The Fandom Portals Podcast
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The Fandom Portals Podcast
Did "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" End Sean Connery's Acting Career? The Truth Behind Bringing LXG to Life.
In this episode Aaron dissects the troubled production and mixed reception of the 2003 film "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" to see if it was really a flop or if it has found a second life as a cult classic. We talk about Sean Connery's essential yet controversial role, the impact on his and director Stephen Norrington's careers, and the challenges of adapting Alan Moore's beloved graphic novel.
Join us as we analyse the substantial differences between the film and the original graphic novel, particularly the unsettling change to Mina Harker's character. We uncover behind-the-scenes drama, from Connery and Norrington's notorious clashes to the severe production delays caused by Prague's flooding. Plus, get the latest scoop on the prospective Hulu reboot and how it might stack up against other series like "Penny Dreadful." Whether you’re a die-hard fan or a harsh critic, this episode offers a rich, nuanced discussion about a film that refuses to be forgotten. Share your thoughts with us—do you think "LXG" is a misunderstood gem or a justifiable disaster?
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Did Sean Connery bid farewell to Hollywood because of this infamous movie? What production nightmares turned a promising masterpiece into a missed opportunity? And was the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen really the financial disaster? Everybody says it was. All this and more on this electrifying episode of the Fandom Portal's podcast, where curiosity meets community in a celebration of all things geek. We build connections on every episode by delving into your favorite fandom questions in the time it takes you to decorate a birthday cake. Say happy birthday from me.
Speaker 1:It's Aaron here, guys, your host of the Fandom Portals podcast, with another solo episode coming at you. And today we are going to answer the question was the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a fandom flop or has it entered that cult classic status? Has it entered that cult classic status? By the end of this episode you're going to know all the things that appeal to audiences about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, how a budding piece of source material was handled for success or for failure of the film overall, and we're going to see some behind-the-scenes stuff that happened with the production, with the casting, that might shed some light on some of the rumors of this alleged career-ending movie for not only Sean Corrin but also the director, stephen Norrington. Ultimately we're looking at was it good or was it not so good? The reason we're looking at this episode was because our threads and Instagram had a discussion in our community sites and it was pretty much divided. So, from over about 120 voters, we had 49% of people saying that this movie was hot stuff and we had 51% of people saying that it absolutely was not. So it's got middling reviews everywhere, including on IMDb, where it ranks at 5.8 out of 10. On Letterboxd it's a solid 2.5 out of 10. And Rotten Tomatoes an audience score of 44%. Now, us here at the Phantom Portals podcast know that some places that do movie reviews and stuff like that on the internet aren't always accurate. We do like to take our own stuff into account, so that is why we're doing this investigation as well. Now, if you have any comments that you'd like to leave about this episode or about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, make sure you go and tag us in your comments on any social media platform. We are on them all. Use the sign at fandom portals you can find us there or even hashtag fandom portals podcast. You can find us there as well. We'd love to hear from you and we'd love to hear what you think as to whether this was a fandom flop or a cult classic, but let's get into it. Let's get into what the league of extraordinary gentlemen actually is.
Speaker 1:So if you know of the original source material, it was a graphic novel that was made by the brilliant mind of alan moore. It was a one volume graphic novel and it also was pretty successful. So it spanned a spin-off trilogy, now lost in adaptations. Dominic young on youtube credited this movie as being the thing that popularized the shared universe, this one obviously encompassing a Victorian era of characters and they had coincidentally entered the public domain, but it was almost like an Avengers style blockbuster before it became that cinematic norm for the MCU. Now, this movie was directed by Stephen Norrington, and Nick Rajanis from.
Speaker 1:Imdb describes this movie as being from a parallel Britain. At the dawn of the 20th century, the megalomaniac warmonger known as the Phantom threatens to unleash a bloody Armageddon of global proportions. Before this extreme and unstoppable menace, the experienced adventurer Alan Quatermain, played by Sean Connery, assembles a unique set of superheroes torn straight from the pages of English literature in high hopes of thwarting this madman's plan for world domination. Now a bloodthirsty vampress, a sad but sexy immortal, an elusive secret agent, an ambitious scientist, a lonely, invisible man, a savage beast and a legendary hunter are humanity's last hope. Now, as we said, this movie was headed by sean connery as alan autermain. It stars richard roxborough as m and peter wilson as mina parker. Now, this is a movie that came out in 2003 and it is obviously based on that source material created by alan moore, who has historically gone down gone down to say that he does not like many, if not any, adaptations of his work at all.
