Steampunk Short: The Amazing Screw-On Head pilot (2006)
The Amazing Screw-On Head was originally a comic book by artist Mike Mignola, who also brought us the Hellboy series and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. In 2006, the SyFy Channel (the then SciFi Channel) aired several pilots on their website for possible shows. Unfortunately, Mignola’s creation did not make the cut, but you can watch 22-minute pilot below.
“As I’ve always said; All intelligent people should be cremated for the sake of public safety.”
~Screw-On Head
Did those voices sound familiar? That’s because you just heard the voice talents of Patton Oswalt (Mr. Groin), David Hyde Pierce (Emperor Zombie) and Paul Giamatti (Screw-On Head).
I thought this was a fun little show with some good body part puns and a strong Steampunk premise (a super secret agent who can use a variety of mechanical bodies). It’s too bad it didn’t get made into a series, I bet the writers and actors had a lot more to offer.
Steamboy (2004) is an Epic Steampunk Adventure out of Japan
When I first ran across a description for a manga Steampunk movie I admit that I was skeptical. But, I am so glad that I got it through Netflix and gave it a shot because it was incredible!
The director, Katsuhiro Otomo, is best known for his cyberpunk directorial debut Akira in 1988. I have a great respect for graphic artists and animators, and the creators of this film lend all of the attention to detail and breath-taking beauty to the Victorian era as you could hope for. The settings are primarily the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition in London and inside an enormous “steam castle” and they have been rendered with incredible detail.
Otomo takes a few liberties with those pesky historical facts, but you can’t go letting the facts get in the way of a good story 🙂 For instance, Steamboy takes place in 1866, but the Great Exhibition took place in 1851. Likewise you get to see the Tower Bridge totally destroyed, but it was not built until 1894. I recommend you just chalk it up to being an alternative Victorian era and enjoy the ride.
The story centers around a young boy named Ray Steam. He comes from family of talented inventors and has inherited their knack for tinkering. His father, Edward Steam and Grandfather, Lloyd Steam, have been gone for some time working on their inventions, but Ray’s world is turned upside down when his Grandfather sends him a mysterious package with instructions to protect the contents at all costs. Soon after it arrives, representatives of O’Hara Foundation (the wealthy and powerful company that sponsors his family’s work) appear and try to steal it from him. Grandpa Steam gets to Ray in time to tell him of his father’s death and to help him escape the clutches of the O’Hara cronies.
Monowheel from Steamboy
The letter from Grandpa Steam tells Ray to get the steam ball to another inventor, Robert Stephenson. By happy coincidence, Stephenson was on his way to see Ray’s grandfather so he was on the train Ray uses to escape the agents of the O’Hara Foundation. Or, at least that is what they think. But, as the train pulls into the station in London a zeppelin descends and the henchmen use a huge metal arm to capture Ray and take the steam ball to their headquarters at the Crystal Palace. When Ray arrives he finds out that his grandfather lied and his father is still alive and the steam ball is an integral part of a colossal steam-powered castle that is hidden within the walls of the Palace itself.
For a while, Ray works side by side with his father and meets Scarlett, the incredibly spoiled granddaughter of the O’Hara Foundation’s found. Unbeknownst to Ray, his grandfather is being held prisoner inside the steam castle, but he manages to escape. Ray finds him attempting to sabotage the steam castle because he knows its true and nefarious purpose. Ray has to decide where his loyalties lie and whether he is will to be just another cog in his father’s machine.
In case you couldn’t tell, I loved this movie. And don’t give me any of that “I don’t DO anime” or “cartoons are for kids,” because this film can totally stand up against any Hollywood blockbuster simply because it is animated. Illustrators and animators have the freedom to make anything they can imagine actually appear, and the massive scale of this movie would hardly be possible any other way. And never fear, just because it is a Japanese movie doesn’t mean you are doomed to subtitles. Just make sure to change the language setting on the DVD and you can watch the whole thing dubbed in English.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) Breaks the Mold When it Comes to Movies Based on Books…
I honestly can’t remember any other time this has happened to me, but I think the movie is actually BETTER than the books it is based on! It takes the best elements of Volume 1 a smidge from Volume 2, but the plot is totally different from either in the end.
