TheOne

I'm debating to see it or not and wants to know everyone's opinion that have actually seen it.

Thanks.

Patman

I think this film has a decent beginning, and then suffers badly from the character development/interaction standpoint in trying to derive some form of "mystery" subplot as the LXG try to stem the tide from the backdrop plotline that sort of goes nowhere interesting.

The actions scenes are chaotic, but nimble in some spots, while also being a bit too dark and murky to make out what's really going on.

It was sort of hard to connect with almost any of the underwritten characters (though Connery tries hard to make us care about his Quartermain character and the promising lives he's seen cut short in his lifetime of adventures), and when the plot gets moving, there seemed to be some scenes cut that would have smoothed out the plot transitions.

I give it 2 stars, or a grade of C, mainly for the action sequences.

Zodiac_Speaking

I must admit I never read the comic series, so I went in open-minded.

Cons:
-Sawyer was uninteresting, had a weak sub-plots with Mina and Quatermain.
-Logic. How could the Nautilus travel through the canals of Venice being that size? How could Mina, being a vampire, walk in broad daylight and check herself in the mirror? How could Sawyer drive a car, that Nemo built and claimed it is a first and the future?
-Script. It was average, but needed more character development and add more meat to the secondary characters.

Pros:
-Jekyll/Hyde: This is what the HULK should've been like. A person who struggles with his inner turmoil, a chance at being a hero, and controlling the beast within. Plus, the FX were dandy too.
-Invisible Man: Finally, an invisible man who was like Griffin (Claude Raines in IM 1933)! Had the best dialogue in the film. Too bad he wasn't even in the Second act.
-Action and pacing.
-Nemo. two words: Bad @$$.

Final Thoughts:
I think non-Moore fans will enjoy this more. I had no prejudement entering it, so I was open-minded. It was certainly entertaining, and that's what film is foremostly meant to be. It was a good film, but not extraordinary; they should have studied X-men. A fun film if you seen everything else, but it has some glaring flaws. My grade might be high to some, but the fun factor won over the flaws.

B-

RocShemp

jonpeters,

Though I'm a fan of the comic book and wish the film was closer to the source material, I'm glad it was fun and think that what you listed makes it worth going to see. I am upset about the slight Rodney Skinner spoiler. Not so much that you mentioned it but WHAT it is that you mentioned about his participation in the film.

You mention that Nemo is a bad ass. I'm glad to hear that. But ass kicking aside, what didyou think of Naseeruddin Shah's performance as Captain Nemo? Ever since I saw Monsoon Wedding I've been obsessing over what Naseeruddin Shah could do with this role.

Zodiac_Speaking

Well, sorry first of all. It is late.

Shah's very stoic; to me, I thought he brought his proud heritage to the role. He's smart, observated, but needed more screen time, for sure.

I believe you will hate me after seeing this. I read enough to know about the scource material, but like I said I never read the comic. It seems like fans don't like it. Hopefully, an early showing isn't expensive for you. Me, I live in NE, so its only $5. So I seen anything and everything.
I did have some high hopes that this would be an X-men-like movie, but it is not. I would like to know fully what off screen problems there were, it might have effective the final product. Norrington is certainly talented.

I don't know. It was fun for me, but at this forum, my reviews are certainly a minority opinion. Maybe I relished seeing these classic literary characters battle, but the flaws were distracting. I might see this again, maybe it will be worse the second time, or the same, I don't know.

I did like this better than the HULK. But T3 and Pirates will make the bucks.

RocShemp

Can't hate you for having your own opinion.

I've really been looking forward to this movie and was okay with the changes I've heard about (except for Sawyer) since comic books to film is never easy to adapt, studios can't help butmeddle even if it were easy to leave it exactly as it was in the comic books, and a direct translations is usually boring anyway. If I want everything to be just as it was in the comic book I'll ready my copy of the comic book. I'm sure I'll miss the tone of the book but I'm certain I'll have fun watching this (despite the flaws you mentioned).

I'm glad Naseeruddin Shah was able to make a positive impression but I am sad to see you say his screentime was not enough.

