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...

2015 Reading Challenge - Fifty Shades of Grey

I finally picked my first fill for this challenge and it's this one:

I figured, what with the film coming out and stirring up all the hype again, I should probably bite the bullet and finally read this goddamn book from start to finish. The last time I tried I couldn't get past the first page, hence it being at the bottom of my to-read list, because I do not actually want to read this. I will never get that time back. However, I'm a firm believer in not smack-talking a thing unless you've actually read the thing, so I'm going to read the thing. So. Expect a summary of my thoughts and reactions on Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L.James.

Ughhh....

I'm not looking forward to it...

2015 Reading Challenge

One of the things I've stopped doing as much since work took over is reading, which has sucked, because I've always thought that reading was awesome. I've thought that since before I could even read:

Proof!

Luckily I found this little diamond floating around Tumblr. As reading challenges go, it looks pretty interesting and I've decided not only to take it up, but to post reviews of the books I read on here. I'm going to try and read one book for every item on the list (apart from the trilogy one, for obvious reasons.) So I won't pick a book and use it to check off three different items, even though it might qualify, because I feel like that would be cheating.

Hopefully this gets me back into actually reading books, as opposed to just going on shopping sprees in Waterstones and then abandoning my purchases on already groaning bookshelves.

2015 Update

It's officially January - the month of making promises to yourself that you really, really mean to keep this time...but probably won't. For me, one such resolution was to dust off this blog. I was amazed to discover that, in spite of it being well over a year since I last posted anything, I was still logged in. I was also relieved because frankly, I've forgotten my password.

I've found gainful full time employment since my last post, so that's the big news. In October 2013, I successfully interviewed for a job at a company that provides 'Brand and Colour Management services' as a 'Quality Assessor'. What that essentially means is that a client will send us a bunch of information about how they want their packaging to look and what it needs to say. We then take all that information, check it against what the printers can and can't do, make sure it matches the client's general brand guidelines and conforms to legal requirements, change it if it doesn't, then send the client a file to approve, and if they like it, it gets printed.
It's essentially really convoluted proofreading...if proofreading involved a stage where you had to make sure that not only was everything spelled correctly, but you also had to take into consideration the potential binding methods of the book once printed. And you also had to make an educated guess as to whether or not the font used was in actual fact the font the client wanted, or just the first one that their design team had to hand, and then wonder whether you're going to get the blame for the cock up if it isn't.
It's...well...it's a decent paying job? I'm not happy doing it, but I think I've got that in common with 99% of the workforce. I've also met some absolutely brilliant people doing it, so it will always have that in it's favour, and having money is just brilliant, so I won't complain too much. It'll certainly do.

I'm still living with my mum and sister while I save up to move out, but we've had an addition to the family in Freddy, our french bulldog puppy (and the absolute light of my life):

Only Andrew Garfield has more effective brown doe eyes than this fucker...

He's transformed me into an avid dog lover faster than I could say 'Who's a good boy, then?' and I talk about him waaaaaaay too much. And yet I can't stop myself. 

(His birthday is February 14th - I kid you not, he's literally so adorable that he had to be born on Valentine's Day. And that is the first fact of many that I will be sharing over the coming months...)

I turned 24 last October, which was sobering, because I'm now less than twelve months away from being considered by the X Factor as equivalent to pensioners in terms of age category. 

I also did my very first pub crawl for a work friend's birthday last year. That doesn't sound like much but I cannot tell you the extent to which I have not partied in my life (crippling social anxiety - just what every teenage girl needs to suddenly develop when her peers are discovering alcohol!) so the fact that I a) went, and b) really bloody enjoyed myself, was pretty monumental for me. 

That's just about it, I reckon. I've found all my old drafts from when I actually wrote on this thing, so I'll polish those off and post them at some point. In the mean time, there's more New Year's resolutions to get started on, one of which is learning to drive. Oh, lordy...

In which our intrepid blogger experiences street harassment...

Today I got honked at as I was walking home from the high street. It was not awesome. I would even go so far as to say that it was uncool. Because it genuinely scared the crap out of me and I was left feeling jumpy and on edge for the rest of my journey home. I haven't felt like that in my home town for a long while. I hated it.

So yeah, I just experienced street harassment. And it's a reality for a lot of women, every day. And it made me mad because this is not my first introduction to the charming world of strange men scaring the bejeezus out of me because my being female and in their general vicinity apparently gives them the right. 

I first got cat-called when I was about 15 years old. I was walking down the very same road I was walking on today, on my way to the high street, and I was wearing knee-length denim shorts. (I know. Sexy.) 

Suddenly a lorry driver thundered past and wolf-whistled at me. I know it was me he was whistling at because I was the only person on that path, and once I'd stopped jumping out of my skin at the sudden loud noise I remember feeling this heady rush of flattery, because I didn't really get an awful lot of male attention as a teenager and at the time it felt like validation. All I wanted was to be attractive and it felt like I finally had proof that I was (and god just remembering this I want to shake my past-self by the shoulders and scream at her naivety I really do).

