The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington, 2003) We've talked about The League of Gentlemen, Basil Dearden's ingenious caper movie. Writer Alan Moore had a devious idea for what he called "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," a comic series he created for the "America's Best Comics" publishers. He'd had editorial problems—"notes" as they're called—with the major comic book companies because he'd write stories for their licensed/trademarked characters only for editors to tell him "we/they can't do that, as we need the characters to sell breakfast cereal/action figures/underoo's/whatever." Rejection. It was just this sort of thing that forced him to create new characters for his landmark "Watchmen" series, when the characters he wanted to use (and rather irrevocably, too) were considered "too marketable or exploitable" by the company that had acquired them. He couldn't kill them off, give them less than honorable intentions—anything the Comics Code Authority considered "unheroic."

Quatermain, Tom Sawyer, Dorian Gray, The Invisible Man, Mina Murray and Captain Nemo

But, for this "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" he decided to make up his team consisting of characters that appeared in works in the public domain, where nobody could squawk or...sue...for that matter...over their use and what Moore wanted to do with them. So, his book has Mina Murray, recent paramour of Count Dracula, recruited by British agent Campion Bond (yeah, "they're" related) to recruit a team which consists of: Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard's books (particularly "King's Solomon's Mines"), Captain Nemo from "20,000 League Under the Sea," Dr. Griffin from "The Invisible Man", and Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll (and if he's in, so is Mr. Hyde). The first story had the League recruited by Bond's  spy-master boss, "M" (who is eventually revealed to be Professor Moriarty) to look into the smuggling of the valuable anti-gravity mineral "cavorite" (from H. G. Wells' "First Men in the Moon") involving a Chinese criminal named "The Doctor" (who resembles Fu Manchu). The next series had them battling invading Martians during that bothersome "War of the Worlds" incident. A library of literature and "alternate histories" were there for Moore to exploit and the series enjoyed great success in comics circles.

Connery, being the biggest star, becomes the de facto leader of "The League"

Moore's work had already made it to the screen—The Hughes Brothers had adapted his "Jack the Ripper" series "From Hell"—and there had been talk of making a film of his "Watchmen" since the time it was published. Moore was apathetic—he hadn't liked the From Hell film and found the attempts to adapt his work tedious and less than faithful—and vowed to have nothing to do with them.

Mina Murray—a vampire in broad daylight in Africa

It would seem hard to screw up "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", however. The characters were well-known, Moore had breathed a less Victorian sensibility into them—while remaining true to the original concepts. But, that was assuming people read books. The screenplay—by James Dale Robinson—became a patchwork of Moore's concepts and studio-dictated "ideas," such as the character of Dorian Gray (played by Stuart Townsend), who for the film is not only immortal, but also unkillable, Mina (in the film and played by Peta Wilson) is not just immortal but a full-fledged vampire, The Invisible Man (played by Jason Flemyng) is another character entirely (use rights could not be obtained for Wells' character of Dr. Griffin), and—for the benefit of American audiences who might find the film too "European"-centric, a character named "Tom Sawyer" (played by Shane West) is added as a member of the U.S. Secret Service; there is nothing extraordinary about him, other than he might be able to paint fences. The thing is: if somebody doesn't know who "Dr. Jekyll" or "Captain Nemo" is, they're not going to know who "Tom Sawyer" is, either.

Captain Nemo (played by Naseeruddin Shah) is true to Jules Verne's Prince Dakkar version—not Disney's—but the emphasis is on Sean Connery's Alan Quatermain. His salary took a big chunk out of the budget, and, as one of the film's producers, he and the director clashed so often they nearly came to blows. Connery subsequently retired from acting—except for some voice-work, and Norrington, citing studio interference and the difficulty of working with large crews, stated he's never direct a large studio film again. They might have added Mary Lincoln to the characters if only to ask "How was the play?"

Quatermain reasons with Hyde

Where the film sticks to Moore's original it's rather good: Connery's a fine Quatermain—but the film-makers misspell his name at a rather crucial point—and the other actors acquit themselves rather well given what they have to do; the most unnerving thing is the sight of the gargantuan Hulk-like Mr. Hyde, even though it recalls the way artist Kevin O'Neill drew him in the books. Nemo's Nautilus also recalls the "Scimitar of the Sea," although how it could traverse the canals of Venice without scraping bottom remains a mystery, along with how Dorian Gray can survive multiple gun-shots and how a vampiric Mina can go out in the noon-day sun of Africa.

But, then, there's not much to the story. Moore's book was so "inside" that it would have left audiences in the library-dust. So, there's no "cavorite" and the main villain is "M"/Moriarty disguised as a phantom menace known as The Fantom (and played somewhat tepidly by Richard Roxburgh), whose scheme is to build the League in order to discover their secrets and thus make replicas of them for a rampaging world-conquering army of vampires, invisible men and Id-creatures armed with Nemo's technology. The question lies: they needed Quatermain to do that? Not really, and given that there were enough members of the League capable of double/triple-crossing their ranks, such a formation becomes unnecessary...even an empty effort that just delays things. Moriarty would never do that. I doubt Gaston Leroux's "Phantom" would do that. Even Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Phantom" wouldn't do that...he might fit in a song-soliloquy, but he'd get on with it.

It's something of a mess, and it's such a gory mess that even the several gateways to literature it provides ends up as so many dead-ends; no parent would take their kids to see this, although so many kids have some of these characters in their culture growing up (well, the last time I was a kid, they were). Such a waste of good material and the potential that Moore made of it, one of the most fanciful pastiches to come out of the comics world and out of literature.

An extraordinary waste, fiction be told.

The Nautilus crests...