Movies are $5 here too (and $3.50 during the first showing) so money is not an issue. I'm just looking for a fun time at the movies.

I'll admit that unlike most here, I thoght HULK was fantastic. And the X-Men franchise is a perfect example of how to keep true to the spirit of the source material while still putting a new twist on things.

TheOne

Thanks for the reviews. Keep them coming.

I think I'll see Pirates first and see LXG later. The mixture of all the classic characters are intriguing to me.

BDB

I also went in with little or no expectations and had similar questions. The canal issue, in the amazing race, they couldn't take a turn in a gondola.

For sure Nemo was the best character and the portrayal of him was excellent.

My biggest issue though was the use of Tom Sawyer, I have not read the source material, so given that I am not sure about his part in the show.

The Nautilus was fantastic a real beautiful work of art.

All in all quite the good show
I would give it 3 out of 5.

DRG

Well, I wasn't impressed with the trailer, and heard all the bad buzz. But I went with an open mind. It's odd... I was both impressed and disappointed. The first act is pretty good, if you go in expecting silliness. It's dumb but fun. The middle act goes overboard into nonsense. The final act was pretty routine. I wasn't bored, but it was predictable as hell. You can guess everything that's going to happen by the second act. The cast did a really good job, probably saving this from becoming a total disaster. The world the film creates is lovely to look at, and the stylized "technology" is a cool touch. The effects are hit and miss... the Invisible Man looks great, but Mr. Hyde... ugh. My friend said it reminded him of the Fat Bastard costume... I wouldn't go that far, but ugh. And the aforementioned logic problems... don't even attempt to think about this one too hard, because it'll ALL fall apart under even the lightest scrutiny.

I think it suffers from the same problem I had with Tomb Raider (the film it reminds me most of in terms of script, quality, direction, etc.)... the most interesting action scene takes place early in the film, so the finale seems a bit of a letdown. Overall a fun and empty film. It's like going home with an ugly girl after the bar... it's feels good while you're there, but on the drive home you realize what just happened.

SunMonkey

I haven't seen it, but it can't be completly terrible with bad guy lines like:

Josh-da-man

In Bram Stoker's original "Dracula" novel, Dracula could move about in daylight. He was weakened when he did so, but it wouldn't kill him.

harosa

LXG is what you want from a COMIC BOOK movie, a bunch of cool characters with cool powers, each gets their own scenes to shine and they come through in the end to stop a villain, pretty simple, no need to make something more out of it ala' the HULK and this movie gives you a monster type battle better than the HULK did. Add to it a cool concept, some really inspired action scenes and production design and some good(and bad) FX and you leave the theatre with a nice grin on your face. Could it have been improved, yes, but then again no movie is perfect. And for some reviewers stating that the movie dumbs the charcaters down because they believe the majority of people wont know who the characters are, well, DUH! I challenge anyone to go out into the street and see how many people know who the hell Dorian Gray, Captain Nemo and Mina Harker are, hell even ask about Alan Quatermain and Tom Sawyer and you'd get blank looks, think of that what you will.

Revoltor

LXG was very good. The characters were all fun to watch and the story, albeit foolish, was still satisfying.

I own the comic books but have never had a chance to read them so I wonder how many liberties they took.

Anyway, after watching it and exchanging with my friends about how great it was we began to read online reviews for it. RottenTomatoes was currently at 17 percent fresh. The critics bashed the living hell out of it.

I'm not realy sure what to say out of that.

Zodiac_Speaking

I for one, liked the Hyde FX. The use of prostectics and CG, worked out pretty well. The transformation process was a unique touch.

I'm eager to see the dvd, to see about deleted scenes.

Josh-da-man: I do remember that about Dracula, but how do you explain Mina looking into a compact mirror?

MrN

Let me preface by saying I'm a big Alan Moore fan. I would probably only recommend this to genre fans because they took a great comic and just made it a dumb summer action movie - which is understandable from a business pov. Still, some of the fun of the comic was figuring out who everyone was by little clues and the movie to me had too much explanation. But, I guess they thought summer audiences would have no clue who Mina Harker and Dorian Gray are.

