I was reading last month that the movie, 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (2003), ended Sean Connery's movie acting career. The fact that he was 73 at the time and commanded a fee of US$17 million (equivalent to £10.9 million at current exchange rates) per movie, may be other feasible explanations. A multi-millionaire tax exile, Connery is known to have strong views on who he works. Certainly, director Stephen Norrington and Connery did no get along well in making this movie. Norrington also retired from movies following the release of this one. The movie took US$179 million (£115 million) across the world. Added to this has been a further US$48 million (£30 million) from video and DVD rentals and sales. Yet, you read it was a 'flop'. I think this is, partly, because it garnered poor reviews from the media, though I would have anticipated that even before it was released.
I have been reading how actors found 'The Matrix' difficult to understand even though school children I know have no difficulty with the concept of people being downloaded into computer systems. We know from the example of the 'Fatherland' (1994) movie how audiences dislike movies which mess around with history. They are often not certain of what really happened, so feel uneasy when this is subverted. 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' is both a counter-factual and a steampunk movie. Outside Japan, steampunk is not familiar to the general movie-watching public, so this movie was always going to face difficulties in being accepted. In turn, however, it was also going to battle with finding support among a 'cult' audience, partly because they always expect very close adherence to the original novel/graphic novel in any movie adaptation. Similar problems were encountered producing the 'Watchmen' movie (2009) based on Alan Moore/Patrick Wilson's graphic novel (1986/7) of the same name. Like 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (1999-2009) graphic novels, 'Watchmen' was authored by Moore and had counter-factual elements.
Alan Moore always distances himself from any movies made of the graphic novels he has authored. Moore responded as equally negatively to the 'V for Vendetta' (2006) movie. Kevin O'Neill, the illustrator of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' graphic novels, argued that 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' movie failed because it was too far from the original source material. Moore and O'Neill seem ignorant of the fact that no movie can be like a novel. Directors are very constrained by the expectations of their audiences, as channelled through producers and movie-making companies, and, as noted above, the expectation especially in the USA is for movies which are eye-catching but do not seriously challenge the audience intellectually.
Things which can be explored in a graphic novel, especially with illustrations as detailed as Moore/O'Neill's work, would be very bitty and messy in a movie. Authors seem to believe that their ideas will work in any media, but this is unlikely to be the case and they have to yield to a whole different set of constraints: to expect anything else is very naive. Novels of any kind can conjure up entire universes and refer easily in passing to many background elements that it can be very difficult to introduce into a movie without seriously disrupting it, or at best, slowing the pace of the movie to an extent which loses audience. This has been recognised at least since '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968) if not longer. It seems that many authors, even of graphic novels which have a 'cinematic' aspect to them, do not really comprehend, not only the 'language of film' but also what limits there are to its 'vocabulary' and 'grammar' when people are trying to make money out the movies they produce.
It does seem that Moore has great difficulty with the whole movie industry. He was angered by the case brought by Larry Cohen and Martin Poll against 20th Century Fox who had made 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. Cohen and Poll argued that the movie had plagiarised their work called 'Cast of Characters' which they had offered to Fox in the mid-1990s. The case was settled out of court. Moore felt he personally was being challenged by Cohen and Poll and wanted a court case to exonerate himself of plagiarism. He missed the entire point. First, the case was not brought against him, even though his graphic novel came after their proposal. Second, Hollywood finds difficulty in really engaging with good stories; see my posting: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/03/lack-of-good-stories-in-hollywood.html Consequently as they have often done with other good styles/characters they scrabbled around for a plotline to hang that setting/characters on. Hence, they used that of Cohen and Poll, which, featuring some of the same characters as Moore's work, would have seemed ideal. Again, this is more about the state of how the US movie industry and its prime audience (Americans) sees the right way to make a (financially) successful movie.
Of course, Cohen, Poll, Moore and O'Neill, had all raided a lot of other people's work, who in fact, seem to get no attribution anywhere. The graphic novel of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' features, amongst others, characters such as Allan Quatermain based on the Allan Quatermain of the novels of H. Rider Haggard (published 1885-1927), Wilhelmina 'Mina' Harker from Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897); Captain Nemo from 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea' (1870) and 'The Mysterious Island' (1894) by Jules Verne; Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde from 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1886) by Robert Louis Stephenson and Dr. Hawley Griffin from 'The Invisible Man' by H.G. Wells (1897).