Speaker 1:So there's a little preface for you, but let's go into what my experiences with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was. In some parts of this, I might refer to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as LXG, just for my vocabulary. Basically, all right. So I first watched this movie when I was about 14 years old and I watched it quite a lot growing up. I hadn't previously read the comic books, but I knew it was based off of one of the comic books and I was pretty well drawn to the fact that this had a lot of Victorian literature like characters in it and I liked them from an early age, and that is thanks to the Page Master. If you've seen that movie with Macaulay Culkin, it is a wonderful masterpiece you should go and check out. It had all of the different types of English literature characters in there and it really sort of solidified my love for them.
Speaker 1:Not only that, but also whenever I would go and visit my nan's house, there'd be black and white movies on the tv, including like Moby Dick, the Invisible man, treasure Island, war of the Worlds and they always felt adventurous. They always felt like otherworldly. It always felt like something that I could really sink my teeth and dive into. When I watched this movie, my favorite characters were Tom Sawyer and Alan Quartermain. They were my favorites and I liked that mentor-mentee kind of relationship. And it surprised me to know that that actually wasn't present in the comic books, with Tom Sawyer being an adapted character made specifically for the film, the reason for that being that the American producers thought that American audiences couldn't possibly get behind a movie that didn't have an American protagonist in it, so they invented the character of Tom Sawyer for this movie.
Speaker 1:Now the movie is Action Abound and during the time in 2003, it was kind of like a precursor to the Avengers movies, but it came out around the same time as the X-Men movie and Spider-Man movie, and it came out a year before Hellboy. So those sort of superhero movie blockbusters were really starting to be well known, and those were very much well known for their action sequences as opposed to their dark and gritty content, which is very much the case for its source material. It's very dark, very gritty and that sort of wasn't landing with audiences at the time. So they went in the direction of a more action-filled blockbuster. Now, when I got older, I started to branch out from superhero comics that I was reading to something new. As I got older my taste got more mature, you might say.
Speaker 1:Say so I started looking at some of Alan Moore's work. Now his stuff isn't for the faint of heart. I will give you that warning. If you are going to read it, make sure you go into the mindset of thinking. You know this does contain a lot of unfair racial stereotypes. It does have some drug and alcohol use within them and it also has some pretty violent and sexual based crimes throughout them as well. So if you are going to look at the source material, there's a little warning of content stuff for you in there as well. Alan Moore does create a really entertaining story. You cannot deny that. His narrative mind is a really brilliant one. It's definitely for mature readers, and I read this after I saw the movie. I will say that because, from what I've seen from our threads and Instagram community, if you were a person who read this source material first and then saw the movie, you were rightly sorely disappointed due to the vast differences between the two. So let's go into what was right about this movie.
Speaker 1:What was the good things about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film when it did come out? So I think this was a really great precursor to the Avengers movies. It had a unique concept and I think everybody really could get behind the shared universe of seeing all of these literary characters come together under one banner to fight an ultimate evil. It's obviously a system that works, because it had worked a few years later in the MCU and everybody that was involved in those movies in terms of the characters had that rich backstory that everybody came to the film either knowing a little bit or a lot about. So you already had that sort of buy-in for some of these characters that allowed you to go in and basically enjoy a movie with some well-known characters in it going on a new adventure. So I think, also one of the greatest things about this, and one of the things that the fandom sort of got behind, was the fact that these movies had some pretty good entertainment value. It had some pretty cinematic moments and it was kind of a really well quotable movie, uh, the entertainment value being the high-end action sequences, the special effects. There was all the it's basically explosion fatigue by the end of it. The cinematic moments include long combat scenes, some witty and fun, if not cliche, dialogue, which is definitely really quotable as well.
Speaker 1:I think that this was a movie that was bulging with potential, especially with the rich sources of characters and the fact that Alan Moore did actually make three more volumes from this that turned into a trilogy. So the potential for source material and content was all there, as well as just creating adventures for these characters within the space as it existed already. So talking about what went wrong in this, this film, so, as I said before, most of the people that seem to have a problem with this movie were people that had already invested in alan moore's work. They went into the cinema expecting this dark, gritty experience. That was the league of extraordinary gentlemen graphic novel now, the main thing that was wrong with the film, according to these film goers, was the characterization issues that were abound throughout the film.
