20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954): 20 Things You Never Knew!

[@barrybarlowe5640]

Lord... nostalgia... When Disney was Imaginative Family entertainment. Literally, the GOOD old days!

[@robvangessel3766]

Considering that this was "Walt Disney" in his day, this film was uniquely HEAVY. Nemo talks about how his wife and child were tortured to death, which is what drove him insane. He later gets a bullet in the kidney section of his back and blood is splashed on his jacket. He dies with eyes wide open and stiff. And, of course, Nemo's passages eloquently delivered by the great James Mason, like, "We are nearing Vulcania.I want you to see the extent of these secrets for which they have hounded me.The knowledge which cost the lives of those dearest to me, the power which is still mine. Enough energy to lift mankind from the depths of hell into heaven...or destroy it. Perhaps then you will feel less inclined to barter such a prize." Disney himself wasn't generally this permissive. Maybe in this case it was because he had a major Hollywood team here, rather than his usual in-house staff and ensemble. In any case, this is easily one of the greatest sci fi movies of all time, to this day.

[@lefantomer]

I love this character. He is faced with a desperate responsibility and never flinches, never backs down. Is ready to risk it for the possibility of release some of the "safe" tech and to lay it all down rather than to have it fall into the hands of tyrants who would use if for conquest and tyranny. Some of us got our first real heroes early. This one was mine.

[@robvangessel3766]

@@lefantomer Echoes in Forbidden Planet's Morbius character a few years later.

[@lefantomer]

Mason is extraordinary! There were 4 possible choices for Nemo and he was holding out until they came up with a better script, which fortunately the did. However, I must correct one misconception: Nemo was not "driven insane". Since when is intense grief and determination for justice "insanity"? We have had rammed into our heads a pacifist, self-sacrificial notion of morality in which "forgiveness" and dependence on Almighty Sky People to exact justice when we can not are valued ahead of justice. Deciding to do limited -- no attacks on passenger ships, cities or the like, just slaver munitions carriers -- is a difficult choice but when there is literally no one you can trust -- not even so inadequate and corrupt an "authority" as a League of/United Nations -- not to even accidentally hand the secret right back to the bad guys sometimes you have to make them until you can find a better solution. If it was your family, your life, would you just sail off to grow food in the ocean and leave it to someone else?

[@danielmkubacki]

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) is so good!

[@brianperry]

My mother took me to the cinema to watch this film in 1954, l also received the Disney book 20,000 leagues under the Sea.. l was enthralled… The Nautilus the most iconic movie submarine in history… I’ve since seen a few beautiful RC Nautilus submarines on KZbin…l think by the Sub guy…

[@kratibnoi10310]

Fantastic film and great video. Thanks 👍

[@SSmith-fm9kg]

I was at Disneyland in August, 1955. I was 5. We walked through the 20,000 Leagues exhibit. Looking through the portal at the squid attacking the Nautilus on the surface of the ocean, I and my two younger brothers were let down...we could see the wires suspending the squid tentacles, moving them up and down. Disneyland was cool in 1955. 58 years later, I returned. The only thing left of the original park was the Mark Twain riverboat, the train around the park, Cinderella's Castle, and the Victorian Era buildings at the entrance. Sad. Even the TWA rocket ship had been replaced with a smaller one. Sad.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

This is my third all-time favorite motion picture.

[@jayjay-bz3rr]

This is one of my most favorite movies 🦑

[@DavidSmith-xs3or]

I love how the Nautilus was redesigned from the original drawings in the novel; It has a style leaning toward steampunk- before steampunk was a thing. This movie is a classic, and I think any attempt to remake it will never come close to that original lush, vibrant look of this film. Now, if Hollywood was to remake a filmed Jules Verne based novel, I'd like to see Vincent Price's " Master of the World remade. It looks like a lower-budget version of 20,000 Leagues.

[@Andrew-sv6zq]

One of my favorites kids movie and ride

[@robvangessel3766]

This wasn't a kids movie. It's for all audiences.

[@lefantomer]

@@robvangessel3766 It inspired Dr. Robert Ballard, discoverer of the wreck of Titanic, to go into oceanographic work when he saw it at age 14.

