30,000 Leagues Under The Sea (2007)

People who read books should not watch movies. There will never be any similarity between them. Does that make them bad? Verne's book "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is boring compared to any film made about it...except maybe ones with Doug McClure. 30,000 Leagues is clearly deeper than 20,000 Leagues but that doesn't make for a deeper film. This movie made me feel like I was in the first grade playing, "What's wrong with this picture?" It was fun and the only way to watch this film and enjoy it.The first question I had to raise (having served on a nuclear sub) was when did they start allowing women to serve on subs? The answer I got from Wiki was December 2011...meaning it hasn't happened yet and certainly didn't happen in 2007 when this film was made. Okay, but it made for a more interesting film. Now the enlisted people had dark black background petty officer patches sewn to their left arm on their light blue shirt. The background on the patch is supposed to be the same color as the uniform. The woman appears to have a steel workers insignia, i.e. a construction rating and not an engineering or electrical type rating as one might expect. The male petty officer appears to have a discontinued (as of 2006) photographer's mate insignia. This is a special sub and would be considered a re-enlistment bonus for top first class petty officers in the engineering field, not a second class photographer's mate. Natalie Stone as Lieutenant Commander Lucille Conciel has her oak insignia on the right lapel only. The captain had his birds on both lapels and Lorenzo Lamas as Lieutenant Michael Arronax had his Lt. bars on one lapel and a chief petty officers anchor on the other. You got to ask yourself what did they do? Go to an army-navy store and buy a handful of stuff and tried to make it work? Of course they are going to try to rescue a sub that is stuck on the bottom (in tact?) at 20,000 feet that was taken down by a giant squid. In the following scene Lamas "corrects" his lapel insignias by eliminating the chief's anchor and replacing his double Lt. bars with a single silver Lt. junior grade bars. Did he get busted in those 2 minutes?As their small sub descends they can look out into the ocean fairly clearly and see all kinds of things growing from the ocean floor. This is wrong on so many levels. 1) They don't have viewing window or screen doors on subs. 2)If they did it would be too dark to see much of anything 3) They are diving near the Marianas Trench. They wouldn't see the ocean flora even if they had a window with visibility.As the small Aquanaut descends it shakes as if it is falling apart. The reason given is because they are going through thermal layers which rocks the boat. Hmmm. Actually submarines operate in those thermal layers because it makes it harder to be detected. And was that flames underwater?The movie is fun as Asylum films demonstrate they know nothing about the Navy. Why do they insist on making ocean films? The only fun in watching this film is finding the errors. Captain Nemo was played bad. Natalie Stone look as if she was playing Casey Anthony on trial with the way she had her hair.No f-bombs, sex, or nudity. Frequent "Asylum actress", Kim Little looks cute in a pony tail and that is about as sexy as it gets.

I can stomach poorly presented Sci-Fi at many levels, but the horror of 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea has left me feeling - not unlike it's poorly scripted and utterly inconsistent villain - that nuclear missiles would be a suitable option in this case.If you're coming to this expecting anything similar to the novel or previous film, you're truly going to be disappointed. Jules Verne has provided the scriptwriters with a few names and after that they appear to have burnt the rest of the book.Poorly acted, poorly scripted, poor set-designs, poorly lit, the sound poorly mixed - with sometimes inaudible and overlapping dubbing in - this film starts off bad and just gets worst.The most criminal act perpetrated by the team behind this is the apparently complete and utter lack of research performed whilst scripting this. At the stage where the commander of a (blatently WWII era) battleship orders it to steam at over 70 knots, my eyes glazed over, my mouth dropped open and I sat vegetable like at the ensuing horror. The set designers are not escaping this in glory either, whilst I understand the budgeting concerns, would it not perhaps be quite easy to remove the equipment that is clearly and prominently marked with the name of the cargo ship they are filming the "Battleship" scenes on - I managed to spot a fire axe, a lifeboat, and a life ring all happily visible in the background, just turning axe and life ring around would have sufficed but no, it's this slipshod attention to .... absolutely everything that sticks the rusty nails into this rotting coffin of idiocy.In summary. No. No. A thousand times no!

