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League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Trailer 360

An anonymous reader notes that the League of Extraordinary Gentleman Trailer is on apple.com. It's in quicktime. And since I'm downloading at under 3k a second, I'll let others comment on it. Here's hopin'
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League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Trailer

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  • I had the trailer in 20 seconds...

    Maybe you should finally get rid of that 36.6Kbit/s Modem...

    Yeah, trailer looks good-- but what is it? Am I supposed to know that?

    • by Anonymous Coward
      Good to know /. still has the requisite number of arrogant losers hanging around. Your comment is right up there with "Let them eat cake."
      • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @12:52PM (#5314195) Journal
        Your comment is right up there with "Let them eat cake."
        Actually, "let them eat cake" is a missquote. When Marie Antoinette was told that the peasents had no bread, she replied 'Why don't they eat brioche', since in the royal family brioche had always been availible when the bread had run out. It was not an arrogant statement, simply one which showed how utterly removed from the real world she was.
        • "That's what Marie Antoinette said before giving the Ultimate Head." -Robin Williams
        • "Let them eat cake" is a slander against Marie-Antoinette, and an especially heinous one because she took a very active role in trying to relieve the famine in France.

          Jean-Jacques Rousseau attributed the words to "a great princess" in his "Confessions" which was written about three years before Marie-Antoinette arrived in France in 1770. So she couldn't have been the original source of the quote.

          The situation gets more interesting than that. Under French law, bakers were obliged to sell certain bread products at a fixed price. To prevent the obvious trick of baking only a few cheap rolls then using the bulk of the flour to make expensive products, the law obligated the bakers to sell more expensive products at the cheaper price if the cheap rolls ran out.

          "Let them eat cake" was far from a sign of indifference or ignorance, it was a very humanitarian call: the bread shortage could be alleviated if the law was enforced against profiteering bakers.

          But alas history is written by the victors, and the French Revolutionaries had a vested interest in making Marie-Antoinette seem foolish and callous.

          --
          Steven
  • Foolish Title (Score:3, Informative)

    by Yurian ( 164643 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:08AM (#5313624) Homepage
    Can't help but think they messed up naming this one - everyone (in the UK anyway) is going to confuse it with the League of Gentlemen - a very twisted black comedy.
    • Well, it IS named after a comic book series, so I think it would be messing up to name it something else. But maybe that's just me. :P
    • Re:Just the link (Score:2, Informative)

      by ahaning ( 108463 )
      That's just a reference file. What I've done in the past for downloading the full file is to get ethereal for Windows (you'll also need winpcap). Then, start a capture. Start the movie streaming. Wait a second or two. Then, stop the capture and find a packet that was going to or from your machine and the apple streaming server. Right-click on that packet and select "Follow TCP stream". You'll get a window that shows the data that went between the apple server and your machine. One machine's data will be in a reddish color, the other in blue. Save this as a text file (or copy-paste into notepad). At one point, you'll see a line for what server your machine went to. Nearby, you'll see GET /some/path/movie.mov where "/some/path" is a long directory path to the movie.mov. Put these two parts together, append "http://" and use wget or whatever to download the movie.

      Simple ;-)
    • Re:Just the link (Score:5, Informative)

      by James Lanfear ( 34124 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:27AM (#5313694)
      That only gave me a 1K... something (I assume it's supposed to switch me to the trailer stream, but I'm using mplayer so it didn't work too well). The full trailer is available here [akamai.net].
      • If you have quicktime working in mplayer under linux and you use Mozilla for browsing, you might want to check this out:

        http://www.webfreetv.com/linux/ [webfreetv.com]

        Its a plugin that uses mplayer for quicktime on the web. It works pretty well for most of the trailers that I have tried it for. (Worked for this trailer, for instance)