The graphic novels of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' make a point of taking characters from numerous Victorian and 20th century novels and yet, Moore/O'Neill seem to feel that the characters have become theirs rather than being the property of the original authors. O'Neill laughably complained that he did not recognise the characters as portrayed in the movie script; I wonder if Verne, Stoker, Stephenson, Haggard, et al, would recognise their characters at all in Moore/O'Neill's work? Even the title of the graphic novel was borrowed from 'The League of Gentlemen' (1960 movie; from 1958 novel of the same name by John Boland). This preciousness about the graphic novels helped damp cult following of the movie.
A particular criticism of the movie is that characterisation is shallow. This is again a laughable complaint. Movies are far shorter than people think and lack time to fill in characters, especially as in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' in which there are so many lead characters. In the movie, in addition to the characters listed above, there is also Dorian Gray who is pictured in the graphic novel, but is not a character. Gray comes from 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1890) by Oscar Wilde.
To appeal to the US audience and to have a character who is younger, Tom Sawyer is also featured; he appeared in four novels by Mark Twain published 1876-96. Sawyer in the movie is shown as being 18, though if in 'Tom Sawyer, Detective' (1896) set in 1896 and showing Sawyer as 17, then by 1899 when 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' is set he should be at least 20. The League's opponent in the original graphic novel was Fu Manchu, but such stereotypical, dated portrayals of Chinese would have gone down poorly in the 21st century. Consequently, in the movie, he is replaced by Professor James Moriarty from a number of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though he also referred to early on in the movie as 'M' a reference to James Bond's boss. His use of the disguise of the 'Phantom', described by Quatermain as 'operatic', references the phantom of the opera in Gaston Leroux's 'Le Fantôme de l'Opéra' (1909-10).
The movie, then, has to sketch in eight major characters with Rodney Skinner replacing Dr. Hawley Griffin as an invisible man after Fox were unable to secure the rights to Wells's character. Of course, there is a benefit that many of the audience would know these characters from other movies and the various novels. Some will know them from the graphic novels (I have read all of these), though despite O'Neill's complaints against the movie, their characters are not particularly well developed in those stories either (graphic novels, like movies, lack the space novels have to develop characters, except over sustained editions).
I think the movie presents a very exotic bunch of characters and in the limited space shows not only their personalities and some of their difficulties with their particular traits, but also the tensions between them. In an action movie with such a large ensemble I would not expect there to be time for much more; compare it to 'The Magnificent Seven' (1960) which similarly has seven heroes and one opponent to detail. Quatermain (who in the original novels died in 1885) is weary of his adventuring life and is patronising to Harker as a young woman. Jekyll fears being controlled by the beast of Hyde and this generates friction especially with Nemo, though the respect between the two grows. Nemo is shown as a worshipper of Kali and is described as a pirate, reflecting his anti-hero standing in the novels. Despite being an Indian (a Hindu but dressing more like a Sikh), he is accepted by the white characters in a way that may have been unlikely in genuine 1899, though given that all the characters can be seen as 'outsiders' they may have muddled along. Gray is a hedonistic snob who has had an intimate encounter with Harker, but whilst out for himself, seems also vulnerable given that Moriarty holds his painting. Skinner is the one looked down upon and suspected, reflecting the real class divisions of the time; he is a burglar anyway, but he seems to be along for the adventure.
The character with least substance in the movie is Sawyer who seems to be an insensitive American, rather arrogant towards European ways and foolishly being brash about Quatermain's personal losses and over-confident in believing he can seduce Harker; hardly a positive character. He also wastes bullets in the way Americans are renowned for doing in numerous novels and movies. This was always going to be a challenge for this movie in the USA: it is full of middle-aged European characters.