Speaker 1:Not many of the characters represented in Stephen Norrington's piece of work actually resembled many of the characters in Alan Moore's graphic novel, most notably Mina Harker, the vampirist played by Peter Wilson. So in the movie Mina Harker is kind of she's pretty highly sexualized and she is hit on by a lot of the male protagonists to the point where she's kind of given this damsel in distress kind of moniker throughout. Even though they did attempt to give her some pretty awesome vampiric powers, that was revealed like at the drop of a hadeson. She got into some serious trouble. In the comic book Mina Harker is actually quite a capable member of the team. She is in fact one of the main protagonists, if not the leader. She's the one that was contacted by Campion Bond to actually form the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the first place and go against the mastermind known as M. Now Mina Harker, throughout the first volume of Alan Moore's novels, was not revealed to have any powers that were vampiric nature. She was, however, very capable, she was very intelligent, she was tactical. She was even able to assist some of the male characters in some of their more debilitating character flaws. For example, alan Quartermain within the comic books was actually an opium addict and only was able to get through that addiction phase was because Mina Harker sort of isolated him and made him go through that withdrawal process before he was then able to come out and be a useful member of the team.
Speaker 1:So the fact that Mina Harker was reduced to a femme fatale basically in the 2003 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film was kind of a point of contention for some of the film goers as well, not to mention the fact that the spotlight of the movie was given to Alan Quartermain, who was played by Sean Connery. Obviously, the drawing card for the film was the fact that they had this big actor playing the role of Alan Quartermain. They did give him quite a substantial part of the budget, so I think it was 17 or 18 million dollars that he was given to play the role and obviously it was starring him as the member of the league who formed the league and took that title character away from kind of Mina Harker. But yes, with an estimated budget of about 78 million US dollars, sean Connery got 17 million of that. So it made sense that they were going to make him star in it and become the protagonist that everybody was looking at, not to mention the fact that he had a pretty substantial filmography before that. He was a drawcard for many.
Speaker 1:So the next reason that filmgoers were pretty disgruntled with the LXG was because that the special effects and the CGI were inconsistently bearable and also unbearable. So obviously we can all remember the ending scene where the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen infiltrate the base of M to find that all of their superpowers had been in fact stolen and other versions of themselves were created, where they then had to fight other versions of themselves, most notably the character of Hyde having to fight the CGI version of himself. Hyde, now, the original Hyde, who was played by Jason Fleming, was actually wearing prosthetics for his role as Henry Jekyll. However, the counterpart to his character, who we saw in M Space at the end, was actually CGI, and I think we can all agree that that was definitely not a very well manufactured CGI enemy. That is juxtaposed with the CGI that they used to create Tony Curran's Rodney Skinner.
Speaker 1:Now, during the process, rodney Skinner or Tony Curran rather had to wear a blue morph suit in order for them to sort of delete out his features and give him that invisible appearance. You see the scene where he's introduced and he's applying that cream to his face and for the time of 2003, that was that was pretty good CGI to the point where, as he's running through the library during the scene when the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were actually gathered together, you can see him stripping off his clothes, in terms of his jacket and his top hat and his glasses, and he actually gets a glass of whiskey, throws it in his face and that all then dissipates until he becomes invisible during the mess and firefight that is happening throughout this place. Now, that kind of CGI inconsistency didn't sit well with the fans of the movie or the moviegoers and it was actually kind of surprising to me from looking at the behind the scenes docu-mini series that's on YouTube, referenced in the show notes below, that a lot of the physical effects were actually quite well done in terms of the car chase scene through Venice, now that Venice was actually physically built, it was a model that they had to use and then reset after each take in order for them to get those sort of explosion sets right. All of the city buildings that you see that begin collapsing. They're all able to be like, risen once again and reset for the next take to take place. It was also surprising for me to note that a lot of the car chase scenes during that venice sequence was actually done by a miniatures and a remote control vehicle where the the speed at which the car was moving was actually incredibly increased so that the frame rate of the the film would be would look accurate during the filming. Uh, the visual effects look accurate during the filming.
Speaker 1:The visual effects were used during the sinking of Venice scene Because it was cheaper and it was quicker to produce. They could also use multiple camera angles If they used the physical prop instead of the CGI and they took this sort of idea Because it gave them more control over the aesthetic look and they were able to scale the vehicle down and maneuver it more effectively than they would if they actually had to drive that creation in real life. So that creation uh noted by uh, shane west, the person who played tom sawyer. He said it was incredibly hard to drive and when they had to pull off that 360 after he came out of the nautilus, that took multiple takes to do as well, because it was just a hefty and hulking looking vehicle and it probably wouldn't be able to maneuver in the way that it was portrayed to in real life. Obviously, we know that Hollywood does take some sensibilities, but I think that overall those physical effects were done quite well.