After that it would happen a couple of times a year, usually in summer (although not always) and that first time was the only time I felt flattered. After that initial exposure it felt like exactly what it was: an aggressive demand for my attention. Because cat-calling from a moving vehicle is not a compliment. I don't feel complimented when my heart's in my throat because some douchebag just screamed something unintelligible at me from a van window, or honked his emergency horn right in my goddamn earhole, and then continued driving past while I figure out what the hell's going on. When that happens I feel scared, because that's the natural response to sudden loud noises. And even if it is meant as a compliment (and it's not, it's really really not. Re-evaluate your definition of the word 'compliment' if you think that's the case) then I don't care. 'It's a compliment' is a blanket statement used to cover a multitude of sins because it makes us look ungrateful for objecting and I'm sick of it.

My sister works at a local pub that has a widely acknowledged, unspoken policy of only hiring good-looking bar staff. She took that as a compliment when she got the job. I took it as a sign of how the management there sees their employees - as little more than meat. Sure enough she's regularly trussed up in a variety of titillating outfits, ranging from 'Sexy Santa Shot-girl' to 'Booby Girl In Football Kit' - all in order to 'get the punters in'. She's regularly groped by colleagues and customers. The other night a guy backed her into a corner, tried to kiss her and shove his number into the waistband of her skirt, all after he and his mates had grabbed hold of her at the bar and refused to let her go until the bouncers stepped in. She is encouraged to dismiss all of this as 'banter' or 'just blokes being blokes'. And she does, because she considers herself one of the boys and she just wants to fit in. She doesn't want to seem like she can't take a joke. She doesn't want to be labelled as the bitch who ruins the party for everyone else. 

And that's how we're made to feel when we speak up about things like street harassment or workplace harassment, or any kind of harassment. Because these guys are only bothering us because we're pretty, right? And we're supposed to appreciate that, aren't we? After all, it's just a bit of fun.

Well, no, actually. It's not. It's a deliberate act of intimidation, and I'm sorry but I'd rather feel safe walking around my home town at eleven thirty in the fucking morning than be considered attractive by the kind of moron who hangs out of his car window like a baboon while his mate honks the horn. It's not funny, it's not flattering, and it just makes the world that little bit worse to live in. So kindly fuck off.

Now You See Me

Oh boy oh boy, I love it when a movie practices what it preaches!

I've been excited about Now You See Me ever since they released the promo clip of Jesse Eisenberg (or more specifically, his character, J. Daniels Atlas) performing the flashy, close-up card trick that ended up with your card lit up on the side of a building. It was smoothly done, and it was clever, and it made the promise of more to come. I have a weakness for magic tricks, and also for a good caper movie, so the fact that this movie was combining the two practically guaranteed my butt being parked in that cinema seat when the time came.

It did not disappoint.

The trailers all imply that The Four Horsemen are the main focus of the story, but this is not the case. For the majority of the movie, we follow Mark Ruffalo's Agent Dylan Rhodes as he desperately tries to catch them. This means that the audience is put in his position, watching the stunts from the outside, wondering how they did it, and wondering who can be trusted as it becomes clear that there is much more going on than a simple string of robberies.

If you're the kind of person who likes feeling smarter than the movie you're watching and enjoys picking it apart as it goes so you can guess the twist before it comes, then you and I are fundamentally different people and I don't understand why you hate that sense of wonder and surprise when a twist is genuinely unexpected. Also, this movie is not for you.
Personally, I found the final reveal at the end to be genuinely surprising and it made me grin so much that my cheeks hurt. There is a scene where Interpol Agent Alma Dray (played by the charming Mélanie Laurent) performs a card trick on Rhodes and asks him whether he felt exploited by the deception or whether it brought him a small hint of enjoyment, and this of course is the whole crux of the movie. The entire thing is permeated with set-ups and misdirection. If you think you know where a scene is going, it's because you're supposed to. Significant details are placed in view long enough for us to notice but not so much as to seem conspicuous. Clues are just obvious enough to slip under the radar, ready to pop back into your head after the event as you wonder what you missed, and it's clever without being obnoxiously clever. This movie is not afraid to make you think, and I love that. I really really love that.

Most importantly of all, this movie is fun. It's a really fun ride, thanks in no small part to it's pitch perfect casting. Jesse Eisenberg is surprisingly charismatic as the cocky J. Daniel Atlas. Woody Harrelson brings his trademark laid-back charm to mentalist Merritt McKinley, Isla Fisher is gorgeous and whip-smart as Henley Reeves, and Dave Franco gives Jack Wilder an almost terrier-like quality that serves as most of his characterisation, unfortunately. There are, of course, the behemothic talents of Micheal Caine as financial backer Arthur Tressler and Morgan Freeman as magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley, and rapper Common even makes a brief appearance as one of the Feds, but I think this movie undoubtedly belongs to Mark Ruffalo and Mélanie Laurent. I could wax poetic about the subtleties of each of their performances, but in the interests of keeping this short I'll just say that they're both wonderful. As they always are.

So yes, you should go see Now You See Me. It's a really good, enjoyable movie and we could do with more a lot more like it in cinemas.

Vampires, Werewolves and Parasols - my latest obsession.

