LXG

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: watched just now on PPV. I could have done it much better of course. Hey, I’m supposed to say that in a blog!

I love adventure movies. The production design was excellent, but some of the special effects were awry. The Nautilus just won’t fit underneath the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, even if it were narrow enough for that particular canal. The Mr. Hyde half of Dr. Jekyll was clumsily done, mostly in the beginning and at the very end when he is fighting the uber-Hyde. Fights: relying too much on fast scene cuts.

The best fighting scenes of all time are good enough for sustained watching: the dueling scene at the end of the Mark of Zorro, for instance, or any of Bruce Lee’s fighting scenes in Enter the Dragon. One can enjoy skill, instead of extrapolating from visual confusion.

With the best adventure heroes of late 19th century literature, you could have a field day with the story, the plot development, and the characters. The story is essentially good – save the world. The movie gets in its way. You miss that goodness, for instance, in the confusion of the villains; I had a hard time keeping the villains visually “distinct” – they kept looking like each other, and several other people in the movie too. And calling the arch-villain “M” in a movie starring Sean Connery might just be a little much. M also was not bad enough. I want the sizzling evil that Alan Rickman brings to the Sherriff of Nottingham.

Explosions: too many. Got boring, watching great gouts of flame ripple across the screen.

Less visual dazzle needed, more character dazzle.