The Good: some of the effects like Mr. Hyde and the Nautilus. I liked Wilson, Shah and Townsend. Most of the others seemed too campy.

The Bad: Basically no real story and the plot just barely holding things together. Plus, as I said they really dumbed it down - all the characters are seemingly given more powers and less charcater with no arcs to speak of.

One more thing I wanted to add - since someone asked how Sawyer knew how to drive. Cars as we know them have been around (in our world anyway) since 1895 and since Sawyer is a spy he would probably be up on technology. He'd never seen Nemo's advanced version before but caught on to the controls quickly.


5/10.

Zodiac_Speaking

That was me. Alright, you made a good point.

I seen the movie again today, because my uncle wanted to go. I'll keep my initial review from before (a few posts up).
I really liked Dorian Gray. A complex character, although I think everyone will agree that all characters needed more development, but interestingly played by Townsend. I liked him in Queen of the Damned; what other movies as he been in?


Nemo to me was the leader.

ChemDoc

Nemo was awesome. Serious ass-kickings going on.

Harker was totally smokin hot. Some neat F/X w/her, but the mirror thing was ???

Some good effects, some obvious CGI.

Bad mattes (sp?), especially in London.

Connery is getting too old in the tooth to be pulling off the action hero.

Harker was hot.

The invisible effects were pretty OK.

Did I mention that Harker was hot?

-Overall, I went into this without a background in the source (comic/graphic novel) material, but I did know each of the characters. I really enjoyed it. Great summer movie. Who gives a flying rat's ass what the critics thought?

But then again, I like the Hulk too.

BTW, Peta Wilson as Mina Harker was hot.

-doc

Goldberg74

I liked it, but felt really underwhelmed.

The sets had a grandios feel to them... in the same way that Wild, Wild West did... so much in fact that they seemed too unbelieveable.

I liked Hyde, Skinner, Nemo and Tom.

Didn't much care for Harker, Gray or Quartermain.

But however I do find it funny that Richard Roxberg's next role is as Count Dracula in next Summer's Van Helsig... I laughed when they talked about Mina and Dorian's back story.

But this show does make me want to go back and read Allan Moore's original graphic novel.

***/****

Cornelius1047

Boring and rather predictable. Some definite bad acting. The effects were okay, I guess, but nothing we haven't seen before. Same could be said about the action scenes. Connery seemed like he was basically phoning it in. And the whole business with more than one guy wanting to get with some chick (a vampire chick, nonetheless) has been done a million times before, and it was too obvious. In the confines of an comic book movie, X-Men did it better. I hardly agree with Ebert, but he gave this movie 1 star and I think that was rather generous.

"I'm waiting to be impressed." Me too, Mr. Connery, me too.

K

wm lopez

I've hated just about every Connery performance since 1989, but this one I enjoyed. His voice wasn't as gravely and moved around good for a 75yr. old geezer.
I enjoyed this movie from begining to end.
Great family movie!
No sex, just comic book violenance.

Giantrobo

The same thing was shown and explained in Francis Ford Coppola's '92 version of Brahm Stoker's Dracula.

TheMadMonk

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Townsend,+Stuart

Townsend will probably be most famous for the role he had, but then lost: He was originally cast as Aragorn/Strider in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but was let go after a couple weeks of filming, because Peter Jackson decided he was too young to for the role, and replaced him with Viggo Mortensen.

neale

The sets looked a little too much like sets for my taste. It all looked very staged. And when walls were knocked over (by the tank at the beginning, for instance), it looked very, very fake. And the acting was sub-par.

Not a terrible movie. Not a good movie. The League Of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Tuan Jim

Wasn't horrible -- and I liked seeing Jason Flemyng again after LS2SB, but I just didn't really care too much about anything. I woulda liked a few more colorful sets too. Everything was dingy and gray. The villain from the first comic miniseries would have been a lot more interesting IMO -- more variety and more colorful among other things. 'Course there'd probably be complaints about racism and stuff.

MrN

The effects were really obvious in some places - like when water is flooding the Nautilis right onto running people - and they keep running as if they haven't been hit.