4) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
I could fill an entire list just with Allen Moore comic book movies that have been raped in their adaptations. Moore does like rape too, so that would work on two levels. Seriously, though. From From Hell to V for Vendetta, Hollywood likes mining Moore’s stories and taking out anything that makes them edgy, taboo, and subversive. In other words, they rape his films until they are broken shells of their former selves. How ironic is that?
Though many look at Watchmen as the go-to Moore ruination, I like to lean towards The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This adaptation proved that the big wigs up in Hollywood understood nothing of what made the best comic books work. It is like someone picked up one issue of the comic, saw the main characters, and wrote a script around that idea.
“Oh cool, it’s all the characters from some of the most important works of literature, all working together to solve crimes. Sort of like TMNT! Let’s work with that!” That’s probably the dialogue that went on between the writers on this one.
The thing is, as is often the case, the filmmakers missed the point entirely. Alan Moore likes to play up the fact that “superheroes” in his world are very fucked up people. They are often WAY MORE fucked up than most of the people they encounter, and the lines between who is good and who is bad in Alan Moore’s work often blur. But you wouldn’t know that if you saw this movie because you know what scene they left out? The scene when Hyde rapes The Invisible Man TO DEATH. No, honestly, he rapes him to death. He then goes and eats dinner.
So yeah, they kind of missed the point on that one, big time.
