The league of extraordinary gentlemen movie review :: essays research papers

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"Despite Sean Connery and some impressive 19th deoxycytidine monophosphate gloom, this big-screen translation of Alan Moores culty comic-book series f eachs to earth with an incoherent splat.- - - - - - - - - - - -By Charles TaylorJuly 11, 2003 In the opening scene of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," a tank plows done the elegant Victorian interiors of the Bank of England. In short order, we see the destruction of an inn in Kenya, an enormous book-lined London sitting room, and the center of Venice, with the basilica San Marco among the buildings reduced to rubble. This a destructo-thon for those with a taste for Old World elegance. Theres no reason why "The League of Extraordinary Gentle human" has to be as bad as it is, considering the inspired pop premise of its source, Alan Moore and Kevin ONeills graphic novel. The deuce installments that have appeargond in book form so far are a sort of cold daydream of popular literature. Set at the end of the 19th century, the comics tell the story of a group of heroes assembled by British intelligence to fight various threats to the empire. The ingenious element is that all of these adventurers are characters from popular fiction of the era. Theres the aged Allen Quatermain (the adventurer from H. Rider Haggards " powerfulness Solomons Mines") Mina Harker, ne Murray (from "Dracula") H.G. Wells the Invisible Man Dr. enthalpy Jekyll and his alter ego Edward Hyde (who takes the form of a grotesque behemoth) and Captain Nemo (from Jules Vernes " cardinal Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"). Their contact with the British government is an stem of James Bond and, as in the Bond books and movies, the head of British intelligence is M, and his initial is a hint at his own sham identity. Moore and ONeill use these characters to play a sophisticated version of the fantasies kids indulge in about whether Superman could defeat Spider- Man. The graphic novels are written and wasted in a style that mingles the formality of Victorian literature with contemporaneous raunch and bloodthirstiness. When Hyde goes on a rampage we get to see him pull bad guys quite literally in two, or chomping on their limbs. The Invisible Man takes advantage of the sexual liberties open to a man who cant be seen.