LXG - A Comparison

This post contains spoilers for the 2003 movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and for the comic book series of the same name by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.

I loved The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when it first came out on VHS. I was 14 years old and a huge fan of explosions and Shane West's face, so I was more or less the movie's ideal audience. I was so into it that I even read all the related fanfic (and wow, the Tom Sawyer/Dorian Gray pairing was an eye opener at the time) but it wasn't until very recently that I got around to reading the comic book series that inspired it. I'd never read anything by Alan Moore before, and I think it's fair to say that the movie did not prepare me at all for what it was going to be like. My expectations were for a more violent and adult tale, naturally, but…wow. Just wow.

The Allan Quatermain of Moore's interpretation is introduced in an opium den: emaciated, broken and - most significantly - a wasted shadow of the adventurer he used to be. Compared to Sean Connery's crotchety-yet-still-charming Quatermain, he is quite a shock. 
The movie version is reportedly the way he is because Connery refused to play a drug addict (although I've long lost any source to back that up), but I suspect there was far more ego involved than that. Moore's Quatermain is frail and pathetic, with his opium addiction placing higher than anything else on his list of priorities - heroics included. His poor health proves a considerable hindrance, and he is far less useful to the League than Nemo, Hyde and their invisible man Griffin. 
He is not even the leader of the League - that honor is given to Mina Murray. So I would argue that Connery's more capable and commanding Quatermain is the result of professional vanity more than anything else. ‘I hate getting old’, he remarks as he has to pause to put on glasses, before shooting down a fleeing attacker from a seemingly impossible distance. Meanwhile Moore’s Quatermain can barely hit anything due to the shaking of his hands from opium withdrawal. A tragic figure of spent glory Connery’s Quatermain is not. He’s James Bond still, with considerably greyer hair and less gadgets.

If movie Quatermain benefits a little from his Hollywood makeover, then it comes at the expense of Wilhelmina Harker. As already mentioned, Connery's Quatermain receives the mantle of leadership that was given to Mina (or Miss Murray, as she is more frequently addressed) in the comics. Moore's Mina is a woman traumatised following the events of Bram Stoker's Dracula. She is divorced from her husband and disgraced by the assault she suffered at Dracula's hand, and yet she stands tall, confident in her ability to manage the team of monsters and criminals she has been asked to assemble. She is brave, proud, and parries every misogynistic remark Quatermain makes with wit and gusto. Her response to Henry Hyde is to stand her ground and scold him like a misbehaving child...and that actually works! She takes absolutely zero per cent of anyone’s nonsense and she will get shit done regardless of society’s notions regardingthe capabilities of her gender, and I absolutely adore her. 
In the film, however, she first suffers a demotion from leader to token female character (because of course a leading woman will never fill as many seats in the cinemas as Sean Connery smirking his way through the script.) She then receives a far more 'sympathetic' back story: instead of suffering disgrace through divorce, she is now a widow, and her presence in the League is justified not by her experiences and character alone, but through her new status as a vampire. 'Vamp' is unfortunately the summation of her characterisation in the movie, as her significance is reduced down to a leather-clad lust object for Tom Sawyer and Dorian Grey to compete over. Yes, she kicks more butt (or should that be 'eviscerates more throats'?) but she's not a character. She's a male fantasy.

Actual scene from the actual movie. Yes, she's making the noises you think she is.

(Credit has to be given to Peta Wilson, though - she brings as much dignity to Mina as possible, and her Sean Connery impression remains one of the film's comic highlights.)

Interestingly, despite being key characters in the film, neither Tom Sawyer nor Dorian Grey appear at all in Moore's League. It's reported that Sawyer was added to the film to give American audiences someone to identify with, in case they felt alienated by all these stuffy English literary icons. He pretty much gatecrashes the plot and cowboys his way through the rest of it, hooting and shooting and giving Shane West all the opportunities in the world to sullenly pout from beneath his perfectly feathered blonde mop. He also provides Quatermain with an extra character arc of fatherly redemption as he succeeds in saving Sawyer where he failed to save his own son. It's very moving. And also very, very cliché. 

Dorian Grey, on the other hand, acts as a slippery, cynical foil to Saywer's gung-ho earnestness. Like the original character from Oscar Wilde's novel, he is a man at the mercy of his greatest, darkest secret - the portrait that takes all physical evidence of his sins upon itself and allows him to remain untouched by the ravages of time. Unlike in Wilde's novel, this has been translated into some kind of superpower-level of invincibility. Wounds magically disappear from his body. There is one particularly memorable scene where his is Swiss-cheesed with gunfire, purely so the camera can linger on his naked chest as he calmly waits for the bullets to pop back out again.

You're welcome.

