Well...there are a _few_ semi-spoilers at the end.
I was very disappointed with this movie. I thought it was surprisingly poorly
made - the cinematography was dim and blurred, the editing was choppy, the
action sequences were staged in a way that you could not actually see what
people were doing, there were huge gaps in the narrative, at times you could
understand what people were saying, and the story made very little sense. Also, a
lot of the larger scale outdoor scenes looked fake, as if purposely supposed to
appear like paintings or sketches rather than an attempt to at least fool you
into thinking it was real. Maybe that was intentional, to emphasize the comic
book origins?
For a movie these days to look and sound bad is an amazing and dubious
achievement.
There was some entertainment value in the movie, but I just did not find it
as enjoyable as I had been hoping. I do not expect it will do very well.
For one thing, a summer movie needs to appeal to younger people. And among
them, who the hell has ever even HEARD of any of the characters in this movie?
(Heck, how many ADULTS know who Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray,
Mina Harker, and even Tom Sawyer are?) If you stopped 100 twenty-year-olds and
asked them to identify Allan Quartermain, I bet not even a single one could
tell you who he was.
I loved the LXG comic book, I think it was a grand conceit; I think the movie
is a huge letdown.
Spoilers (of a sort; some are more like nitpicks):
What is the fascination this summer with Mongolia? Charlie's Angels: Full
Throttle opens up in Mongolia for no reason that makes sense, and LXG concludes
in Mongolia for no reason that makes sense. You're manufacturing all these
super arms - why in Mongolia? How the hell could you even build that factory
there? How the hell are you going to get all those tanks back to Europe? I didn't
see any roads in the snow leading to/from the fortress. Put the damn thing in
Africa or Asia Minor or Eastern Europe. Makes a whole hell of a lot more sense.
And where did all those scientists come from? They are never mentioned at any
previous point in the film. Were there even that many scientists in the world
in 1899? Okay, I know this isn't our world, but still.
How can Nautilus move through the canals of Venice? The thing's as big as a
city block. When it surfaces right next to the dock in London, it should blow
right through the wooden planks. It should swamp anything near it.
How does the invisible man send telegraph signals from the little scout ship
back to Nautilus without being detected? And how does he survive on that ship
for the days it takes it to get from Venice to Mongolia? How does an invisible
man eat - and, more importantly, go to the bathroom?
How can a vampire stand in the sunlight and not burst into flames? And what's
the deal between her and Dorian Gray? Some backstory is implied but seems to
have been edited out.
Seeing Mr Hyde suddenly turn out to be a rather okay guy is kind of silly. If
Jekyll can control him - why didn't he do so earlier?
Tom Beck
www.prydonians.org
www.mercerjewishsingles.org
I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the
last. - Dr Jerry Pournelle
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