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[personal profile] rowyn
Saturday morning, Lut and I went to see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I had very high hopes for this movie. I love fantasy, Alan Moore -- who wrote the graphic novel on which this film was based -- is an excellent writer, I have a great fondness for 19th century literature, and, as [livejournal.com profile] lady_anne put it: "Personally, I'd pay to watch Sean Connery read the labels on cereal boxes".

On the whole, the film was enjoyable and worth seeing, but I wasn't as happy with it as I'd hoped to be. It was, however, at least as good as "Terminator 3" or "X-Men 2". (Or X-Men 1, for that matter. Not as good as, say, "Terminator 2", though.)

The very opening of the movie was strong, but parts of the first 30-40 minutes moved slowly. I found myself thinking, at a couple of points, "This isn't as much fun as I thought it would be." This included during action sequences. In fact, some of the action sequences in particular disappointed me. Some plot points seemed, well, incoherent. "They're doing what? Why is that supposed to work?" Some of the fight scenes were confusing, as the camera tries to follow several different characters, and things that at first appear to be unfolding sequentially are later revealed to be happening at the same time.

The film is rife with literary allusions of all sorts, which entertained me. Sean Connery was a joy to behold, as always, and so were most of the 'no name' actors also in starring roles. The revisiting of various characters from sf, adventure, and horror stories of the 19th century was charming to behold. Enough was explained about their background that you did not need to be familiar with the fiction that backed them, though I'm sure it helped. (For example, I've never read any of the source material on Sean Connery's character).

I plan to read the graphic novel next. Alan Moore has been a consistently good, and often great, writer -- I expect the graphic novel will be better than the film.

Whee!

Date: 2003-07-13 06:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kagetsume.livejournal.com
I just returned from seeing that movie, m'self. I rather enjoyed it. It was fun, and I was terribly amused by who all the characters turned out to be, since not that many were actually named in the previews.

-- Kagetsume

Re: Whee!

Date: 2003-07-13 09:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kagetsume.livejournal.com
So, was the one you thought you recognized initialed DG? ;)

-- Kagetsume

Date: 2003-07-25 01:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] krud42.livejournal.com
I wound up having to go see LXG alone, which I imagine skewed my opinion of it (I'm generally more forgiving of movies when I go see them with Krudita, for example.)

I'm doing an entry about it, though I'm trying to find that explanation about cut-links or whatever... I have an e-mail with it, but I need to hack through a mile of spam to get to it again...

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