It’s been over twenty years, and honestly, we still need to talk about what happened to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Most people remember the 2003 movie as that steampunk flick where Sean Connery played a grumpy adventurer, but that’s barely scratching the surface of what this franchise actually is. If you only know the film, you’ve basically seen a watered-down, "superhero-ified" version of a much darker, much stranger masterpiece.
Created by writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill, the original comic series is a dense, often nihilistic tribute to Victorian literature. It’s not just a crossover. It’s a funeral for an era. Moore didn’t just want to see Sherlock Holmes’ brother and Captain Nemo in the same room; he wanted to explore how these fictional icons reflected the anxieties of the 19th century. The movie tried to turn that into The Avengers with top hats. It didn't work.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was never meant to be a superhero team
In the late 90s, Alan Moore had this idea. What if all the characters from classic 19th-century fiction actually lived in the same universe? It sounds like a fun "what if" scenario. You’ve got Mina Murray from Dracula, Allan Quatermain from King Solomon’s Mines, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, and Dr. Jekyll. But here’s the thing: in the books, these people are mostly terrible.
Mina is a traumatized survivor who is far tougher than the men around her. Quatermain is a literal opium addict who can barely hold his rifle straight when we first meet him. Nemo is a high-tech pirate with a deep-seated hatred for the British Empire. This isn't a group of buddies. It’s a group of dangerous, broken outcasts blackmailed by the British government into doing dirty work.
The tone is heavy. It's gritty. It's filled with references to obscure Victorian smut and forgotten pulp novels. If you read the first volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, you aren't getting a triumphant "team-up" moment. You’re getting a cynical look at colonialism and the birth of modern espionage.
Then the movie happened.
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Hollywood took this complex, deconstructionist work and tried to make it a summer blockbuster. They added Tom Sawyer as a "secret service agent" to appeal to American audiences. They turned Dorian Gray into a member of the team even though he wasn't in the original lineup. Worst of all, they sanitized the characters. The Nemo of the comics is a terrifying, silent figure of vengeance; the Nemo of the movie is basically a kung-fu master with a cool boat.
Why the 2003 film became a legendary disaster
You can't discuss The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen without acknowledging the chaos behind the scenes of the film. It was the last live-action movie Sean Connery ever made. He famously hated the experience. Rumors of his clashes with director Stephen Norrington are the stuff of industry legend. At one point, production was shut down by massive flooding in Prague, which destroyed sets and cost millions.
The movie ended up being a messy mix of early 2000s CGI and a script that felt like it was trying to do too many things at once. It currently sits with a dismal 17% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But why does it still get watched? Because the concept is bulletproof.
People love crossovers. They love seeing the Nautilus rise out of the water. They love the idea of Mr. Hyde being a massive, hulking beast that can tear through a city. Even if the execution was flawed, the movie tapped into a hunger for "literary shared universes" long before the MCU made it a requirement for every studio.
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The hidden layers of the Alan Moore comics
If you want to actually understand The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, you have to look at the "Black Dossier" and the later "Century" volumes. This is where Moore went off the rails in the best way possible.
He didn't stop at the Victorian era. He started pulling in characters from the 1920s, the 1960s, and even the 2000s. He used Mary Poppins as a stand-in for a cosmic deity. He turned James Bond into a sexist, incompetent jerk. He even tackled the rise of Harry Potter-esque "chosen one" narratives by framing them as the rise of an Antichrist.
It’s dense. Honestly, it’s borderline unreadable if you don't have a Wikipedia tab open to look up the references. But that's the charm. It's a love letter to the history of human storytelling.
- The First Volume: Deals with the theft of Cavorite (from H.G. Wells) and a gang war between Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty.
- The Second Volume: A brutal, horrifying retelling of The War of the Worlds where the League has to deal with an alien invasion they are completely unprepared for.
- The Century Trilogy: Spans 100 years, showing how the League's influence fades as the world becomes more cynical and corporate.
The lasting legacy and where to go next
So, where does The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen stand today?
There have been talks of a reboot for years. 20th Century Studios (under Disney) reportedly had a new film in development as recently as 2022. The hope is that a new adaptation would stick closer to the gothic, experimental roots of the comic rather than trying to be a Victorian X-Men.
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If you're looking to dive into this world, don't just stop at the movie. The movie is a footnote. The real meat is in the books.
Actionable steps for fans and collectors
If you want to experience the "true" version of the story, here is how you should approach it:
- Start with Volume 1 of the Graphic Novel: Forget the movie for a second. Read the first six issues. Look at Kevin O'Neill's art—it's scratchy, detailed, and feels like a 19th-century engraving gone wrong.
- Watch the movie as a "What If": If you go in expecting a campy, alternate-reality action movie, it's actually kind of fun. Just don't expect it to make sense in the context of the books.
- Check out the "Annotated" versions: There are websites and books dedicated solely to explaining every single reference in the comics. Jess Nevins’ Annotations to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the gold standard here.
- Look for the 20th Anniversary Editions: These have better paper quality and include the "back-matter" stories that flesh out the world.
The story of the League is ultimately about how we use fiction to make sense of a chaotic world. Whether it's Mina Murray leading a group of monsters or a disgruntled Sean Connery shooting a machine gun in Venice, the core idea remains: the characters we create often outlive the people who wrote them. They become myths. And myths, as Alan Moore shows us, are rarely as clean or as heroic as we want them to be.
To truly appreciate the depth of this world, look past the surface-level action. Seek out the original texts by H. Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker, and Jules Verne. When you see how Moore twisted those foundations into something new, you'll see why The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen remains one of the most significant works in modern comic history despite its rocky relationship with the big screen.