League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Jul. 11th, 2003 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia"The animation was great, but the manga made more sense."
...I haven't actually read more than the first issue of the comic. But you know how sometimes you walk out of a sleek big-budget anime movie certain that it all must have made sense in the manga? Yeah. I quite liked From Hell as a film, not having read the graphic novel first, so I figured a similar approach would be enough to avoid trauma. Turns out I'd have to have been ignorant of all of the original novels as well, so no help there. Methinks this is actually a mild bout of what people who grew up reading actual comics must feel about some of the superhero flicks that have come down the line recently. "Um. Um, no, you - you can't do that. ...Damn you."
Though it was quite pretty in a severely desaturated (and in fact totally not steampunk) sort of way.
Not to mince words, I have issues with the writing. It's serviceable, but it's not Alan Moore, or anyone else I'd trust with a premise that demands better. Rather, given that the idea is basically cracked-out crossover fanfic, the canons demand better. God knows I'm not actually very obdurate about these things; it's not impossible to make me accept that Dorian Gray is being blackmailed by Professor Moriarty and used to have a sweet thing with Mina Harker; but you have to make your dialogue bear at least a fleeting resemblance to the language of Wilde, Conan Doyle and Stoker, or I can't buy it. As it is I get the depressing sense that the people making the film haven't read those original books properly. And why would an audience member who's never read the books find the concept cool in the first place?
...I haven't actually read more than the first issue of the comic. But you know how sometimes you walk out of a sleek big-budget anime movie certain that it all must have made sense in the manga? Yeah. I quite liked From Hell as a film, not having read the graphic novel first, so I figured a similar approach would be enough to avoid trauma. Turns out I'd have to have been ignorant of all of the original novels as well, so no help there. Methinks this is actually a mild bout of what people who grew up reading actual comics must feel about some of the superhero flicks that have come down the line recently. "Um. Um, no, you - you can't do that. ...Damn you."
Though it was quite pretty in a severely desaturated (and in fact totally not steampunk) sort of way.
Not to mince words, I have issues with the writing. It's serviceable, but it's not Alan Moore, or anyone else I'd trust with a premise that demands better. Rather, given that the idea is basically cracked-out crossover fanfic, the canons demand better. God knows I'm not actually very obdurate about these things; it's not impossible to make me accept that Dorian Gray is being blackmailed by Professor Moriarty and used to have a sweet thing with Mina Harker; but you have to make your dialogue bear at least a fleeting resemblance to the language of Wilde, Conan Doyle and Stoker, or I can't buy it. As it is I get the depressing sense that the people making the film haven't read those original books properly. And why would an audience member who's never read the books find the concept cool in the first place?
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 09:32 pm (UTC)Big explosions and as the promo spots keep stressing, Sean Connery? *ducks*
no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 02:09 am (UTC)The writing though... gods. It's like they couldn't manage period style so they're all, "what's old? hoary cliches are old!"
no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 12:49 pm (UTC)And that is why I am not going to be able to see this movie.
The preview alone made me squirm with its wrongness ("No! He's a drug addict! She's not a vampire! *Why* is there a car?") I think the film itself would make me cry.
Yah
Date: 2003-07-12 01:08 pm (UTC)Well, I hear in later comics more is revealed about Mina re: her past experiences, but those haven't come out in trade paperbacks yet.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 01:35 pm (UTC)though i sorta cheerfully ruined some of my friends interest in the series and movies by informing them that the invisible man gets sodomized by mr. hyde, but of course, we don't see anything, because the invisible man is, well, invisible.
mediocre graphic novel series with a mediocre movie.