I like the movie because it quickly gives us a variety of characters that are different from the usual run of heroes and I think everyone has their favourite. It is nice to see a movie without too many of the stereotypes of Hollywood action movies, though Connery comes close in his portrayal to many of his other roles. The fist fight in his club in Kenya at the start of the movie reminds very much of his fist fight when his character goes to prison in 'Family Business' (1989) and his fight in a bar using just one of his thumbs in 'The Presidio' (1988). Mr. Hyde appears very similarly running across Parisian rooftops as he does in 'Van Helsing' (2004) even down to the bloated upper body. However, in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' he is captured (as in the graphic novel) rather than killed as he is by Van Helsing.
In the movie there is ambivalence (in contrast to the graphic novel) as to whether the League is genuine or simply been created by Moriarty. In the novel it is real and has been subverted by him so he can get his hands on cavorite (the material used in 'The First Men in the Moon' (1901) by H.G. Wells to propel Dr. Cavor's spaceship to the Moon) stolen by Fu Manchu. In the movie it is to get elements of the various members of the league to sell to the rapidly arming powers of Europe. This fear, that individuals were seeking to profiteer from the clear steps towards war of the 1890s-1910s by fostering these developments, featured in novels of the time, such as 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' (1915).
The world portrayed in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' both the movie and graphic novels, is not our world. It is a steampunk world, i.e. with anachronistic and fantastical machinery present. However, the portrayal of cities of the movie is even more distinct. In the shots of London in July 1899 only horse-drawn vehicles are shown, but, in fact, the car, though rare, had appeared; by 1911 there were 240,000 cars in the UK. Of course, none of them would have looked like the 1930s-style limousine (especially one with a hard roof rather than one of canvas or leather) used by Captain Nemo, but he would not have had to introduce intelligent people like the rest of the league to the word 'automobile' which had been in use in US newspapers since 1897.
The streets of East London where Dorian Gray lives and, especially, those of Venice shown later, are fantastical versions of these locations. Venice from the air resembles the city in our world, but its size as a whole and the width of the roads running through it are both far larger than in our world. You certainly could not raise a submarine in any of the canals and in reality the city has only one enclosed bridge crossing the canals, the famous Bridge of Sighs. Leonardo Da Vinci produced maps of Imola and the Chiana Valley, but his plan of the foundations of Venice is a fictional McGuffin for the movie. Thus, despite the huge hangar of Zeppelins in Berlin, we see a world where there are greater advances in technology (throughout history, given Da Vinci's work shown) but which have been kept by the privileged.
Like many steampunk stories, the technology that Moriarty and Nemo use, has simply been brought back in time by twenty-thirty years. The tank used to attack the Bank of England is very characteristic of those used on the Western Front by the British from 1915 onwards, though it is manned by soldiers dressed in the uniforms adopted by the Germans in the middle of the First World War (when the spikes were no longer put on the helmets). The uniforms of the men guarding the bank are typical of British soldiers on the Western Front during the war, notably the particular style of helmets. Interestingly the Metropolitan police officers outside, wear the capes of Parisian police rather than the longer British style. The radio signal that Nemo follows to track Moriarty to the Amur river on the border between Russia and China, had been public demonstrated in the mid-1890s and transatlantic signals were demonstrated in 1902, though with some possibly successful attempts preceding this, thus this technology is not too advanced. The 'Nautilus' itself is probably larger even than a modern day submarine, but the missile it fires locking on to a radio signal, even just a couple of kilometres across Venice was not seen in our world until anti-ship missiles introduced by the Germans in 1943.
We see flamethrowers used by Moriarty's men. Flamethrowers date back to the 7th century CE but in their modern form were first demonstrated to the German army in 1901, so not out of step with the movie. We also see assault rifles used by Moriarty's men in the movie. The Italian Army had been experimenting with them as early as 1890; the Russian Army issued assault rifles in 1915 and through the First World War the French Army developed what can be seen as assault rifles in large numbers. So, again, this is not an unfeasible development. Nemo's crew have even more advanced weapons, using silver engraved versions of the British sten gun submachine gun produced from 1941 onwards in our world, though, of course, never as elegantly as the weapons Nemo's men have. His own pistol is something unique that I cannot identify having an actual parallel. The Winchester rifle used by Tom Sawyer is presumably an 1894 version as from 1895 onwards they were produced with magazines rather than rounds being held in a tube under the barrel; these were sold in a variety of calibres and 7 million of these rifles had been sold by 2006. Quatermain's 'Matilda' is a so-called double rifle. These guns are custom made and hand-fitted. It may be a Holland & Holland, 'express' rifle firing often hollow or explosive tipped rounds; typically of .450 calibre aimed at stopping big game animals. Such guns, with the two triggers as shown in the movie, had been around right through the Victorian period.
