> > July 11 - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
> > Despite the heavy-hitting hype for this movie, I don't know of anybody -- either those who have read the graphic novels or those who haven't -- who is impressed with the trailer.
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> Having only recently heard of the graphic novel and read the first volume (thank you Stephen), I was simultaneously thrilled and horrified that they were making a movie of it. "Horrified" quickly won out, after I saw the trailer. I think the reason this movie offends me so much is that, to me, the story is simply the greatest concept I could ever have imagined. I have always been a huge fan of 19th century adventure fiction, and finding out that somebody had actually written a book that brings together Captain Nemo, Alan Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Jekyll/Hyde, Wilhemina Murray et al to fight crime (that cad Professor Moriarty has stolen some Cavorite, no less!) made me feel like I'd died and gone to heaven.
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> Finding out from the trailer that the whole thing had been reset in what appears to be the 1930s, and seeing martial arts stunts, explosions and Wilhemina Murray dressed like she just fell out of The Matrix made me feel like somebody out there needs to be hurt. A lot.
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> It probably isn't too much to say that I find this movie offensive for much the same reason that Sam and Grishny don't like comedies about God.

According to us.imdb.com, the movie is set in an " alternate Victorian Age world". So there's steampunk gee-jaws and there's a car that looks like it came from the 20's. Big deal.

Wilhelmina Murray is a fictional character created for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book mini-series. She's based (or supposed to be) on Mina Harker, a woman bitten by Dracula in the book by Bram Stoker. It's not so farfetched to think that Hollywood would take that and make this entirely new fictional character a real vampire.

Complaining that an action movie made nowadays has martial arts mayhem and explosions is a bit like complaining that when people get shot in movies it's a travesty that they don't just clutch their chest and collapse like they did in movies made in the 40's.

Comic books, movies, television, stage plays: all different forms of media. Costumes have to change -- something looks good on a drawn character doesn't look good on an actual human. Compare Hugh Jackson's leather to Adam West's form-fitting whatever that was. Action sequences have to change -- what works well in prose or in the limited space in a comic book won't on screen. There's a reason why J.K.Rowling didn't write the screenplay for the Harry Potter movies. There's a reason why Brian Michael Bendis hasn't written a full length novel. There's a reason why Howard Chaykin shouldn't write teleplays.

So Brunnen-G's main complaints are they expanded some fight scenes from the static panels of a comic book, they feature explosions (which they also had in the comic book), added a car to the late 19th century (even though Nemo's huge submersible and other futuristic-for-the-time devices were featured in the comic book), and that they changed the only unique fictional character created for the comic book series and her wardrobe so it would appear a lot more photogenic on the screen.

To wintermute's "they didn't stick to the story", the comic book series isn't actually a normal comic book series. It's two different mini-series. It appears that if LEG continues, it will be a series of related mini-series, each telling one story. This movie is simply another story.

-FP