20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954)

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954)

Tagline: The Mightiest Motion Picture Of Them All!

(Sci-fi, Adventure, Giant Squid Will Eat Your Face) [G]

On the surface, there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence.

In this one, we are taken back to the late 1800s where ships are disappearing in the ocean. It is rumored that a giant narwhal is taking out the ships one by one so Professor Pierre Aronnax and a whaler named Ned Land go to check it out. 

First off, I think one thing that bugged me about this movie is its length. This is based on an epic book, but 2 hours and 7 minutes in the ’50s was fairly rare. I am all about storytelling, but outside of a few scenes, the dialog just feels really overkill. It’s also one of the very few movies from the era that doesn’t have a single lead female role. Re-watching this now, adding one even if the original book didn’t have one might have gone a long way to making some of the dialog more dynamic. 

What went well in this movie was any time you see that rad-looking Captain Nemo sub. As much as I loved LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, Captain Nemo’s sub in this is just better looking. I also liked the action sequences and that we get a giant squid with dudes in awesome diving suits looking for treasure and all that. There are just some really cool scenes in this and on that level I can see why so many people felt this was a triumph of movie-making. Ned Lad’s song near the beginning of the movie was also a lot of fun.  

Acting-wise Kirk Douglas is really awesome in this. He ended up in over 90 productions and lived to be 103 which is just amazing. He is also the father of actor Michael Douglas. He wasn’t involved in much regarding sci-fi but was in both THE FINAL COUNTDOWN and SATURN 3. James Mason plays Captain Nemo in this and to be honest, I really didn’t like him in this role. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great actor though. He was in films from 1935 to 1985, so that’s a pretty amazing career. I mostly know him from 1978’s HEAVEN CAN WAIT. Paul Lukas who plays Professor Pierre Aronnax is solid in this which really helps this thing. I am not familiar with his other work, but he was in over 130 productions.

Where this movie kind of loses it for me is in the actual script. I never read the book but there are some ideas that the movie is kind of asking you to embrace that I am just not really on board with. When you really look at this film, it’s basically a really long hostage situation. I think I would have liked a much quicker pace here, especially with the promise of the pomp and circumstance behind the movie's promotion and production. One tidbit, like a lot of Disney’s creations, this was another idea they got from creators outside Disney. 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA had already been made in 1914 and then got re-made again in 1997. There was even a TV series around this famous Jules Verne book. 

This may disappoint some people but for me, this just didn’t hit that 1950’s sci-fi or adventure charm I had hoped for, but a younger me, probably would have been blown away. For those reasons, I have to give this one a 4 out of 7. There is just too much downtime and if you are going to do that you have to dialog I can relate to, and I just couldn’t get there.

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