Though no submarine was the size of the 'Nautilus', they had been used during the American Civil War of 1862-5 and the first British submarine was launched in 1901, so the concept would not have been alien. One interesting thing about the 'Nautilus' is that it uses solar power to charge its batteries for undersea travel. In both world wars submarines tended to travel on the surface of the water as much as they could as they were reliant on batteries charged off diesel engines when underwater. This is something which critics of the movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' (1981) miss. (It is interesting that if you search on Google 'submarine controversy' comes up as one of the commonly selected options). Yes, the submarine in that movie does not look precisely right, but certainly Indiana Jones could have remained on board as it went across the Mediterranean. Remember that movie is set in 1936 and the world war has not started, so there would be no need for the submarine to submerge.
Submarines in the First World War typically had a naval gun on deck and often this would be their prime weapon rather than torpedoes. It is only people who have grown up in the age of nuclear-powered submarines who expect them to be submerged for more than a minority of the time. To some extent, Nemo in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlement' falls into this trap of aiming to submerge when he has no need. Of course, he might be about to enter the fictional undersea tunnel beneath the Suez Canal which allowed him, in the novels, to by-pass Africa when heading towards Asia.
The climax of the movie occurs close to the Amur river at a base that resembles some Russian palace but is filled with an extensive industrial plant. This is very much in the ilk of the evil mastermind's lair in many movies and novels, which, of course blows up at the end. Fortunately the 'Nautilus' is vast enough to take away all the scientists and families and other workers from the base, once Moriarty has been killed.
'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' is an action movie, but one that I feel rises above many of its kind. Its range of characters and its steampunk setting make it stand out. It could never have been a close portrayal of the graphic novel, and yet it avoids being an entirely Hollywood version either. Possibly this is due to its primarily non-American cast and portrayal of events, settings and behaviour that do not form part of current US consciousness. In the time it has, I believe, it lays out a far more interesting range of characters and, in many ways, those who come out best from it are those who would not do so in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Mina Harker is shown as a scientist, eschewing male attention and patronising attitudes. She is a vampire and fights as effectively, if not more so, than her male counterparts. Captain Nemo is probably the first Hindu hero I can think of in mainstream movie from the USA, bar perhaps those in 'A Passage to India' (1984) and the biopic 'Gandhi' (1982) and the recent, 'The Last Airbender' (2010), featuring many Asian actors though set on a fantasy planet. He is gracious, innovative and a good fighter, also a conciliator. As a consequence of these traits, it is a movie that I return to on DVD and enjoy. I accept that given my taste for steampunk it would attract me more than the average movie watcher, but I certainly do not feel it should be remembered simply as the movie which seemingly ended Sean Connery and Stephen Norrington's movie careers. Even if it is, they should feel no shame about being involved with it.
Showing posts with label 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Saturday, 12 April 2008
'The War In The Air' and Steampunk
'The War in the Air' by H.G. Wells
When commenting on H.G. Wells's 'The War of the Worlds' and steampunk aspects of some of its spin-offs I was reminded of 'The War in the Air' (1907; novel 1908) also by Wells. I came to this novel as a boy, prompted by the small airships which flew over my house in the summer, out on short pleasure trips or off to film sports events. Of course, they were tiny compared to the airships of the past but that droning sound of their engines as they approached probably stirred up in me a feeling of excitement as it would have done in a boy fifty years earlier. Maybe I was destined to have an interest in counter-factual and steampunk ideas from that stage on.
