For this entry I’m going to do something a little bit different, in that my focus is shifting some from movies into books and comics (as well as movies). I mentioned in my previous entry that I wanted to discuss the concept behind the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The more I developed this idea in my head, the more I expanded on it, and so what I’d originally planned as a short, quick entry about one movie has expanded into a full-sized entry that covers a couple of movies, a couple of TV mini-series, a comic series, and a book. In order to explain the concept of this entry, let us begin with a quick introduction of the movie that inspired this entry, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or LXG for short). For those folks who aren’t familiar with it, the film is based on the comic book series of the same name, written by Alan Moore (author of comic series V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and From Hell). It takes place in Victorian England, and features characters drawn from a variety of popular works of fiction from this era.
What I want to talk about in this entry is the idea of bringing famous characters from other works of fiction together into a new story. I’ve only run into the concept a handful of times, but I find it really fascinating (and when done right, really fun to watch/read). Of course, due to copyright issues, I’m guessing you can generally only do this with really old stories, where the characters have entered the public domain (or you have the resources to acquire the rights to use the characters – an issue that I guess 20th Century Fox ran into with the movie, which is why they list their character as AN invisible man, because they hadn’t secured the rights to call him THE Invisible Man – no idea how all that works, though). That being said, copyright issues aside, I just love the idea of taking well-known characters that are from the same genre of stories, or from stories set in the same general area/time period, but that are from separate, distinct stories, and bringing them all together into a combined universe.
While I have found other examples of this idea, LXG definitely is at the top of the list in doing this in a huge way (especially the comic books). The movie features all of the main League member characters from the comics –Mina Harker (from Dracula), Allan Quartermain (from King Solomon’s Mines), Captain Nemo (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and an invisible man. The movie also adds two additional characters – Dorian Gray, and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (grown up and a member of the US Secret Service). There was a fair bit of discontent among fans of the original comics at the inclusion of Tom Sawyer, not only because he’s not in the comics, but also because he is an American fictional character, and not a character out of Victorian England (which Dorian Gray at least is).
I have mixed feelings about Tom Sawyer’s inclusion in the movie. On the one hand, it pisses me off because it’s a prime example of blatant studio interference in the movie-making process (Fox insisted on his inclusion in the movie, because they felt that an American character would make the movie more appealing to American audiences). That being said, personally I have to admit that I liked his inclusion in the film. I liked the idea of Tom Sawyer grown up and a Secret Service agent. I also think it really fits well with the concept of the comic books (regardless of what other fans might think), which pulled random characters into the story from all over the place.
I decided to re-read the comics while I was writing this (since I hadn’t read them in a few years), and I also found a Wikipedia entry that listed all of the various characters included in the comics. It’s almost insane just how many minor characters in the comic are from other works of fiction. For example, they give the name of a prostitute who was killed by Mr. Hyde – who the other characters are trying to track down at the time – and it turns out the name used is actually that of a main character from an old novel. In a later issue they briefly show The Artful Dodger (from Oliver Twist) as an old man leading his own group of young thieves. One of the secondary characters they bring in that I especially enjoyed seeing was C. Auguste Dupin, a French detective created by Edgar Allan Poe (and a precursor to such future detective characters as Sherlock Holmes).
Another interesting variation on this concept that Alan Moore uses in the comics is to create supposed ancestors of famous characters from later time periods. For example, one of the supporting characters is Campion Bond, who is supposedly the grandfather of future spy James Bond. Another example (that I read about in an interview with the artist), is that in one of the London crowd scenes, everyone in the crowd was drawn to look like a Victorian era version of (in essence, an ancestor of) the characters of East Enders (a very popular British soap opera).
It astounds me to think of the level of thought and research and effort that the writer and artist had to have put in to incorporate all of these dozens of characters into their stories. Admittedly, when you really look into it, it almost feels like overkill, but it’s still awfully cool. But even without all these extra secondary and minor characters, just bringing together the main characters the way the movie does really makes for a fun story (even if the movie’s execution is only okay and not great).
There are only a couple of other theatrical films that I’ve run across (at least that I can think of) that have followed this same concept. One is the sadly disappointing Van Helsing. This is a movie I really wanted to like. I like both stars, Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale, and I loved the idea of bringing together several old school Universal horror movie monsters into one movie – namely Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster. Done right, I think you could make a really interesting movie. But in this case, the story was incredibly dumb, and the movie overall was really mediocre.
