No, not the version from the horrible League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie. This one (according to Variety, again via Ain't It Cool News) is a new adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.Craig (Scooby Doo, Cheaper by the Dozen) Titley is the writer, and though his filmography isn't impressive, his take on the property is sound. He's writing it as a period piece set at the time the novel was written and promises to "put some of the novel's classic scenes that have never been filmed in any version onto the big screen for the first time. That and a few surprises along the way."
The "surprises" comment may concern purists, but frankly, I've never met a purist when it comes to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Everyone I've ever talked to about the book agrees with me that it's an overly long, tedious read with a weird ending. There are some cool sequences along the way though, so if Titley can bring those to life while making the rest of it more exciting, it could be a cool movie.
Either way, it'll be interesting to see how they cast Nemo. If he'll be an Eastern fellow as depicted in Verne's sequel The Mysterious Island, or Western like in the Disney movie.
2 comments:
This has the potential to be really cool, if they avoid all the period costume drama crap that the recent TV versions seemed to revel in.
And I'm not embarrassed to admit that I liked the LEAGUE movie. However, I love love love the comic book. They're two different things; if the Moore work had not existed, I think more people would have viewed LEAGUE as a blast. A flawed blast, but a good time nonetheless.
I'm not so upset that movie League wasn't faithful to Alan Moore's version. What got me was that some of the characters were so essentially different from their original source versions. Especially Mina Harker and Mr. Hyde.
If it hadn't been for that, I'd agree that it was a flawed, but fun summer flick, but Mina is one of my favorite literary heroines and I hated seeing her turned into a generic vampire. Mina triumphed in Dracula in spite of having to operate within the confines of her role as a Victorian woman. Van Helsing and the others were idiots compared to her. I saw none of that intelligence or elegance in the LXG version of her.
And Hyde is supposed to be the freakin' ESSENCE of everything that's evil in a man. How does he become a good guy?
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