'The War in the Air', possibly, has more use for current steampunk thinking, or, even, bakelitepunk/Zeppelin Age work than 'The War of the Worlds'. This is because, rather than featuring technology developed by aliens, it as about a war between different Powers on Earth. It was pretty prescient about the kind of airborne combat which would develop during the First World War 1914-18 that broke out just a few years later and would cost the life of Wells's son. The politics of the world Wells portrays are interesting with an aggressive Germany, Russia divided in revolution (the 1905 Russian Revolution would be fresh in readers' minds at the time), China and Japan in some kind of alliance (this is the least likely outcome more feasible was a collaborationist government installed in China by the Japanese as occurred 1931-45) and the USA in tension with Japan; the USA itself seemingly facing a repeat of the tensions of the 1850s that resulted in the American Civil War (1861-5).
Against this background of global politics, the focus of the story is on Bert Smallways, a man who builds light aircraft as a hobby in the way men of the time were increasingly fiddling with bicycles and later motorbikes. This focus is reminiscent of the characters we see in the 'Steamboy' (2004) movie, where three generations of the Steam family: Lloyd, Eddy and James, are featured as keen amateur engineers whose work ends up being desired by governments. Smallways effectively creates a kind of flying motorbike which lands him in contact with Alfred Butteridge an aviator and then with the German airship fleet which goes to attack New York. However, at the same time, the Japanese-Chinese alliance forces, using similar flying motorbikes, also invade the USA, as well as Pacific islands and Australia. War breaks out in Europe too, between Germany and their Swiss allies and Britain, France and Italy. The widespread fighting leads to a desolate backward world. Interestingly, all of this was in a context when the Kaiser of the German Empire, Wilhelm II spoke in 1895, about the danger of the 'yellow peril' meaning the growth of states in East Asia.
Though 'The War in the Air' has not been as referenced as much in subsequent media as 'The War of the Worlds', elements of it do turn up in other stories. In the first volume of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' some of Fu Manchu's guards ride on flying motorbikes with long tails which are very similar to those described as used by the Chinese forces in 'The War in the Air' especially at the Battle of Niagara Falls. I take the lack of reference to these in critiques of the 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' novel as stemming from the unfamiliarity most people have with Wells's lesser-known novel. However, it fits Alan Moore's use of people and inventions from right across Victorian/Edwardian fiction.
In some ways Robert Conroy's '1901' (1995) which sees a German invasion of the USA in 1901 owes something to Wells's novel, but, probably, more to 'The Invasion of the United States' by H. Irving Hancock (1916) which envisaged an invasion of the USA by Imperial Germany in 1920-21; not an unreasonable suggestion given that the First World War was raging at the time and Germany was unbeaten and the USA had not entered the war yet, despite some of its shipping being sunk by German submarines.
A more recent example is 'Turning Point: Fall of Liberty' a PC and console first/third person shooting game which envisages a Nazi German invasion of the USA in 1953. Despite it being set presumably after Britain and the USSR have lost the Second World War and jet fighters and long-range rockets have been developed, a lot of the invading German troops are brought by airship. There is one wonderful screenshot that shows this:
Unfortunately the game is apparently not very exciting to play and the story does not develop a great deal as you are a builder in New York fighting back against the Nazi invaders. It does stem from an interesting counter-factual however, that Winston Churchill was killed on 13th December 1931 when he was hit (in reality) by a taxi in New York. In this game Britain made peace with Germany in 1940, as was expected by people on both sides at the time. The Japanese decide not to attack Pearl Harbor, presumably sated by easier gains in British, French and Dutch colonies and also, I imagine, fighting for gains in Siberia with Germany having turned against the USSR a little sooner.
'The War in the Air' probably does not offer the steampunk enthusiast a great deal beyond lots of airships and flying motorbikes, but it does put them in a context of the Edwardian era when steam trains were the main form of transport in the UK and steamships had not converted to oil from coal. It also has that context of the inventor in his garage building something that could be of a challenge even to governments. Of course, this was a time when car companies in Britain and elsewhere were becoming established in precisely that way. The ingenious individual against greater powers is always a nice perspective for stories and who of us could not dream of powering around the skies on a flying motorbike? This angle I imagine is one that we are likely to see featuring commonly in steampunk writing.
