Avowing to hasten that sunset is the fiendish megalomaniac known as the Fantom. It falls to the mysterious British intelligence agent, M (Richard Roxburgh), to counter the Fantom with a team of singular individuals he recruits through inducement, threat or plea.
Quatermain is lured by the opportunity to fight, perhaps for the final time, the good fight. Nemo is offered amnesty for charges of high treason, while Mina Harker is secured by an offer of a breakthrough treatment for her peculiar medical condition. Likewise Rodney Skinner, the invisible “gentlemen thief.” Dorian Gray is swayed by the feminine charms of Mina Harker, which he hopes to enjoy in the intimate manner he formerly did. Gray is not, however, the only one casting an admiring eye towards Mina. The dashing young American secret service agent known as Sawyer, who joins the League of his own accord, is immediately smitten, though he is as of yet unaware of her nocturnal tendencies.
Adding the straight-shooting Sawyer to the mix was one of Robinson’s chief tasks in broadening Alan Moore’s story. The young man soon comes to view Quatermain as a father figure, and the special bond that forms between them becomes perhaps the most vital link in the group.
The story’s most dynamic link is between the dual personas of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde. The film’s version of Hyde is a nine-foot-tall towering mass of menacing power. As the alter ego of the timid and repressed Dr. Jekyll, who yearns to escape the extreme constraints placed upon gentlemen, Mr. Hyde is a brutish, uninhibited monstrosity driven by the most basic instincts and darkest desires of the human soul.
As the League discovers, it is difficult and dangerous to deny a monster his pleasures. Able to vanquish a score of men with minimal effort, Hyde’s ferocity instills awe and fear among those witnessing his unleashed fury.
“All of the characters’ attributes and special abilities have been ramped up in the film,” says Don Murphy. “Essentially, they’ve been ‘superhero-sized.’”
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