        If you have another plugin that handles quicktime (I was using plugger, which seldom worked) you will have to locate the plugin, rename it (xxx.so.OLD or some such) edit pluggerrc (if you use that) and start Mozilla. This removes Mozilla's "dependence" on the old plugin. Then, you close Moz, add the new plugin, rename the old plugin (if you were using plugger) back to its original name and start Moz. It should work, then. I would advise patience when you first try it out as the plugin gives no indication that it's downloading the movie. Pick a small, low res version to start out with.
  • by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:09AM (#5313626) Journal
    Name is kinda weird, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (sounds more like a Monte Python parody) but the trailer looked pretty damn good. A bit gothic, but good.
  • LXG! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nathan Brazil ( 13299 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:14AM (#5313651) Homepage Journal
    I saw the trailer before Daredevil, and I have to say, this could be incredibly good, or it can be the worst thing ever to grace the silver screen, beyond the badness of Batman and Robin. There will be no halfways on this thing.

    I was really psyched by the various characterizations, though; they seemed spot-on. And the voiceover sounds like they kept the, um, moral ambiguity aspect of the Alan Moore stuff. Hopefully he had a large hand in the story/script...

    Too bad Sean Connery is such a bigger star than anyone else; this means that the center of the story is likely to be Alan Quatermain, rather than, um, whatsherface. I wonder if he will be the leader, just because of the star power present there...
    • Re:LXG! (Score:2, Funny)

      by jcdick1 ( 254644 )
      "whatsherface"?

      Yes, I suppose he will be the star of the show, but for some of us, the opportunity to see Peta Wilson of La Femme Nikita all vamped out is definitely something to look forward to!

    • From the few frames I saw of an incredibly bad model of the Bank of England falling over incredibly badly, I'm tempted to err on the side of "the worst thing ever".

      Cinematography looks reasonably good, though (a bit Dark City-ish), so maybe not all bad...
  • by bguilliams ( 68934 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:14AM (#5313652)
    The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book written by Alan Moore. The movie is extremely loosely based upon the first six issues, which comprise the first volume. The movie, due to its rather frightening changes, has a rather high suck-potential, but the trailer gave me hope.

    The comic books are very good, however. Alan Moore has read every book ever written. And he really likes the ones written in and about Victorian England. In the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen reality, just about every book and character ever written is real. The level of detail is astounding. Check it out.

    B.
    • by 17028 ( 122384 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:24AM (#5313689)
      Kudos for knowing what the heck you are talking about, compared to most of the other comments.

      I was a little disappointed that the trailer was all action, and didn't give any feeling about the theme. It would've been cool to at least start the trailer with the cobblestone streets and horse-drawn coaches to show that it is the 19th Century, and not the 1930s like it seems based on the car shots. They didn't move it in time, did they??
    • Um - 'real'? As in fictional ;-) ? They are taken from other works of fiction - often Victorian.

      Jess Nevin's annotations [enjolrasworld.com] are an invaluable companion to the original books.

      Volume two is in progress currently - the fifth one should be out at the end of this month (IIRC).

  • Collector's edition (Score:5, Informative)

    by delfstrom ( 205488 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:18AM (#5313663)
    Buy the original graphic novel now [barnesandnoble.com] before it is out of print and zooms up in price.
  • A mindless SFX extravaganza with none of the original's wit, subtlety, irony, cleverness, in-jokes, immaculate period references and panache.

    I was going to say, a fine opportunity wasted, but I don't think it was. The League was too sophisticated for the type of audience attracted to a movie derived from a comic in the West. They mainly want mindless violent-action crap, such as Dardevil appears to be.

    Ignore the movie. Alan Moore's stuff is too good for movies; this looks to be a travesty even more egregious than the appalling From Hell. Read the book, instead. It's pure, inspired brilliance, with breathtakingly intricate Kev O'Neill artwork to match.
    • ...none of the original's wit, subtlety, irony, cleverness, in-jokes, immaculate period references and panache.

      Hard to convey these in a short, short trailer...

