I really enjoyed this one, and the idea and concept were fantastic. If retro-cyberpunk is known as Steampunk these must be Steam Supeheroes!
One nit though, I've been to Venice (last year) and the Nautilus would not get up a canal, let alone into the lagoon! Nor would the car get very far from St. Marks Square either!
I agree with Ray that the addition of Tom Sawyer into the mix didn't really add much, but I was wondering who they could have added instead.
Imdb says that a scene was cut from the film where Sawyer explains that he and his friend, Agent Huck Finn, were tracking down the Fantom, and that the Fantom killed Huck. That would have at least explained why Sawyer was so intent on getting the Fantom.
The Character of Campion Bond, a British Intelligencer, was to be a main character in early drafts of the script. He was eventually totally cut out of the film to be saved for a possible sequel.
Who else could they have used?
I expect that Sherlock Holmes has been overdone somewhat, and anyhow since Moriaty was the villain he would have deduced that rather quickly. M (a shortening for James Moriarty) is taken from the Sherlock Holmes stories as well as from the James Bond books.
There might have been some rights issues with using Holmes. There were rights issues with using the Invisible Man, which is why they changed him from Hawley Griffin in the comic (original novel gave no forename) to Rodney Skinner. All of the other characters have fallen into the public domain, which means that anybody can write about them.
If it needed to be an American actor, or the work of an American author (for American audiences) then why not something by Edgar Allan Poe? He used a French detective by the name of C.Auguste Dupin in 'The Murders of the Rue Morgue'. But maybe that doesn't fit the timeline here. I don’t know any other American fictional characters of that period, but there has to be something better than Tom Sawyer!
Imdb says that portraits seen in the background of various shots appear to be of previous Leagues, and one in particular corresponds to a similar portrait seen in the comic. This previous “League†consists, then, of: The Reverend Dr. Syn, pirate and highwayman; Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlett Pimpernel; Natty Bumppo, aka Hawkeye or the Deerslayer, hero of "Last of the Mohicans"; and Lemuel Gulliver, of "Gulliver's Travels". Two female members appearing in the comic portrait (Lady Blakeney and Fanny Hill) are absent.
The other two portraits in the meeting room also represent previous Leagues. The first shows Robin Hood (from various legends/poems), Ivanhoe (from Walter Scott's novel), and the Black Arrow (a Robert Louis Stevenson novel). The Black Arrow, though, is set in the 15th (during the War of the Roses) century, far later than Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, but this may be one of the many who took the name prior to the novel's setting. The other portrait displays the Four Musketeers; Porthos, Athos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan (from the various novels by Alexandre Dumas), the Sea Hawk and Captain Blood (both pirates created by Rafael Sabatini.)
The ending I didn't quite understand, but probably alludes to a possible sequel. Imdb also says that the poster in the background of one scene on the docks displays "Volcanic eruptions on Mars". This is an inside joke to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 comic in which the League battle the Martians from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. This is also supposedly a hint of a possible sequel to the film.
One nit though, I've been to Venice (last year) and the Nautilus would not get up a canal, let alone into the lagoon! Nor would the car get very far from St. Marks Square either!
I agree with Ray that the addition of Tom Sawyer into the mix didn't really add much, but I was wondering who they could have added instead.
Imdb says that a scene was cut from the film where Sawyer explains that he and his friend, Agent Huck Finn, were tracking down the Fantom, and that the Fantom killed Huck. That would have at least explained why Sawyer was so intent on getting the Fantom.
The Character of Campion Bond, a British Intelligencer, was to be a main character in early drafts of the script. He was eventually totally cut out of the film to be saved for a possible sequel.
Who else could they have used?
I expect that Sherlock Holmes has been overdone somewhat, and anyhow since Moriaty was the villain he would have deduced that rather quickly. M (a shortening for James Moriarty) is taken from the Sherlock Holmes stories as well as from the James Bond books.
There might have been some rights issues with using Holmes. There were rights issues with using the Invisible Man, which is why they changed him from Hawley Griffin in the comic (original novel gave no forename) to Rodney Skinner. All of the other characters have fallen into the public domain, which means that anybody can write about them.
If it needed to be an American actor, or the work of an American author (for American audiences) then why not something by Edgar Allan Poe? He used a French detective by the name of C.Auguste Dupin in 'The Murders of the Rue Morgue'. But maybe that doesn't fit the timeline here. I don’t know any other American fictional characters of that period, but there has to be something better than Tom Sawyer!
Imdb says that portraits seen in the background of various shots appear to be of previous Leagues, and one in particular corresponds to a similar portrait seen in the comic. This previous “League†consists, then, of: The Reverend Dr. Syn, pirate and highwayman; Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlett Pimpernel; Natty Bumppo, aka Hawkeye or the Deerslayer, hero of "Last of the Mohicans"; and Lemuel Gulliver, of "Gulliver's Travels". Two female members appearing in the comic portrait (Lady Blakeney and Fanny Hill) are absent.
The other two portraits in the meeting room also represent previous Leagues. The first shows Robin Hood (from various legends/poems), Ivanhoe (from Walter Scott's novel), and the Black Arrow (a Robert Louis Stevenson novel). The Black Arrow, though, is set in the 15th (during the War of the Roses) century, far later than Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, but this may be one of the many who took the name prior to the novel's setting. The other portrait displays the Four Musketeers; Porthos, Athos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan (from the various novels by Alexandre Dumas), the Sea Hawk and Captain Blood (both pirates created by Rafael Sabatini.)
The ending I didn't quite understand, but probably alludes to a possible sequel. Imdb also says that the poster in the background of one scene on the docks displays "Volcanic eruptions on Mars". This is an inside joke to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2 comic in which the League battle the Martians from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. This is also supposedly a hint of a possible sequel to the film.