I am not the only one commenting on 'The War in the Air' on my blog:
http://praxeology.net/blog/2007/04/06/war-and-back-again/
I have to replicate the image from these blog pages used to illustrate the invasion. The image of large airships over New York was not an uncommon one as the Hindenburg (which was three times larger than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet aeroplane is today) and other German airships flew over the city in the 1930s and after the Germans, the Americans and especially their Navy, long had an interest in airships.
These days, portrayal of the near future usually has as bleak conclusions as those shown by Wells, but nowadays the technology is usually small scale and the stories about big business or big government. The individual enthusiast is still the focus through which we see the developments but these days he (and interestingly it does still tend to remain 'he') is likely to be a computer hacker or conspiracy theorist rather than a garage engineer. So, though there may be similar conclusions, the scope and the vision of how we reach such situations is much more constrained than a man sweeping over New York as part of an airship fleet.
As an aside, while researching this posting I came across a recording on YouTube originally captured on an Edison phonograph wax cylinder recording in 1908. It is very crisp given the age. The audio is illustrated by covers of books available that year, including 'The War in the Air'. Just right for the steampunk mood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4B5MVDM_0
As with 'The War of the Worlds', you can read 'The War in the Air' for free online see: http://www.wells.omnia.co.uk/war-air/ or http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/780
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
'The War of the Worlds' and Steampunk
'The War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells
I was reading on 'The Heliograph' website that there is an intention to make a $200 million movie of the novel 'Larklight' (2006) by Philip Reeve. It envisages a solar system which humans have been exploring since the time of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) so beginning with clockworkpunk, though the novels (this book was the first of trilogy) are set in the Victorian era when colonies have been set up on moons and planets. Apparently the Martians who were the same as those in H.G. Wells's 'The War of the Worlds' (1898) were surprised when invaded by humans. This is ironic because in part the Wells book was a critique of colonisation which was nearing its peak for the British Empire at the time he wrote it, with the British for a change being the 'native' peoples having to face up to an invasion by technologically better equipped colonisers.
My thoughts on 'The War of the Worlds' and its relation to steampunk had also been stimulated by recently reading 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II' by Alan Moore which features the league battling against the Martian invasion. (I also suggest reading 'War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches' ed. by Kevin J. Anderson (1996) which features a range of stories by leading science fiction authors viewing the events from the perspective of various historical characters around the world, in some cases leading to a string of counter-factuals, such as Chinese expulsion of European powers at the turn of the 20th century using Martian technology, though given Empress Cixi's aversion to the technology available at the time, I personally doubt she would have embraced alien techonology any stronger). The Martians are defeated by a biological warfare disease H-142 (a mix of anthrax and streptococcus) created by Dr. Moreau (from H.G. Wells's novel 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' (1896) which as a novel with its theme of a scientist creating animal-human crossovers through genetic engineering and given last week's announcement of the development of human-animal hybrid embryos in the UK seems even more prescient than 'The War of the Worlds') but is claimed for history that the common cold was the killer. This picks up some of Wells's own themes about biological warfare whether intentional or not, as killed out many native populations of the Americas.
Another interesting follow-up is 'Scarlet Traces' by Ian Edginton (2002) a steampunk graphic novel which sees the British Empire utilising Martian technology in the 1900s and expanding by the 1930s into space. Sequels were not common in Wells's era in the way they are today, but it would have been interesting for him to show life after the Martians have been expelled. There is a sense that the Earth would be purified of Marian influence and technology rather than that technology being exploited. Again there would be parallels with colonialism as the Japanese in particular, through adopting the technology of the colonial powers from the mid-1850s onwards, within forty years were able to make Japan a colonial power itself taking Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1910.