      Good news for those of you of the male persuasion--a movie with Sean Connery is a movie your girlfriend would probably like to see.

  • Some basic Info (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gryftir ( 161058 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:20AM (#5313671)
    The league of Extraordinary Gentleman was a Comic written by Alan Moore (at least for some time, I haven't read it myself though I've heard about it).
    Basically it consists of pulp heros and villains, like alan quartermain (as in Alan quartermain and the lost city of gold, which i have seen, No imdb but plot synopsis here. [amctv.com] )
    Basically Moore rewrites the characters of british pulp mythology in ways reminiscent of The Watchmen.
    The Invisible man has sex with girls at a boarding school. It's that kind of comic I guess.
  • by mjhaynes ( 604572 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:20AM (#5313672) Homepage

    "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is a very successful comic book written by Alan Moore, who also wrote "Watchmen" with Dave Gibbons (THE comic book of the '80s) and "From Hell" with Eddie Campbell (which was recently made into a movie with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham).

    The comic book follows the adventures of several fictional Victorian characters (like Alan Quartermain and the Invisible Man).

    For more information on Alan Moore, you should check out The Alan Moore Fansite [alanmoorefansite.com]. LoEG is really worth the read.
  • well (Score:4, Informative)

    by cap'n foolsy ( 635911 ) <demonstar311.yahoo@com> on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:22AM (#5313678)
    it looks like a lot of people haven't heard of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and are passing this off as a matrix/x-men/whatnot ripoff.

    come on guys, this is a comic book. i thought you were geeks? ;) true, it has the slick look of just about any another special-effects movie, but give it a chance. if you want to know more about the comic book, take a look here [wildstorm.com].
  • Background Info (Score:5, Informative)

    by Armarius ( 595436 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:26AM (#5313693) Homepage
    League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is kinda like X-Men 1800's sytle with a dash of James Bond both in story and because it includes Sean Connery.

    The League is a recuited by MI-5 to protect England and includes Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea," Alan Quartermain from H. Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines," and Jekyll/Hyde of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", H. G. Wells' "The Invisible Man" and Mina Harker from Bram Stoker's "Dracula"

    From the Alan Moore graphical novel http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563898586 [amazon.com]

  • But then again, it's seldom that trailers don't look good, assuming you like the actors and the genre.

    God knows that having Sean in it tells us nothing about the movie's quality. He lets himself appear in some real stinkers.

    Here's hoping for the best...
  • Alternatively, maybe they're hoping to duplicate the out-of-control appeal of Dick Tracy.

    No one is going to see this movie.

    I might, some of my friends definitely will, and some other slashdotters, but this movie is going to bomb. I want to know how a group of people can make decisions which are, at the same time, totally driven by greed and, at the same time, so obviously directed towards utter commercial failure.
    • No one is going to see this movie. I might, some of my friends definitely will, and some other slashdotters...

      That sounds like its target audience to me. X-men, Spiderman and the Matrix seemed to do quite well, with pretty much the same demographic...

      • Many movies which target geeks have been commercially successful because they appeal to many people who are not geeks, and because they appeal to geeks especially well. I'm saying, based on this trailer, that no one is going to want to see this movie.

        It is manifestly obvious, to me, that this movie is going to lack broad based appeal, liken the Turkeys that I mentioned.
  • by davejenkins ( 99111 ) <slashdot@da[ ]enkins.com ['vej' in gap]> on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:43AM (#5313738) Homepage
    You have no business here!
    This is a LOCAL shop, for LOCAL fol---

    oh, wait...
  • .. "I'll take movies that will suck for 2000, Trebbek"

    "That's not a real category, Mr. Connery"