Speaker 1:What I didn't like about those physical effects was when you saw characters jumping out of this vehicle. They would simply just stand still, no inertia taking effect at all, and that sort of dispels, the suspension of disbelief. For me, like the 65 year old Sean Connery, alan Quatermain, jumping out of a vehicle and just landing directly on his two feet, just, and then going to chase down heaps of these guys, just completely took me aback. So the next thing, and probably the most famous reason that this movie has been said to not land with its critics, was because there was some directorial and cast issues in the form of Sean Connery and Stephen Norrington. Now, both of these creators actually went on to not make another film in terms of their either acting wise or directorial.
Speaker 1:So Stephen Norrington, previously the director of the Blade film, which is why he was so heavily interested in doing this film, because it was kind of in a similar vein, a similar genre, and that superhero sort of classic movie that he'd made in Blade was highly successful. So they thought this was a shoe in for him and with Sean Connery his time on this film has been noted to be quite a bothersome one has been noted to be quite a bothersome one. He was obviously given most of the budget and it has been noted that Norrington and he didn't get along in many of the scenes of the film. It's been noted by a couple of the cast members, including Jason Fleming from before that it seemed like Big Sean, as he calls him, kind of wasn't getting along great with Stephen Norrington and it's been noted by Fleming and other cast members that Connery was sort of just taking this as a money gig and it seemed like he only wanted to be out there playing golf anyway. Now Connery took this role initially because it has been widely said that he had declined the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings and the role of Morpheus in the Matrix because he didn't get the script and he couldn't commit to the filming schedule in New Zealand filming the three Lord of the Rings movies back to back. So he took the role of Alan Quatermain, even though he said at the time he didn't really fancy it to start with and he thought it was a little bit tricksy, but in the end he didn't want to pass up on another opportunity like the ones he'd missed before and he saw this as having some potential and he ended up taking the role.
Speaker 1:It is rumored that Stephen Norrington and Sean Connery got into some pretty steep verbal confrontations during the film. It has been alluded that sometimes it's gone on to talk about some physical incursions as well, but these are only hearsay and probably exasperated in hyperbole. Now, connery does agree as well, however, that the comic is extremely different from the film and he said that was kind of an intentional choice because the film needed to. The film grossed about $179 million worldwide. That's pretty good in terms of its time, considering it kind of costs $78 million to make and to compare that with some things that sort of came out today, it's made more than the movie If starring Ryan Reynolds. It's made more than Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling, and it's even made more than Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling and it's even made more than Furiosa in 2024. During its time, it made more than Freaky Friday and Daredevil and it only made $1 million less than Kill Bill in 2003. So, as a financial success on paper, yes, it was a financial success, however, in the eyes of the audience and the appeal rating probably not so.
Speaker 1:Jason Fleming and Stuart Townsend were interviewed a little bit after the movie came out those two playing Henry Jackal and Dorian Gray and they kind of were asked about the contentious relationship between Sean and Stephen, and Jason Fleming's gone down as saying that he thinks that Sean Connery's instincts were right and they kind of deserve to be listened to in some of the scenes, as he's a big Hollywood actor, he's been on lots of sets before. But he also went on to say that Norrington was a really creative director and he'd made films like this before and he had the filmmakers kind of opinion that sort of also needed to be listened to. And Jason Fleming basically said that each was not listened to by the other enough and for that matter, the studio didn't listen to either of them enough either. Townsend, who plays Dorian Gray, has said that he doesn't think that Sean Connery quit acting as a result of this movie. He doesn't think it's true. He said that his passion had kind of definitely left during this stage and he was kind of only there as a money gig. That being said, however, both Norrington and Sean Connery quit the industry after this movie. So whether this was the straw that broke the camel's back or if it was just time to say goodbye for both, I guess we'll never know.
