I’m not even sure The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen warrants a review, because it’s not like I loved it or hated it. I just spent the whole movie fighting sleep. The guy next to me actually lost the fight.

As expected, LXG suffered from the comparison with the graphic novel (fancy way to say long comic book) from which it was inspired. I do think those who haven’t read it will enjoy the movie more, because it will be their first exposure to the neat premise, but I still doubt the film can hold their interest beyond that.

In the comic book, most of the characters, taken from classical literature, are past their prime, and are now battling demons of some kind or another. Mina Harker has just narrowly escaped death in some dubious circumstances, Dr Jekyll is struggling with his inner monster Hyde, Alan Quatermain is addicted to opium, and when they find the invisible man, he is busy serial-raping girls in a convent. It was mainly that moral ambiguity that made the characters so interesting. As expected, they scrubbed the characters completely clean for the movie and, well, they lost all their colors in the wash.

Storywise, although the story in the comic is rather straightforward, and not the most original idea ever written, the movie has completely replaced it with one even more asinine and forced.

Visually, some will say it isn’t fair to compare the look of a comic book with that of a movie, but I disagree. There have been plenty of movies that achieved the atmosphere of a comic (Batman looked wonderful, even if there wasn’t much else in it).

Now, it’s not that I expect a screen adaptation to be absolutely identical to the original material, but I do expect there to be a sound reason behind decisions to change things, even if it’s simply that “it works better on screen that way”. Sadly, none of the beautiful designs of the book found their way into the movie, although it’s obvious that considerable money went into it. The design of Captain Nemo’s ship Nautilus was absolute vanilla, and there is no reason why that should have been. I mean, it’s CG.

Other visual effects were sometimes good, often uneven. For example, the invisible man looked really different when he was CG than when they filmed a guy with makeup on. I won’t spoil any plot elements, but look at Hyde and his “friend” for the same unevenness.

There are some actors whose presence in the cast is often a sign that the movie will be good. Sean Connery isn’t one of them. Add LXG to Avengers and Highlander II among his questionable decisions. Mark Wahlberg is actually better at picking roles!

Add clumsily written dialog, a villain that belongs in Army of Darkness, remove any logic to the story, and there you have it: a really good premise, wasted.