As to the former--not enough like the graphic novel, in other words--just how in the heck can a screenwriter accommodate the dark and twisted visions of Alan Moore in a two-hour Hollywood movie, anyway?

I don't believe that one can compare anything written by Alan Moore to what ends up on the screen being ostensibly "based on the graphic novel". (The same applies to FROM HELL, which is another one most people pan, and one which I think is under-appreciated even though the style is breathtaking. I don't even want to think about the reaction that will ensue once THE WATCHMEN comes out!)

What seems to have been missed by most people is that this movie is about style as opposed to substance. It's based on a graphic novel. That's a fancy way of saying it's based on a comic book. On that level, the film succeeds admirably. The characters are archetypes of their literary forbears. They aren't supposed to be, strictly speaking, human. Of course the plot is grandiose, impractical, and over-the-top. Hello? Aren't most comic books like that? Good heavens, isn't most of STAR WARS?

I don't claim that this is a masterpiece. I do claim that's it's fun to watch if one approaches it with a willing suspension of disbelief. For a couple of bucks shelled out at the DVD rental shop, it takes one to a different world for close to two hours. On that level, it's worth a rental. It's also worth a rental, once one watches the movie, to listen to the commentary from various actors and to realize just how well these so-called "unknowns" do assorted accents that aren't even close to their own. Plus the golfing anecdotes are amusing. (And I don't even like golfing.)

This ain't CASABLANCA. Nor is it TITANIC, for which I eternally thank the gods. (Now, THERE was an overhyped piece of inaccurate trash that pretended to be history, but I digress.) But it's kind of fun, anyway, as long as one doesn't take it too seriously.

I found this movie wonderfully predictable. To most people that may not make sense, but I have read most of the books that these characters were taken from. While there were major differences between the characters and the books they were taken from, for the most part it was like seeing old friends, i knew what the various characters would do becuase they kept the proper personalities. I even figured out who the villian was because I noticed one of the major works of victorian literature that was missing from the movie. And you do not need to have read all of these books to understand the movie, but there is a bit of a lack of character developement that you may find, but my friends who hadn't done the reading also enjoyed the movie.

It has great visual effects, some really good action sequences, and a really nice looking car.

Oh if you know anything about these characters and other victorian books, see if you can catch the little references they toss. I recomend this movie for someone who wants a good adventure movie.

Having been critically panned by both film critics and fans of the original comic book version, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which is hardly a league of "Gentlemen" considering the presence of a female character) was absolute rubbish. However, despite the flagrant misuse of characters established in classic Literature (Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Invisible Man, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) there is an essentially a massively fun film to be found, made all the more enjoyable if you disengage your brain and just don't question the ridiculous goings on of the alternate Victorian universe the film is set in.

So in conclusion, if a night of brainless action adventure fun is what you'r after, then the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is sufficiently enjoyable material.

I get why this movie bombed back in 2003. It would have been hard to understand what was this movie's idea. Is it a Connery badass movie? Is it a group effort? And what about all the adventure stuff laced in between? And wait, fantasy with a little fiction laced in there?

But watching it today, after we've all been educated by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Umbrella Academy, The Boys, and more, this movie makes sense. It's unfortunate that in this sense the movie came out at the wrong time.

Because 20 years later, after all we know and love in current movies, this movie fits very well. Sure, some elements are dated, they didn't quite know how to define a "universe", and the VFX leaves a lot to be desired, so it wouldn't have been made just as it is today. But overall, I found it enjoyable.

I would watch a reboot if they keep the same spirit, but now there's the reverse problem - it could arrive too late to the party.