Speaker 1:So, aside from that, some of the biggest issues with this film was that it actually faced quite a few production dramas. They had a hard time finding a writer to start with, because the lore for each of the characters was quite extensive and the producers wanted someone familiar with all of those literary adaptations, to the point where they said that that person pretty much has to be British. When they found the director of Stephen Norrington, they were quite chuffed, and they also didn't think they'd get the actor of Sean Connery to agree, which is why he was given the hefty pay packet as well. Now, production, as I said, was kind of a drama, as the movie was shot in Prague and then some scenes were shot in Africa. It was supposed to take about 20 weeks to do. However, following some intense rainfall across Europe in the summer of 2022, in Prague the worst floods, apparently, in a century the floods actually destroyed about $7 million worth of sets, so financially it was a huge bind and they had to kind of leave Malta oh sorry, they had to leave everything and go to Malta and spent way too long filming bits that weren't sort of scheduled to be filmed yet, and then they had to rebuild the sets in Prague. When they went back to Prague and Townsend, who plays Dorian Gray, has gone on to say that it was kind of like coming back and doing another movie on top of the one that you just did. It was like working on two sets and there was kind of no finish date in sight and it made the relationships with the cast on there. It made them to feel sort of tired and as easy with the process as it was dragging on and taking forever to shoot the film. Easy with the process as it was dragging on and taking forever to shoot the film. So where does that leave the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Now Most of our fandom portals community had one of two things to say.
Speaker 1:They either said it was a good popcorn flick which was fun to view just on a rainy day and it was a great concept that was really poorly executed. Or they say that it was a hard watch, that it doesn't hold up to some of the problematic elements within the story, that its plot itself is kind of disjointed. There's too many twists and turns throughout for them to keep up with. They've made it unnecessarily complex. There was also some users that said that the CGI was just unbearable for them to watch.
Speaker 1:Now, in terms of this intellectual property making a resurgence, it has been noted in May of 2022 that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is, in fact, getting a TV series reboot on Hulu. However, there has been no news of that since May of 2022. It is rumored that the writer of Red Sparrow, justin Haidt, will be penning a script. Now. It is also said that it is owned by 20th Century Fox, which is now Disney, and it was also rumored to have been an all-female lead, which would lead me to believe that Mina Hark would once again be taking the title role of the character back, which would be great to see as well. It'd also be more faithful to the comics, which would mean that people wouldn't see a renewing of Tom Sawyer or the character of Dorian Gray, who was also inserted just for the film, and, again, the last news of that was that it was in very, very early development in 2002.
Speaker 1:There's obviously some very similar stories to this out there that you can watch as well, some of them, a very, very loose example being Penny Dreadful, which was available for quite some time starring Eva Green, timothy Dalton and Josh Harnett, and that came out in 2014, and there is quite a few seasons of that I believe that you can sink your teeth into. It does have that darker kind of motif that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is known for. It is, however, not a direct story in regards to its content being inspired by the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is known for. It is, however, not a direct story in regards to its content being inspired by the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It just similarly has some Victorian era characters working through a fictitious Britain, victorian era, to take down a really bad big evil person.
Speaker 1:With the new TV series supposedly developed by Hulu, there is no word on any director or any casting director, or there isn't even a potential release date. So whether it's still a project that is ongoing or whether the curse of the league of extraordinary gentlemen still exists to this day, it does seem like a lot of alan moore's work is strictly for comic book. It doesn't really translate well to, uh, to the big silver screen. I am enthusiastic to see what they do with this intellectual property of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen if they are to remake something in the future, because, as I said before, I think it is a really powerful piece of fandom culture. It has a lot of potential in terms of its shared universe, its rich, vibrant history and background of characters, and also just the idea of setting something in the turn of the century or starting of the world wars that kind of era where technology isn't so great but the biggest weapons that anybody can have is the people that exist during that time. It's also pretty encouraging that obviously CGI and technology has increased since the year of 2003. So maybe we will get a more accurate looking or less clunky looking version of Dr Jacqueline, mr Hyde and even some of the technological vehicles that Captain Nemo possesses as well. So I guess 20 years on you could say that the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen doesn't really live up to its bad rap. Financially at least, it's not quite that bad and it's certainly no worse or no better than some of the CGI powered studio films of that time. I do think it's worth a watch if you wanted to sit down and watch something entertaining for an afternoon. Now it is able to be accessed on Disney Plus. You can get some graphic novels of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from Amazon. All of those will be in the show notes below.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you guys for listening to this solo episode of the Fandom Portals podcast. Now, these do take a little bit of work to put together in terms of research and also filming, so I would really, really appreciate it if you guys could tell a friend about this or share the episode announcements on social media, or the biggest thing that you could do to help is to rate and review the podcast on your podcast app of choosing. So that goes a really long way in terms of helping creators like us, and if you're on YouTube, definitely click that like or subscribe. And if you didn't know and you're listening to this on podcast, we also have a YouTube. Go and check that out. You can see. You know everything that you've just seen, but also I've got some nice visuals up there for you to see too. So definitely come and check it out and we will be active on social media. As always, we will connect with respect. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you.
