Stephen Norrington
-
2003
This movie sucked. Please, please, please go read the
original comic book by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill instead.
The idiots who made this film don't even know how to spell their own hero's name. Watch closely near the beginning of the film, and you'll see a gravestone marked "Quartermain". The character played by Sean Connery is named Allan Quatermain (with only one 'r' in his last name). The brilliant idea for the comic book is that it is the ultimate crossover book. Characters directly from (or derived from) any work of fiction can coexist in this world. Quatermain was the protagonist in H. Rider Haggard's novel
King Solomon's Mines, and he fights along beside Bram Stoker's Mina Murray (Mina Harker in the film) from
Dracula and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo from
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Alan Moore's book is meticulously researched - to the degree that Jess Nevins found it necessary to annotate it in his own
book. The creators of this film are so inept, they can't even spell its star's name right.
It's of no point to go any farther in bashing the film. There are so very many reasons that the film sucks, I just don't know where to start. The performances are horrible, even from the normally solid Connery. The script, or maybe the editing (likely it's both), cause the film to be practically incomprehensible. I'm being nice when I say the special effects are lackluster. Don't even get me started on the idiotic addition of Tom Sawyer to the League. He's not in the comic and the only similarity to Twain's character that I could find was the name. At least they spelled it right. This is one of the worst films of the year. Just don't let it keep you from reading the comic.