Allan Quartermain (Sean Connery) if the first recruit after armed men attack him in Africa. Though he is on shaky ground with queen and country he answers the call and finds himself in London face-to-face with a mysterious agent for the crown known only as “M” (Richard Roxburgh). He meets the other members so far assembled like Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), Mina Harker (aka Mina Murray, played by Peta Wilson) and Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), who is this version of the League’s Invisible Man.
They set off together to bring a reluctant Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend) into the fold, where they are ambushed by The Phantom and his men. Luckily, Tom Sawyer (Shane West) of the CIA had infiltrated the henchmen and saves our heroes with his sharp shooting. After Quartermain and Sawyer capture Mr. Hyde/Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) in Paris the League is complete, and M sends them to Venice to save a group diplomats at a peace summit. The plot thickens when they find out there is a traitor in their midst, and the string of explosions bringing Venice down around them is only the beginning.
This movie is really fun and I love watching it. The effects are special and the action is well-paced. It doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground and besides Nemo’s car it doesn’t really have as many gadgets as one might like to see in their Steampunk, but I love seeing a world where all of these literary heroes (and anti-heroes) get to team up.
There are a few very important differences from the books to the film, some of which were brilliant and some were disappointing. First, Dr. Jekyll gets to play a much larger role in the movie than in the books, and with the addition of Gray and Sawyer the League feels bigger and more complete. Mina is given both a larger and smaller role at the same time, because in the books she is the clear leader of the League but in the movie she is not only a scientist but force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. I think she was subsumed as leader mostly because of the desire for a Sean Connery type to play the part of Quartermain. The League didn’t have quite enough “flash” to it for the big screen, so they needed a more dynamic male lead to be opposite Mina (especially if they had hopes to pursue a romantic storyline in a sequel). There aren’t that many silver fox action heroes out there, so I think they took advantage of having the right actor for that kind of part rather than keeping to the book’s portrayal of Allan as a skinny, wrinkly drug addict.
All in all, I would say the changes that they made helped the movie to feel full and rich in a short amount of time when they didn’t have two books to work with.
Music to Steampunk By: The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing
Goggles by The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing
Steampunk Book Review: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2
Your favorite cohort of Steampunk heroes is back in another installment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen!
Our story starts on the surface of Mars where literary heroes Gulliver Jones (Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation, 1905) and John Carter (Princess of Mars, 1917) are organizing a resistance against an alien race of foreign origin that is trying to invade. All too quickly their struggle ends with the aliens on their way to the homeland of those who oppose them: Earth.
We meet up with Ms. Murray, Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, The Invisible Man and the ever so dubious Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde when they are called in to investigate an impact crater in the countryside. Tentacled aliens make short work of the white flag waving humans who try to make contact, and the league retreats for the evening. The Invisible Man slips unseen through the darkness (like a dark unseeable slippy thing) to meet with the aliens in secret, and through the ingenious use of scribbling pictures in the dirt he becomes their ally. After getting his intell, the aliens mount an attack from craters all over England using the giant walking tripods they built to protect their soft, molluscky bodies.
While Nemo and Hyde keep London safe from the attacking hordes, Mina and Allan are sent on a mission to retrieve a special weapon from the infamous Dr. Moreau (The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1896). Relationships are reshaped and bodies broken in the pages leading up to the exciting conclusion of this installment of Alan Moore‘s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
I liked this book, but I preferred the first “LXG”. There were some very interesting moments between Hyde and Mina, and between Mina and Allan, but I wanted an enemy that was less unambiguously evil than killer aliens that just wanted to blow stuff up. The double crossing and false identities in the first one made for an interesting and complex story, which was really what I was looking for in my sequel rather than a romantic entanglement between the doddering Quartermain and Mina. (Yep, there is totally grandpa sex in this book) I usually really like to see my characters grow and change, but it is tricky with this concept of bringing all of these fully-formed characters together because too much deviation by Moore could feel like a betrayal to the original.