Another film that used the classic Universal horror movie monsters, but in a much more intentionally silly, tongue-in-cheek way, was The Monster Squad. This movie pulled in pretty much all of Universal’s horror characters – in addition to Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Wolfman, it also included the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It’s been enough years ago that I watched this movie that I don’t remember much about it (I had to jump onto Wikipedia to refresh my memory as to the plot), but as I recall it was a pretty enjoyable movie (and one I need to watch again one of these days).
A book series which has done something similar to LXG is the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer – the big difference being that Riverworld featured a variety of historical figures as opposed to fictional characters. This series has never been made into a theatrical film; however, the Sci-Fi Channel adapted it into both a 2-hour movie (meant to be the pilot for a regular TV series that was never done) and a 4-hour mini-series. I’ve never read the original stories, but from what I’ve read online, both Sci-Fi Channel versions make significant changes from the books. I watched both movies, and both were alright without being spectacular. The concept behind the stories is really intriguing, though – all of humanity from throughout time has been resurrected on a distant planet that is composed of one long winding river. This allows you to bring together a wide variety of historical figures into the same story (for example, the mini-series featured Samuel Clemens – aka Mark Twain – as one of the heroes, and Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizzaro as the main villain). The story possibilities you could develop in this environment are pretty much endless.
Another example of this combining of characters that I want to discuss is also a book, but one that has never been adapted to the screen (although I’d love to see a well-done movie version of it). The book in question is A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny (which also happens to be my all-time favorite novel). It is a short novel, and is written in a simple, very easy to read style. It’s written almost as a journal, with each “chapter” comprising a single day, running through the month of October, some time in the late 1800s, just outside of Victorian London (while the exact year is never given in the book itself, someone on Wikipedia with too much time on their hands figured out that it takes place in 1887, based on the fact that in the story there is a full moon on Halloween, and this is the only year during the Victorian era that this occurred).
The basic plot of the story is that whenever there is a full moon on Halloween, the possibility exists that a mystical gateway can be opened between our world and a dimension of ancient beings – beings very obviously based on the elder gods of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories (for anyone who’s curious – a full moon occurs on Halloween generally every 19 years, with a few exceptions here and there. The fact that I found this information is proof that I have too much time on my hands). Whenever this occurs, various individuals gather and spend the month of October essentially playing an elaborate game as they prepare for Halloween, at which time they come together on two sides – one side trying to keep the gateway closed, while the other tries to throw it open (which would essentially lead to the end of the world).
Here’s the interesting part (well, one of the interesting parts, at least) – all of the people who play this "Great Game " (as they call it) are based on either characters from Victorian era horror stories, historical figures, or standard horror story archetypes (such as a witch, or an evil priest). But there’s a twist that the author gives it that I absolutely love. He never comes right out and names the characters (but at the same time, he makes it very obvious who he’s talking about). For example, there is a vampire simply known as “The Count”, and a mad scientist trying to bring a creature to life who is only referred to as “The Good Doctor”. Then there’s “The Great Detective” and his assistant (a very obvious reference to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson), who aren’t actual participants, but complicate things as they investigate a murder in the area. My absolute favorite, however, has to be the main character, a knife-wielding gentleman who goes simply by Jack. I just love the idea that Jack the Ripper (of all people) is the hero of the story.
There are a number of other things about the story I just absolutely love, and it is beginning to end just a wonderful book (I’ve read it numerous times). However, none of that relates to the theme of this entry, and I figure I’ve gone off-topic enough in discussing a book that hasn’t ever been made into a movie (this being a movie blog and all). I did want to talk about it, though, since it does use the same concept as the movies I’ve mentioned in this entry (and it gives me an opportunity to talk about my favorite novel).
Another combination I’ve seen done a number of times (mostly in comic books – it's a concept that I think would be hard to pull off in a movie; maybe you could do it in a mini-series) is bringing the characters of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz together. There are all kinds of possibilities there, especially if you go back to the original books (which have a much broader and more interesting cast of characters than most of the movie versions of the books).
Regardless of what characters are used, I just love the idea of taking various characters from different sources and bringing them together to tell new and exciting stories beyond the scope of the original books the characters appeared in. This is a fascinating concept that I’d love to try in my own writing – the first step, of course, being to decide which characters to bring together. So the question I would put forth to you, dear readers, is, “What characters would you bring together into a new story if you could?” And with that I conclude this month's blog. Next month we will return to our regularly scheduled movie discussions (without all these silly tangents into books and comic books and other non-movie subjects).
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