If your idea of a movie is to watch head shot after head shot after head shot of actors, used in order to hide poor and questionable backgrounds, then this movie is for you. The scenes seem designed to fit people into as small of a space as possible, probably in order to minimize costs on the walls and backgrounds. What does it cost to build a room with table and chairs and such, versus a closet with a left over kitchen counter top as the apparent table, with chairs so tight around the actors can't move. The scene where the find a remote control attached to their submersible is priceless. There is a remote the size of a large snow globe under there control console, glowing bright blue (which no one notices in the dark cabin), at least until someone reaches under to grab it and yank it out. And then, this complex control mechanism and all the wires they broke is reattached in 5 seconds when ordered to by Nemo.Please, please, please, save yourself and avoid this film.

30,000 Leagues Under the Sea starts as Lieutenant Captain Michael Aronnaux (Lorenzo Lamas) is ordered to use his invention the Oxygenator, which turns water into air, aboard his small sub the Aquanaut 3 to dive down 20,000 feet to the stranded USS Scotia & save the 150 odd crewmen. Once Aronnaux & his small crew reach the USS Scotia they are kidnapped by eccentric billionaire Captain Nemo (Sean Lawlor) & held prisoner on his submarine the Nautilus where he reveals that he has stolen the nuclear warheads from the USS Scotia & intends to use them to destroy the Earth & create an underwater utopia. Aronnaux & his crew aren't keen on the idea & set out to stop Nemo in his destruction of our planet, as the fate of the human race hangs in the balance can Aronnaux stop Nemo?Directed by Gabriel Bologna this is yet another Hollywood blockbuster rip-off from those people at The Asylum, do I really need to to say which Hollywood flick 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea rips-off? There's only one number difference in both titles although any connection to the classic Jules Verne novel '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' is purely coincidental. While the original Verne novel was set during Victorian times the makers of 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea decide to set the story in contemporary times although the basic plot of a sea loving genius who wants to start a new civilisation under the waves is present & correct. To be brutally honest 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea is absolutely terrible, the plot sucks, there's no pace or tension or drama, the character's & dialogue are awful & the film has many, many factual holes which are painfully obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense or general knowledge. For instance the submarine featured in 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea sinks to a depth of over 20,000 feet yet the crush depth of such a submarine is less than 2,500 feet & then there's the scenes of people diving & swimming at that depth with nothing more than normal clothing & simple air breathers. Also I think I am right in saying that at a depth of over 20,000 feet it would be literally pitch black since no sunlight can travel that far through water so why is everything illuminated so well? Why does that underwater Volcano intermittently prevent radio signals? The basic physics & facts of reality are completely ignored in 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea & it has no dramatic impact or weight because of it. The whole film is also incredibly boring, the pace is slow & the plot is very predictable with obvious character arcs, plot development's & a by the numbers 'hero saves the day & rescues the girl' style ending.This film just looks cheap, from the rubbishy low lit sets that looks slightly more futuristic than your average warehouse corridor to the boring design of the costumes & underwater equipment. The sets are decorated by what looks like cheap car seats & I never really got the impression that I was on a modern, sleek ultra sophisticated state-of-the-art submarine. The sets & production design on Seaquest DSV (1993 - 1996) were far superior to this & 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea feels like a cheap imitation of it. This is strictly PG stuff all the way so forget about any fights or gore or action. The CGI effects vary, some of them are alright if a little basic while other's are awful like the giant squid things which look terrible.With a supposed budget of about $500,000 this didn't have much spent on it & it shows since the film looks drab, dull & cheap throughout. Par for the course for The Asylum really, do they even try to make good films? The acting is poor from no-one I have ever heard of before.30,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a cross between 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea & Seaquest DSV with less than spectacular results. The CGI isn't as bad as it could have been but all the errors that you need to suspend your disbelief & forget everything you know about the sea just sink it without trace.