In addition to the main story, there is an additional material like the New Traveller’s Almanac that informs the reader all about the world of LXG and more literary reference fun.
If you haven’t read it, check out my reviews of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 1.
Get to Know Victorian London’s Underbelly a Little Better in From Hell (2001)
One of Victoriana’s headliners will always be Jack the Ripper, a serial killer immortalized in the London newspapers of 1888. A string of murders committed in the East End neighborhoods like White Chapel and Aldgate were attributed to a single person because of the distinctive way he dispensed with his victims. He was sometimes called “Leather Apron” because after he killed he butchered the bodies and left them in the open to be found. These murders predate forensic science so there was never a conviction, only a number of letters (thought to be fraudulent) that were sent to the press and signed Jack The Ripper. One that was not so signed is referred to as “The From Hell Letter” because the writer used Hell as the return address. If you want to check out the original letters you can find them here.
Depp inducing visions
The 2001 Johnny Depp Thriller, From Hell, gives audiences just one possible version of events. In this adaptation of a an Alan Moore graphic novel, Depp is a detective who gets psychic visions of murders. He is based on the real life chief of Scotland Yard, Frederick Abberline who worked the Ripper case. With the help of Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid of Harry Potter fame), Abberline uses his flashes of insight to catch criminals. Unfortunately, Depp must be “chasing the dragon” (ie on opium) in order to get his visions.
When the prostitutes of London’s East Side start turning up dead, he goes to them and finds a reluctant ally in Mary Kelly (Heather Graham). She and her circle of friends are being targeted by the ruthless killer, but none of them know why. But no matter the danger, these women must work the streets or risk the wrath of a local gang, which puts them at the Ripper’s (total lack of) mercy. Abberline must discover the dark secret that connects them before there are none of them left. Ian Holm (Fifth Element, The Hobbit) and Jason Flemyng (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) round out a great cast.
I don’t always like horror films because of the gore, but I felt this movie showed just enough blood to be a Ripper film but relied on good acting while shielding the audience’s view for most of the yuckiest parts. I would call it a thriller rather than a horror movie for just that reason. I haven’t read the graphic novel, but the movie does a great job of weaving conspiracy into a tale of terror.
Steampunk Book Review: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1
Vol 1 Cover art
Steampunk is all about literature, and nowhere else will you find so many Victorian-era characters rubbing elbows as in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from Vertigo. The creator, Alan Moore (whose brilliant mind also brought us The Watchmen) and illustrator Kevin O’Neill take their audience on a wild ride which spans several classic works of science fiction and creates a way for them to occupy the same universe.
The story opens with the corpulent Campion Bond (an ancestor of James Bond) who convinces Mina Murray (aka Wilhemina Harker’s maiden name in Dracula, 1897) to go on a recruitment mission on behalf of the British government. She picks up the opium-besotted ex-adventurer Alan Quartermain (King Solomon’s Mine, 1885) with the help of Captain Nemo and his submarine the Nautilus (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1870). After a jaunt into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) for the title character and a school run by notorious fictional dominatrix Rosa Coote to pick up The Invisible Man (1897), the league is ready for action.
They head next to London’s East End, where the nefarious Fu Manchu (referred to only as “The Doctor” for copyright reasons) has stolen a valuable mineral that allows heavier than air flight. He is at war with another crime lord on the West End (none other than Professor Moriarty of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894), and the conflict is on the verge of costing countless lives. Can the heroes beat the bad guys, and the clock, to save the day?
This is a really fun book and I definitely recommend it for fans of Victorian-era fiction. Over the many iterations of the series literally hundreds of literary figures and places grace the pages, so it is kind of like a who’s who of Victoriana. I occasionally have issues with some of the liberties Moore takes with core character traits, but otherwise it is a great display of imagination. As a bonus, if you get the first volume you also get 30 pages of cover art, games, stories and fake historical factoids in the spirit of the Victorian era.
Alan and Sundered Veil
Fair warning, Volume 2 goes darker, dirtier and deadlier, and you can read all about it next week when I review it!
Have you read this book? What did you think?
For Whom the Gear Turns 