    "It was last night when I was with your Mother! HAR HAR HAR"
  • logic? (Score:3, Funny)

    by matt4077 ( 581118 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:47AM (#5313748) Homepage
    complaining about a low download speed on slashdot is certainly the best way to improve it...
  • Here is a script [byu.edu] I hacked up a while back to automatically download trailers from Apple's website. Just pass the resulting filename to the player of your choice. It is written in Ruby, and I use MPlayer. You can use it by doing a copy-and-paste of the URL in the story as a parameter on the command line (watch out for the lameness filter putting a space in the filename near the end after an underscore character; they really need to fix the problem in a real way, like using CSS right :-):

    playtrailer.rb http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/lxg/lxg_trailer_ large.html
  • LXG Trailer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cptgrudge ( 177113 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:58AM (#5313784) Journal
    I went to see Daredevil this weekend, and I saw the trailer for this. One of my buddies next to me gasped and said, "Nooo! Sean Connery! Why? You don't need the money!" Then he started in with some fake weeping.

    I dunno. It doesn't look all that "extraordindary" to me. Just some slick CG from what I could see. In this day and age, the eye candy won't make the movie. Just look at Final Fantasy. My interest is piqued, I guess, but the trailer didn't convince me.

    Compare this with the X-Men 2 trailer that also played. Just as good of CG as LXG, but with a healthy dose of plot. I suppose it could be that it's already riding on the success of the first one, and perhaps they are going with the whole "mystery" thing to get word of mouth going. And maybe I'm also full of BS, but I think that even non-comic book readers would be more likely to see X2 instead of LXG. Too many acronyms?

    I'll reserve any final judgement (as if my opinion means anything) until I get more info on the plot. But many potentially good movies are bad because Hollywood thought they could dazzle moviegoers with distractions instead of paying attention to plot.

    • You're right, the CG of X2 matches LXG, but what about SW:AOTC? We can write off DD and MIIB (but not MIB). ILM did some great CG on LOTR, but wait till we see HULK. Oops ... sorry. That movie title is an actual english word.

      I counted 83 cuts in that 1 minute, 8 second LXG trailer, which leads me to believe that the filmmakers expect people to still-frame through the entire thing (thank you, Contour Shuttle Pro with the USB jog dial). Of course, if they didn't expect us to watch it at the full frame rate, they should have been more careful with their physical effects. Did anyone else notice the goofy way that last pillar wobbled when the car struck it a glancing blow? It was clearly a fake set piece suspended from some stage catwalk.
      • Trailers are often made before all the effects work is finished, so it is quite possible that the pillar falling effect will be much better in the actual movie than it was in the trailer.
  • by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:03AM (#5313799) Homepage Journal
    Between LotR and all the comic-book films of the last few years, you'd think that the film industry has gone ga-ga over the simplistic "good vs. evil" genre. But you know what? It's actually a prefect fit for these times. The debate over war in Iraq, the neverending saga of Israel & Palestine, and the blackmailing tactics of North Korea all serve as focal points for this topic. Of course, the tone was set in W's State of the Union address last year, with the "Axis of Evil".

    Hollywood seems to follow a pack mentality at times, but this time I think they've actually hit the right cultural spot...

    • by bellings ( 137948 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @02:49PM (#5314783)
      The debate over war in Iraq

      Yep. Good versus evil right there, no doubt about it. Well, except for the "good" part.

      the neverending saga of Israel & Palestine

      Yep, once again it's good versus evil. Well, again, as long as you ignore the requirement for the "good" part.

      Why is it that if something or someone is evil (like Palistinian suicide bombers or Saddam Hussien) that makes anyone believe the opposition to those things is morally good?

      Iraq is run by a very, very bad man. That does nothing to provide any moral justification for killing another 250,000 iraqis to secure oil rights.

      Palistinian suicide bombers are evil. That does nothing to provide any moral justification for imposing martial law on Palistinians in Isreal, and it does not excuse fifty years of condemnable human rights abuses by the Isreali's.

