The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

♥	This article is dedicated to the actor, Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 - October 31, 2020 from respiratory failure and atrial fibrillation).

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
That time the kingdom that created a franchise of adventures from a galaxy far, far away somehow made the late Sean Connery and director Stephen Norrington go "Screw you Hollywood, we're getting out of here!"
Genre: Action Directed by: Stephen Norrington Written by: James Dale Robinson Starring: Sean Connery Shane West Peta Wilson Stuart Townsend Jason Flemyng Richard Roxburgh Photography: Color Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Release date: 11 July 2003 Runtime: 110 minutes Country: United States

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a 2003 action-fantasy film, based on the comic book of the same name by Alan Moore.

Plot

Following an attempt on his life, retired adventurer Allan Quatermain is persuaded to return to the United Kingdom and head up a crime-fighting team known as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. They are tasked with investigating a series of thefts committed by someone known as the Fantom, and discover that the long-thought-dead Professor Moriarty has returned and plans to cause a worldwide conflict.

Why It Extraordinarily Killed Off Sean Connery's Acting Career

1. A poorly unfaithful adaptation of the original comic, which it has very little in common with outside of the basic idea of literary characters working together to fight crime, and some of the main characters.
2. The concept of literature's most iconic characters interacting with each other sounds like a good idea. This could have been an amazing film. The problem is, we don't get to see any of the signature trademarks or tones said characters are famous for. Instead, they all indulge in boring conversations and speak with little to no emotion. As a result, these characters could be replaced by anyone and you wouldn't notice.
3. There's barely any color in the film, and the background looks kind of shaded.
4. They added in Tom Sawyer, who was a character who never appeared in the original comic. This wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but they write him as just some American guy who can shoot really well, meaning just about any literary action hero could have filled the role.
5. Very confusing storyline. It's revealed that the main villain and the person who put the League together are actually the same person, meaning that he ends up being defeated because he sent the League after himself. Granted, it's shown that he needs Dr. Jekyll's formula for his plans, which requires the League to capture him, but there's no reason why he couldn't have falsely fingered Mr. Hyde as the person behind the robberies and had him captured for that reason.
6. Awful special effects, particularly on the Nautilus, the partial destruction of Venice, and the Mega-Hyde monster that one of Moriarty's minions turns himself into during the climax.
7. The film tries way too hard to sell the idea that the Invisible Man is a traitor, making it obvious that it's going to turn out to be someone else.
8. They used Professor Moriarty as the main villain, but Sherlock Holmes isn't even mentioned once, making you wonder why they bothered including Moriarty if they weren't going to include his famous rival.
9. There's a car chase, including an obvious modern-day car they made some slight modifications to.
10. Not only do they screw up how the characters were depicted from the comic, they even get the details of their literary counterparts wrong! They say that Dorian Grey will die if he looks at his portrait, instead of when it's destroyed, and seem to have confused the backstory of Mina Harker (who was bitten, but not transformed by Dracula) with that of Lucy Westenra, who actually did become a vampire. In addition, Moriarty spends the first half of the film disguised as a French literary villain known as the Fantômas, but he's depicted in a way that suggests the film-makers either confused him with the Phantom of the Opera, or just decided to show him like that because the Phantom was better-known.
11. Moriarty gets a very anticlimatic death, with Tom Sawyer just shooting him in the back from a long distance.
12. The ending tries to make a big deal out of Quatermain's death, setting it up as a "passing the torch" moment to the younger members of the League, only to then have a blatantly sequel-baiting ending that shows his implied resurrection.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Most of the cast do their best with what they're given; the only one who stands out as particularly bad is Peta Wilson, and even then only on the handful of occasions where Mina's using her vampire abilities.
2. One or two good action scenes.
3. Impressive production design on the interior of Captain Nemo's boat.
4. The soundtrack composed by Trevor Jones is fantastic.

Reception

The film made just under $180 million on a budget of $78 million; enough for it to break even, but not enough to justify a sequel. Critical reaction was much poorer, however, with a score of 17% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Alan Moore, the writer of the original comic, hated the end result enough to refuse to lend his name to any future adaptation of his works, at least until the releases of V for Vendetta in 2005 and Watchmen in 2008.

Trivia

• This was Sir Sean Connery's final live-action role prior to his death in 2020, his only other acting role being voicing the title character in Sir Billi. Though he initially blamed this on his falling out with the director, Stephen Norrington, during filming, years later he admitted that he had been getting disillusioned with Hollywood politics for well over a decade beforehand, and the troublesome production of this film was merely the last straw.
• Similar to Connery, director Stephen Norrington quit working on Hollywood productions due to on-set conflicts and studio interference, and has since returned to his previous role as a make-up artist.

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