Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's hugely popular graphic novel is the epitome of a great idea being chewed up by the Hollywood machine and spat out as an unrecognizable mess; the tale of a rag-tag bunch of 19th Century literary heroes facing off against a threat to humanity is incredibly cinematic and ripe with franchise potential. Unfortunately, the final product bore little resemblance to the source material and suffered from a notoriously tortured production that ultimately led to Sean Connery's retirement from acting, as well as being director Stephen Norrington's last feature. Despite the perfect casting of Connery as Allan Quartermain, with Naseerudin Shah and Stuart Townsend also excelling as Captain Nemo and Dorian Grey, the rest of the cast are one-dimensional and instantly forgettable. Changing Mina Harker from an integral part of the source material to vampiric eye-candy was bad enough, shoehorning in Shane West's wooden Tom Sawyer for the benefit of American audiences is even worse. The villain is weak, the script clunky and over-reliant on exposition and plot points are randomly picked up and dropped without any explanation. Positives include some gorgeous production design and a couple of decent action scenes, but that's about it. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did manage to gross almost $180m at the box office, and had a strong performance on home video. That being said, the whole endeavor was a giant missed opportunity that will hopefully be remade in the future to its fullest potential. If it had stayed truer to the source material, the result could be a spectacular steampunk-influenced blockbuster action movie in the vein of a 19th Century Avengers. We can but hope.
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