H Rider Haggard August Nemo Popular Books

H Rider Haggard August Nemo Biography & Facts

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, also promoted as LXG, is a 2003 steampunk/dieselpunk superhero film loosely based on the first volume of the comic book series of the same name by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Distributed by 20th Century Fox, it was released on 11 July 2003 in the United States, and 17 October in the United Kingdom. It was directed by Stephen Norrington and starred Sean Connery, Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran, Stuart Townsend, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, and Richard Roxburgh. It was Connery's final role in a theatrically released live-action film before his retirement in 2006 and death in 2020. As with the comic book source material, the film features prominent pastiche and crossover themes set in the late 19th century. It features an assortment of fictional literary characters appropriate to the period who act as Victorian era superheroes. It draws on the works of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Ian Fleming, Herman Melville, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, Gaston Leroux, and Mark Twain, albeit all adapted for the film. It received generally unfavorable reviews but was financially successful, grossing over $179 million worldwide in theaters, and earning rental revenue of $48.6 million and DVD sales (as of 2003) of $36.4 million, against its $78 million budget. Plot In 1899, several terrorists posed as German soldiers to break into the Bank of England and steal Leonardo da Vinci's blueprints of Venice's foundations. Days later, the same terrorists posed as British soldiers, kidnap several German scientists and blow up a Zeppelin factory in Berlin. The attacks resulted both the British Empire and the German Empire to be at odds with each other, which may lead to the start of an imminent world war. A British emissary named Sanderson Reed arrives to Kenya Colony to recruit adventurer and hunter Allan Quatermain, who had retired following the death of his son. Quatermain initially refuses until a group of assassins try to kill him, resulting in the death of his longtime friend Nigel and the bombardment of his club building. In London, Quatermain meets Reed's boss "M", who explains that the terrorists' leader (known as the Fantom) initiated the attacks on London and Berlin as a means to start a world war for profit, and that he intends to attack the world leaders during a conference meeting in Venice in three days. To prevent this, M is forming the latest generation of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, consisting of Quatermain, Captain Nemo, vampire chemist Mina Harker, and invisible thief Rodney Skinner. The League travels to the London Docklands to recruit Dorian Gray, Mina's former lover who is immortal due to a missing cursed portrait. The Fantom and his assassins attack Gray's house, but the League, aided by U.S. Secret Service Agent Tom Sawyer, fends them off. After Gray and Sawyer join the League, they capture Edward Hyde in Paris, who transforms back into his alter ego Dr. Henry Jekyll, and joins the League after being offered amnesty for his crimes. The League travels to Venice in Nemo's submarine, the Nautilus. During the journey, Jekyll is having trouble controlling his Hyde urges. In addition, the League deduce there may be a mole on board when a camera's flash powder residue is found in the wheelhouse and one of the vials of Jekyll's transformation formula has been stolen. Suspicion falls on Skinner, but he is nowhere to be found. The Nautilus arrives in Venice just as the bombs detonate, causing the Piazza San Marco and the rest of the city to start collapsing. Sawyer uses one of Nemo's automobiles to signal Nemo in launching a missile to take down a key building and stop the destruction, while Quatermain confronts the Fantom, who is unmasked as M before escaping again. Dorian reveals himself to be the mole by murdering Nemo's first mate Ishmael and stealing the Nautilus's exploration pod. M, Dorian, and Reed leave a phonograph recording for the League declaring that their true goal is to ignite the world war by using the League's physical elements, and that the previous attacks, the journey and the secret conference were just distractions, all to allow Dorian to steal Skinner's skin sample, Mina's blood, and Jekyll's potion, and as well as document Nemo's science (as Gray used a camera to take pictures of the interiors of the Nautilus, which explains the flash powder residue) for M. It was also revealed that Quatermain was only enlisted to capture Jekyll to get his potion, and that Dorian only stole the elements in exchange of retrieving his portrait which was stolen by M, who plans to synthesize and sell off the elements to start off the world war. The Nautilus is damaged by bombs hidden on board by Gray, but Jekyll saves the day by taking control of Hyde and having himself drain the flooded engine rooms. Eventually, Skinner secretly messages the League, informing them that he has sneaked aboard the exploration pod and telling them to follow his directions. Using Skinner's directions, the League reaches northern Mongolia, where they spot M's fortress hidden beneath the mountains before reuniting with Skinner, who informs that the fortress is a factory used to create and develop M's weaponry, including heavily-armed tanks and submarines, flamethrowers, automatic guns, invisible spies, vampiric assassins, and Hyde-like soldiers. Skinner also states that M is having the kidnapped scientists to synthesize on the formulas by kidnapping and holding their families hostage, and that M plans to leave for Europe tonight to sell samples of the formulas to competing nations. With this knowledge, the League set out their plan to stop M in his tracks. Nemo and Hyde rescue the scientists and their families while fighting M's second-in-command Dante, who overdoses on the Hyde formula. Skinner sets the explosive charges to destroy the factory and its weaponry, while Mina kills Dorian by exposing him to his portrait. Dante has managed to corner Nemo and Dr. Jekyll after Hyde's formula runs out, but when Skinner's explosives detonate, it creates an escape route for Nemo and Dr. Jekyll while Dante is crushed to death by the collapsing factory. In the meantime, Quatermain and Sawyer confront M and identify him as Professor James Moriarty, longtime archenemy of genius detective Sherlock Holmes who had changed identities following his alleged death at the Reichenbach Falls. However, Sawyer is taken hostage by an invisible Reed, forcing Quatermain to shoot down Reed at the cost of being fatally stabbed by Moriarty, who then flees away with his samples. Using the skills that Quatermain taught him, Sawyer manages to kill Moriarty by shooting him at a long distance, and his samples sink into the icy water. With Moriarty and his cohorts dead and their plot foiled, Quatermain dies in peace, but not before blessing Sawyer to continue his services for the new century. Quate.... Discover the H Rider Haggard August Nemo popular books. Find the top 100 most popular H Rider Haggard August Nemo books.