I've just finished reading The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger, and now I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. It's been a fair while since I've experienced such severe book-hangover and I've suddenly become that friend, compulsively pushing it on everyone I know just so that I can talk to people about it.

I picked up Soulless on a whim from my library a few months ago and was completely charmed within the first few pages. The story follows heroine Alexia Tarabotti, a half-Italian Victorian gentlewoman, who has just been unexpectedly attacked by a vampire. The unexpectedness is not a result of it being a vampire - this Victorian England has embraced the supernatural enough that they form the cultural elite - but because it is such a shocking breach of etiquette. Luckily, Alexia just happens to be preternatural - without a soul - and this grants her the ability to turn supernatural creatures temporarily mortal by touching them. She thus de-fangs the vampire and overcomes it, and the subsequent investigation into why it attacked her proceeds to thoroughly upend her life as she knows it, not least because it forces her into contact with Lord Conall Maccon - head of the Bureau of Unnatural Registry, Alpha of the Woolsey werewolf pack, and an all-round insufferably abrupt Scotsman. I think you can see where this is going.

Fortunately, at no point does the book descend into merely a soppy paranormal romance. Carriger writes with her tongue firmly in-cheek throughout the series, giving the narration a strong flavour of high-camp humour and saturating it in an inescapable sense of jolly good fun. The focus is very much on the mysterious disappearances of supernaturals within London and Alexia, like all good heroines, is too nosy to let propriety get in the way of a good investigation. She is also quite prepared to wade into dangerous situations, so long as she has her trusty parasol at the ready to thwack any threats over the head. She knows her own mind - having no soul, she is indeed ruled almost exclusively by it - and she is not going to stay away from a potential lead because 'she might get hurt' or 'this is man's business'. She has an unladylike fascination with all things mechanical and the intelligence to understand the most cutting edge scientific theories, which stands her in good stead to help figure out what the devil is going on. She also, like any good Englishwoman, appreciates the miracle of a good cup of tea, and she is forever endeared to me because of it.

One of the most delightful parts of the series is the distinct threads of steampunk-inspired technology running through it. While not quite substantial enough for some purists, there is just enough present to indicate that this Victorian era is slightly different to ours (as if the supernatural population running about wasn't distinction enough) and even better is that as time progresses, we get to see the technology progress as well. Aethographers - machines that transmit telegraph-like messages via aether frequencies - are introduced as a brand new luxury technology in the second book Changeless, and are so new that they are essentially fancy toys for the rich. By the fifth book Timeless they are slightly more commonplace, with public aethographers existing as far out as Egypt. The inclusion of dirigible travel, the rising popularity of 'glassicles' and the mysterious inventor Madame LeFoux all add to the steampunk side of things, and enough detail and explanations are provided to help immerse the reader into this living, breathing universe of Carriger's creation.

My absolute favourite part, though, is the characters. That's where the true vitality of this series lies, because a nice little romp through a supernatural steampunk Victorian London is all good and well, but it's not going to matter much if you don't care what happens to the people in the story. And you do. Carriger infuses them all with their own brand of charm so skillfully that often I didn't realise a character was my favourite until they'd been placed in a position of peril and I suddenly found myself very, very scared for them. Lord Akeldama's drone Biffy was a stellar example of this, and don't even get me started on Professor Lyall (except do, because I have an awful lot of Lyall feelings that I need an outlet for). With the exception of a few downright nasty pieces of work, I fell in love with almost every character introduced for some reason or another. Ivy Hasselpenny with her bad taste in hats and tendency towards malapropisms, Lord Akeldama with his razor-sharp wit and even sharper fashion sense, the ever-stalwart and obtuse butler Floote - each was endearing on some level. I even liked the rather unlikeable Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings, although in his case I think my affections are reserved for his ridiculous name more than anything else. Still, the series is carried on a solid framework of good characters, who change and grow as events progress. Carriger writes them with such skill and subtlety that when secrets do come out, they manage to hold the appropriate element of surprise and yet nothing feels like it came completely out of the blue. There is a sense that clues were there, but you were too focused on other things at the time to notice. I'm actually quite eager to read them all over again and look for all the unassuming signs of things to come that I overlooked before.

In terms of pace, some may find the series to be a slow starter. I was fond of the first two and it wasn't until the third that my fondness was upgraded to frenzied adoration. I can't really hint at why without giving away key plot points (although the blurbs tend to be annoyingly spoileriffic if you haven't read the previous books) but the third book Blameless is where events start transpiring from which there is no going back, and suddenly no one seems safe. The pace picks up significantly from this point on and does not slow down until the very end, which is somewhat of a double-edged sword as it ups the sense of excitement but brings the finale forward much too quickly for my liking. However, the last three books are also where you can feel all the threads of the series being deftly woven together, and when it does end there is a satisfying sense of all lingering questions being answered, even if there is a bitter-sweetness to having to say goodbye so soon. Thankfully, reports indicate that Prudence, the first installment of The Parasol Protectorate Abroad, is due for release this Autumn, so those longing for more from this universe (such as my frantic self) will soon have their wishes fulfilled. I just hope it can live up to my expectations. The legacy of Alexia Tarabotti will be a tough act to follow...