Revisionist Fiction

Jord from wankercounty came over again Sunday.

He was at my computer and downloaded the unofficial trailer for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (wmv | mov).

For those of you who don't know, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a series of comic books about a collection of characters from Victorian literature covertly brought together to defend the British empire. Each agent had been a respected member of society, but for various reasons dropped out of public favor. The League includes such people as Mina Harker from Bram Stoker's Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, H.G. Wells' Invisible Man, and Allan Quartermain, the adventurer of King Solomon's Mines and other classic texts by H. Rider Haggard.

20th Century Fox decided to add Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer to the "LXG" [ugh] in its film adaptation in order to generate more appeal in the poorly-educated American market.

Anyway, at one point during the trailer, the voice-over says: "They are called 'the vampire,' 'the gunman,' 'the pirate,' 'the immortal,' 'the freak'…"

Mina Harker is "the vampire." Captain Nemo is "the pirate." Dorian Gray is "the immortal." Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde is "the freak." This much I figured. The identity of "the gunman," however, remained a mystery to me.

We watched the trailer a second time in slow motion, matched footage with photographs, and deducted who "the gunman" is:

Tom fucking Sawyer.


Here we see Shane West as "Detective" Tom Sawyer and what appears to be the barrel of a rifle.

I can't believe this. This is a travesty to literature. First Fox adds an American to a team of Brits and then they give him the only fucking gun in England! They could at least make Tom Sawyer "the painter" or "the living dead"!

Invisible Man better be a white guy, dammit.