He also, for some reason, has an unexplained but much-played-upon romantic history with Mina. This adds nothing to the plot other than weird sexual tension and an instant rivalry with Sawyer. I will, however, limit my complaints about it as in the comics Mina strikes up an affair with Quatermain which I neither understand nor appreciate and frankly, feel a little ill just remembering it.
Yet Dorian's addition in terms of the film's plot serves as a nice contrast to that of Saywer's. Where Sawyer provides a solid vein of plucky young heroism and some heart-warming father/son moments for Quatermain, Dorian Gray is the other side of the coin, as he ultimately betrays the League in exchange for the safe return of his legendary portrait. Readers of the graphic novel would have expected their invisible man Skinner to be the viper in the nest, as Griffin was in the comics, and indeed the film plays up to this, so when it is revealed to be Dorian who betrayed them it is genuinely a surprise.

One character who does remain remarkably similar to their graphic novel counterpart is Captain Nemo. Both incarnations are steadfast, serious and scientifically brilliant. They both retain a prickly attitude towards Allan Quatermain and his colonial exploits, having personally suffered at similar hands, and both keep the protection of innocent lives at the foreground of their motivations. The movie version is far more versed in martial arts than Moore's incarnation, but then it is Hollywood. At least he didn't get the Mina Harker treatment of a sexier costume.

Character consistency!

I also discovered while doing some background research that in keeping Captain Nemo much the same as he was in the comics, and by reflecting that in their casting, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen made cinematic history. Naseeruddin Shah, from what I can tell, is so far the only Indian actor to play Captain Nemo on-screen. He is also only the third non-white actor to play him. This might not seem like that big of a deal, apart from the fact that before he renounced all human society and became Captain Nemo, he was Prince Dakkar, the son of an Indian Raja. The adjective 'dusky' aka 'that word they used in the 19th century to mean definitely-not-white' is used in the books to describe him. His hatred of imperialism, inspired by his suffering at the hands of the British Empire, is a pretty big driving force of his character. So it's noticeable that Captain Nemo has appeared on-screen a total of seventeen times and the only time they accurately portrayed his race was in this big dumb Hollywood ensemble.

Anyway, the role as provider of the League's breathtaking modes of transportation is carried over from page to screen, and Nemo's famous vessel the Nautilus is key to this. I remember being thoroughly impressed by the movie's beautiful, sleek design. 'The sword of the ocean' is how Nemo introduces her, and it's an apt description. She's elegant, ornate and cuts through the sea like a blade. I imagine bringing it to life must have been where the majority of the film's budget went (after Connery's salary, of course).

However, I've now seen the Nautilus as envisaged by Kevin O'Neill, and that version is so much cooler!

I'm not as familiar with Jules Verne's original tales of Captain Nemo as I am with some of the other characters, but I do recall that the Nautilus is attacked by a giant squid and that Nemo loses crew members to that attack, for whom he grieves. Bearing that in mind, I think it's such a statement to have the Nautilus look like that which its crew fears, and this version is more at one with the ocean, as Nemo considers himself to be. It is fearsome before it is beautiful. Also, you can't see it in the picture, but this version has prehensile mechanical tentacles. I feel that needs no further explanation, because that's just awesome. 

In essence, the two different versions of the Nautilus symbolise the difference in spirit between the film and the original comics. The film is slick and slightly sanitised, but ultimately concerned with showing off and leaving the audience entertained. It gives the people what it thinks they want, and that's fun. The comics are a darker beast, wanting to expose an ugly, visceral underbelly to all these classic characters. Its monsters are more monsterous - Henry Hyde in particular is a more prominent and repulsive figure, having all but completely consumed Jekyll under Moore's handling. The scene where he takes vengeance on Griffin for his betrayal of the League is particularly harrowing, as Hyde cheerfully brutalises and rapes him and then calmly sits down to dinner with the others. Griffin's blood begins to slowly bloom across his shirt as the visibilty begins to return, indicating that he is finally dead. Compare this to the Hyde of the film, who is implied to have murdered a few prostitutes off screen but ultimately just verbally abuses Dr Jekyll a bit, still needs the formula to make an appearance and just uses his strength to save others in a way that can almost be recognised as heroic. The two are almost completely different characters, in very different worlds, and that's the very crux of the comparison. 

In the film, you cheer. In the comics, you flinch. I found I didn't enjoy one above the other, as the experiences were of entirely different natures - it would be like enjoying a Twix bar more than an expertly grilled steak. There are issues with both, but they are products of their medium. A Hollywood blockbuster was never going to have the same scope as a graphic novel, just as the comic series was never going to be as unapologetically dumb as the movie. I would recommend checking out both, though. Just choose appropriately according to your current mood...