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 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
