How different this is from the book! There's maybe 2 similarities. I grew up with the film, and now, at 26, I'm reading the book for the first time. The book is fantastic, but I honestly think they couldn't gotten away with saying this movie was an original production lol. I'd love for the movie to be accurately portrayed on film, except that it would be too slow and boring for today's audiences.
shareAgreed, aliholly. I've read that the studio felt the novel (both of them, since there are actually two slightly different versions) was too "European" in tone for American audiences. So they tried to make it American-friendly, as they saw it, but based it in Edinburgh as something exotic that Americans might still relate to.
In thoughts of what-might-have-been, the 2008 remake with Brendan Fraser was originally intended to be a faithful version of Verne's novel, done in a Victorian-era steampunk style. I would so much have liked to see that!! But the studio got nervous and decided there wasn't a market for it, and wanted it to be a kids' movie instead; it had the script rewritten, and when the bloke who had originated the project couldn't agree with the changes, he was forced off the project. The end result made money at the box office, but to my mind it was boilerplate crap.