Before leaving this graphic novels, there are a couple of asides, notably that the Martians who invade Earth are not the only occupants of Mars and in fact are portrayed as one-time invaders of that planet. The novel shows John Carter from Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series (1917-64 in novel form) and Gullivar Jones from 'Lieutenant Gullivar Jones, His Vacation' by Edwin Lester Arnold (1905) a novel about his adventures on Mars that was so badly received Arnold gave up writing, though it heavily influenced Burroughs and Carter is taken from another of Arnold's series. Barsoom's Green Martians also turn up alongside the Sorns from C.S. Lewis's (also responsible for the Narnia books) book 'Out of the Silent Planet' (1938) also set on Mars. The other point is made by the character Mina Murphy (who in the graphic novels actually demonstrates no extraordinary abilities, her equivalent in the movie 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen', Mina Harker, is a vampire who can walk in daylight) who it is implied has been attacked by a vampire (referencing Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897)). When the extensive scarring at her neck is revealed in a sex scene, she says that people should not believe the stories about two plain puncture marks in the neck. This was the best comment I had read on vampires in stories for a long time. I had always wondered how vampires drained blood through the two puncture marks simply left by their fangs. The only conclusion I could make was that the fangs had to be hollow and the blood sucked up through them which would make it a lengthy process especially if seeking to drain a person of all of their blood. Of course these days vampires in movies simply rend through the neck and feed like a wolf or lion drinking as much blood as they need. After all fangs are only extended canine teeth which allow predators to hold on to and slice through meat. It is clear the two puncture wounds was only for the sensibilities of the audiences in less brutal viewing eras.
Anyway, another place where I see the steampunk crossover coming to the fore most is in the computer game, 'Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds' (1999). It is interesting since musician Jeff Wayne released his music concept album 'The War of the Worlds' in 1978 he has really snatched the title from H.G. Wells. A single of 'The Eve of the War' element did well in the charts in 1978 and when remixed and re-released in 1989 reaching number 3 in the UK. Wayne was early on the games bandwagon as I remember a game 'Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds' (1984) for the old ZX Spectrum home computer which itself was released in 1982. It was created by CRL and was poorly reviewed as the player often died very quickly. The iconography of his album production remains the enduring one despite the appearance of numerous other books referencing the original (just see the Wikipedia listing). The stage production was on tour around the UK last year to sell-out houses and even included a video of Richard Burton doing the narration as on the album.
The story is a gloomy one, though the with the human race really only spared by a twist of fate and to some extent reflects Wells's novels warning of the potential dangers of the coming 20th century. It is set in the 'early years of the 20th century' and the human technology portrayed is really the same as that available in 1898 so pretty powerless against the heat ray firing tripods, the black powder and red weed of the Martians.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen take on the story brings in more steampunk technology along with the approach adopted in those graphic novels, notably the facilities of Captain Nemo's submarine, Nautilus. Some of the most interesting steampunk suggestions come in the PC game. The game itself sees a second Martian invasion which lands in the Grampian Mountains of Scotland (partly for gaming purposes as the humans begin at the other end of the country in London) and though it seems to be set in a world before the First World War (so in line with Wells's novel) internal combustion engine run lorries are far more common than they were until after the war. One interesting element of the game is that you can play as the humans or as the Martians. Both sides can experiment to gain more powerful equipment and the humans can end up with not only armoured lorries but also caterpillar-tracked tanks; self-propelled artillery guns and mobile anti-aircraft arrays both of which in reality did not come in until the Second World War; a tunnelling vehicle and a special forces motorbike. Some of the technology was around in, say, 1905 such as submarines and observation balloons, but not as developed as they were to become. The Martians can develop a whole array from a 'flying machine' (in the novel the Martians pods are fired to Earth from great guns on Mars and have no motive power of their own) a rapid heat way and a 'bombarding machine' through plasma and laser fencing to an explosive 'tempest', a bio-chemical 'constrictor' and the black 'dust' chemical weapon. As the Martians spread so does the red weed.
'The War of the Worlds' was the first real alien invasion story and is likely to continue to have an impact on our contemporary culture, the latest movie version starring Tom Cruise came out as recent as 2005 and despite relocating the action to the USA and replacing the hero's wife with two children, kept many of the key elements including the tripods. The story and its spin-offs which seem to be growing by the year are an invaluable source of steampunk technology, but wait until I start going on about H.G. Wells's 'The War in the Air' (1907) an often overlooked novel with real steampunk elements.
Meanwhile you can access 'The War of the Worlds' freely downloadable/readable in its entirety from at least two websites: http://www.wells.omnia.co.uk/war-worlds/
and http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/36
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