      Stop looking at the world as black and white. Because, that point of view forces you to think that anything that's not "quite as evil" must somehow be "good." That way of looking at the world makes you into a moral cripple.
  • by dissonant7 ( 572834 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:08AM (#5313820)
    What you say !!
  • To be honest, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is probably one of my less favorite Alan Moore comics, but I've never been a big fan of the genre of dumping a bunch of unrelated characters into a narrative. Perhaps the worst example is Young Indiana Jones in which kid wonder Jones bumps into every historical figure of the 20th century. People who realy think that an Aliens vs. Predator movie would be "cool" should be profoundly pittied. League does not have the rich exploration of diverse characters bound to a common fate that makes The Watchmen work nor does it have the political poetry of V for Vendetta or the raw mystical imagination of Promethia. V is probably the Alan Moore work I would most like to see translated to the silver screen and the least likely to be made.

    I will probably go see this for many of the same reasons that I saw Daredevil a movie about which the best I can say is that it didn't suck, and it enabled me to listen in on a funny conversation about Ben Afflec's chin afterwards. Perhaps this time I'll wait for the $2 theatre.

    From the trailer, we have an adaptation that isn't an adaptation. Part of the fun of the comic was the inside jokes on these Victorian characters put into a "Justice League" situation. The trailer delivers little more than "Blade" in 19th century England.
  • I think it looks awesome. I can't wait to see it!

    It doesn't look like an X-Men rip off either. X-Men the movie was lacking a certain charm about it. This movie looks like it's got everything it needs to be awesome.
  • Crappy Adventure Movie. Looked like Rambo.

    Hollywood please meet plot, Plot; Hollywood.

  • Speed (Score:3, Funny)

    by KillerHamster ( 645942 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:46AM (#5313947) Homepage

    And since I'm downloading at under 3k a second, I'll let others comment on it.

    Let me get this straight - your're dissatisfied with the speed at which you can download this thing, so what do you do? You LINK TO IT ON SLASHDOT? Do you understand CAUSE AND EFFECT???

  • Just FYI (Score:3, Informative)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:49AM (#5313962) Journal
    Most people already know, but if your new to linux I'll mention it anyway. With Mplayer http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

    the quicktime codecs and the Mplayer Plugin (there is one at mozdev.org but I haven't tried it)
    http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/

    You can easily watch quicktime movies in Mozilla. Not to mention many windows media files as well. It sucks to have to do a "workaround" but besides paying for the crossover plugin its your best bet for proprietary media types.
  • I saw Daredevil yesterday, and the LXG trailer was there. I'm a little put off by the "X". Last I checked, Extraordinary started with an "E". I don't expect this movie to to do all that well, but I'll probably see it simply because it's got Sean Connery. When I was in college, my friends in I came up with a scale of whoop-ass for actors. It involved how many cans, cases, or kegs of whoop-ass an actor could open. Sean Connery earned the top spot as the Epitome of all Whoop-ass.
  • *Yawn* (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ryosen ( 234440 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:59AM (#5313994)
    You didn't miss much. The whole trailer looks pretty generic. They don't explain who the "League" is (B-Grade, classic literary characters turned superheroes), not even naming them. And what's with this "LXG" crap?

    The whole trailer looks like an X-Men 2 rip-off.
  • by PizzaFace ( 593587 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @12:02PM (#5314004)
    Everyone's saying this movie is set in Victorian England. Queen Victoria ruled until 1901. That car, and the WWII-style German helmets, don't look "Victorian" to me.

    And besides the Victorian anachronisms, why is it never daytime there?
    • And besides the Victorian anachronisms, why is it never daytime there?

      The sun hides his face from the huge suck of this movie ;-)

    • The comic is set in Victorian England. No roadsters. Everyone travels via Captain Nemo's submarine, train, or occasionally airship.

      This movie, which has taken all of the inessential parts of the comic, and none of the essential parts of the comic, has apparently set everything in a London that has never existed and will never exist. And the Extraordinary Gentlement must have been put in cryogenic stasis so that they can save london one last time.

