League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Trailer

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'

Re:Seriously

[Pharmboy]

What is with the sudden onslaught of superhero movies?

Interesting point. In times of trouble (war, for instance) people need heroes. I have seen many news stories to this effect. Its a 'nurture' type need. For those of us in the US, a few more heroes would be a good thing, post 9-11.

In trying times, people don't want to see the bad guys win, and movie makers know that. I would imagine many projects where "good wins over evil" that were sitting on the sidelines pre 9-11 were given a second look, and we are just now beginning to see the fruits of this.

LXG!

[Nathan Brazil]

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:Is this THE League of Gentlemen?

[Misanthropic Lycanth]

I found this site [wildstorm.com], which sort of explains the origins.

Re:excellent! (POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT)

[SamSpectre]

This is an excellent Alan Moore comic book (Watchmen, From Hell, etc.) but from looking at the trailer (two days ago at the Daredevil movie) I can already tell that they're taking liberties with the story and characters. The most blatant of these IMO is Wilhemina Murray (Harker) who in the comic (and the book) never becomes a vampire. In the trailer, she's manifesting out of bats, etc. I guess having a regular but strong woman-figure among the likes of Captain Nemo, Allan Quartermain, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and the Invisible Man was just not enough for viewing audiences. A good (well-researched comic) that will be gutted in the movie.

LXG Trailer

[cptgrudge]

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.

I know it is dangerous to review a trailer but...

[kirkjobsluder]

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.

Re:Seriously

[sielwolf]

Actually I think it is more economic than anything else. I think we are past the post-Joel Schumacher/Batman and Robin backlash which iced the idea of comic book movies for a while. Then X-Men came along and, although flimsy, it went on to make big cash. From that Marvel was able to sell the rights to three of its biggest movies (Hulk, Daredevil, and Spiderman... along with franchising X-Men).

This occured after 2000 (when X-Men was released and became a hit). Soon after that the rights were sold and all the projects entered the development stages (I remember the whispers appearing online and in publications like Wizard at the time), over a year before 9-11.

Sure they might get more push now but you have to remember how long it takes for the movie industry to go from buying the rights on a movie to lining up the off-screen talent that will pick the on-screen talent to writing the screenplay... even before shooting starts.

Take Daredevil. According to the Coming Attractions page [corona.bc.ca] on it, February 24, 2000 was the first time that Mark Johnson's (the director) name was attached to the project and July 13, 2000 when New Regency locked him in along with the Electra and Kingpin properties to make the movie. Over a year before WTC.

Mplayer and Quicktime on the web

[SiChemist]

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.

Re:League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

[Marcus Brody]

An American writing about Victorian England?

He's very british in fact... He comes from Northampton, near where I grew up. Friends of friends know him - A hippy-goth type with big hair and beard! His knwoledge of History (esp. local)is pretty frigging good, btw...

Shit, Shit, and let's not forget, Shit.

[JimPooley]

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.

Re:"since I'm downloading at under 3k?"

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:"since I'm downloading at under 3k?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Where'd you get that? She said: let them eat cake. Only cake did not mean yummy bakery goods, it meant the the ash in their fireplaces/stoves. Similar stuff to coke - not the coala, the pumice-like formation left by burning coal.

Re:Alan Moore

[Gibbys Box of Trix]

Read it once, then read it again, in conjunction with this [capnwacky.com].
I'm just about to start again with the annotated guide...