21 Worst Comic-Book Movies

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)

It's certainly an extraordinary premise: taking the entire body of Victorian-era sci-fi and fantasy and crafting an elaborate, continuous mythology. In the comics, created by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, the League was a band of monstrous and morally ambiguous adventurers and misfits — the Invisible Man; Captain Nemo; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Allan Quartermain; and Mina Murray, a.k.a., the lady Dracula bit in Bram Stoker's book — that secretly served the British crown and battled the likes of Professor Moriarty and the Martians from War of the Worlds. But the 2003 film version, starring a cranky Sean Connery, is an underfed, overblown fiasco devoid of the geek joy and inspired imagination of the comics. Bad choices and butchery abound, from faithlessness in the adaptation (like adding Tom Sawyer to the British line-up of heroes as a sop to American audiences or giving Murray vampiric superpowers) to a blink-and-it's-over running time. Then again, maybe that's a blessing. —Jeff Jensen