      I can't tell you how lame this movie will be. No, don't think Mystery Men. Think The Avengers. Without the soul.
  • I started watching this trailer with some interest, until about halfway through. Suddenly, a geriatric, slurring scotsman appeared on the screen and delivered a line which destroyed the moment. When is Sean Connery going to get some speech therapy (and maybe an acting lesson or two)?
    • I started watching this trailer with some interest, until about halfway through. Suddenly, a geriatric, slurring scotsman appeared on the screen and delivered a line which destroyed the moment.
      I, on the other hand, watched with no interest until Sean Connery appeared. He provides the wry wink that you need in this kind of comic book fantasy, to make it seem like some intelligence may be mixed in with the posing and flashpots.
  • by JimPooley ( 150814 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @12:19PM (#5314067) Homepage
    Nothing I had ever heard about this movie boded well, but the trailer is just absolutely diabolical.
    They've taken an intelligent well written comic by one of the masters of the genre and created a complete travesty!
    It looks absolutely fucking awful, a mad sub-matrix mindless special effects extravaganza.
    (Excuse me? Mina Murray coalesces from a swarm of bats? I think they missed a major point here in that she's not a fucking vampire!)

    Alan. Alan, why do you let them do this? Do you really need the money so much?

    When it comes on TV I may watch it if I have nothing better to do, but I'd not pay money to see this piece of shit, and I suspect anyone who enjoyed the comics will do likewise.
  • It's not just Moore (Score:3, Informative)

    by kid zeus ( 563146 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @12:20PM (#5314072)

    The comic's pulp brilliance also relies upon Kevin O'Neil, the hyper-frenetic, stylistic artist who has brought us (along with writer Pat Mills) such sick-humor nightmares as Marshall Law (one of the original and best post-modern deconstructions of superheroes, but one all about the humor and the sado-masochism). Kevin got his start with British imprint AD 2000, responsible for such stalwarts as Judge Dread and Slaine, working with Pat on stuff like Warlock.

    I recommend LoEG the comic quite heartily (despite Ain't it Cool's support. . .even a stopped clock is right twice a day). It's written in the tradition of Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton books, where he takes such characters as Tarzan and Doc Savage and writes his own 'more realistic' adventures mixing them with other pulp heroes and villains. Moore can't use these characters due to our criminal copyright laws (he wanted to originally with the Twilight of the Superheroes [hoboes.com] series, the proposed DC book of which Kingdom Come was a very weak but direct rip-off) so he had to go back to earlier characters.

    For those with twisted humor and a high tolerance for violence, I especially recommend looking for the original graphic novel collection of Marshall Law, Marshall Law: Fear and Loathing.

    O'Neill's over-the-top art work is as detailed as Moore's references, and without it LoEG wouldn't be half the book that it is.

    Additionally, LoEG predates the show League of Gentlemen. As for the trailer, it looks fun, but also a bit sad as they felt the need to turn Mina Harker into a vampire. I suppose that's their idea of grrl power, the dumbest/most-hypocritical ploy in marketing history (baby, you've come a long way. . .not only can you smoke yourself into an early tomb, but now you can be as brain-dead violent as so many Neanderthal men!)

  • Now, I was never a regular reader of the comics, but I did have a healthy respect for them. So I cringed when they trotted out the giant glowing "LXG" logo.

    Where's the fun in that? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wouldn't use an acronym like that? In fact, I find it hard to swallow that ANY Victorian would use the letter "X" for extra. I guess they were just trying to make the logo not say "LEG."

    The clips in the background look good, but I worry that the trailer's missing the feel of the comic completely. Something about the entire thing just doesn't feel Victorian. To much of the overblown "action movie" music, possibly. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope they pull off this movie...
  • by !Xabbu ( 1769 )
    Looks like a good movie... I'll watch it when it comes out on DVD. But the name... ick.. sounds so cheezy. I realize its an actual comic book, but it just seems... dumb.

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