Somehow It’s Been Twenty Years Since ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ Came Out

Picture this. You get the rights to a beloved comic by a famously reclusive comic book writer who has hated every adaptation of his work with maybe like two exceptions. You somehow convince Sean Connery to be the lead because he was so worried about missing out on another Lord of the Rings scale franchise because he didn’t understand the script. And you somehow end up with a critically middling review, a degree of financial success, and a premise that somehow still sounds fascinating. Welcome to a retrospective of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003). LXG, if you’re nasty. Picture This: It is the early 2000s, and you and your immediate family are on vacation. After a long day of vactioneering, you are in your hotel watching television and stumble on the start of a movie: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the opening moments, your parents recognize Sean Connery as the lead, Allan Quartermain, and the quick descent into fast paced action seems entertaining. Suddenly, a mysterious M figure appears from the shadow, and then there’s a team up involving a submariner named Captain Nemo (you, a child, immediately thinks of Pixar’s Finding Nemo and not 20,000 League Under the Sea), a vampire, an invisible man (that one you do recognize as a literary figure).

But before you get too comfortable with the already inherent weirdness of a motley crew of pseudo-literary figures on a saber shaped ship, Special Agent Tom Sawyer shows up a…