[@robvangessel3766]

@@lefantomer It's one of those movies you can enjoy on different levels over the years. As an adult viewer, I really got into Mason's Nemo. I thought his battle with the mercenaries from different nations hunting him down made a great story.

[@lefantomer]

@@robvangessel3766 I agree. The man is a hero and yet we get careless reviewers calling him "mad" We are taught self-sacrifice, to "forgive" anything, to let Authorities and "Higher Powers" handle justice. Sometimes we just have to do it ourselves.

[@christoph404]

bit of technical trivia, as most of us know a cinemascope lens squeezes the image from the sides, makes things look elongated, then unsqueezed for projection to give the wide format. So for the underwater scenes of the Nautilus submarine what the special effects team did was shoot the sequences of the sub with a regular non cinemascope camera, but they built the miniature models of the sub already physically squeezed, the models themselves were squeezed rather than being optically squeezed, and when the film was unsqueezed the scale models looked normal and inhabited a wide cinemascope screen.

[@rockywatchesmovies]

That's genius. It's so much more interesting learning about how they used to make films than how they do it today. That's why the new films are just so forgettable.

[@christoph404]

@@rockywatchesmovies Indeed, practical effects were always very ingenious back then, and Disney live action movies incorporated some very imaginative and unique effects!

[@hagerty1952]

I believe this was only for the scenes of it traveling through the tunnel when heading to or from the lagoon at Vulcania. The others were actually shot under water with regular-shaped models of 3 different sizes. You can tell because the bubbles from the propeller travel upwards in most shots, but since the tunnel scenes were shot dry much later (when the Cinema Scope lens was no longer available) you can see the bubbles (generated in air from a bubble machine) falling downward. This is one of those things that you can't unsee once you notice it, but it's an interesting talisman of practical effects.

[@christoph404]

@@hagerty1952 aha..thanks for the further information, that sounds about right, I think that idea of making miniatures in a physically squeezed form has been used in other movies too.

[@srice8959]

@@rockywatchesmovies Things like this is why I love Practical Effects over CGI 99.99999% of the time. Granted some of the special effects in 20,000 is campy, but when HollyWeird when doing it right it’s quite often so much better to me

[@paulm.newitt3246]

The saloon girl on the right @4:34 is Gloria Pall, who was also in an Elvis movie. I met her, Richard Fleisher, Harper Goff, at a remastered reveal event at the Disney studio in 1993. Also, (friend) Disney Imagineer Tom Scherman would be the expert on 20K, worked on the DLP walk through and Tokyo Disneysea attractions.

[@namogel67]

35k Subs. Well done!!

[@paulknuff1555]

No remake will ever be better than the original.

[@lefantomer]

None have even come close. "Leagues" is a legend. There are clubs and organizations dedicated to this movie and the Nautilus is the queen of nautical model-making.

[@johnfun3394]

A magic memory, I seen this at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento in the fourth grade with my friend Alan and his Dad. I wanted to work under water after that. But much later Jaws cured me.

[@hagerty1952]

I think Gregory Peck would have made an awesome Nemo! Also, Fleischer and Goff must have liked the submarine genre because they reprised their roles as director and art director 10 years later in "Fantastic Voyage." I like to call that film "20,000 mm Through the Circulatory System."

[@lefantomer]

He was one of the actors considered and probably would have done very well, but James Mason is perfect.

[@hagerty1952]

@@lefantomer - No argument there! Mason is the definitive Verne protagonist.

[@lefantomer]

Peck managed to make an excellent Ahab though totally miscast! Much too young, resembled "Heathcliffe" more than a grizzled old whaling captain, still carried it off. Fine actor.

[@simonrancourt7834]

In the book, Ned Land (Kirk Douglas' character) was born in Québec City

[@lefantomer]

Yes, much quieter character not the clown show we too often get with Douglas. Gets into a funny argument with Nemo over the latter's whale-hunting technique.

[@Darth_Apath]

They destroyed the sets for a new attraction? Were they effing mad?!

[@brianhanley1903]

Money.

[@MarkMeader-e4r]

I remember seeing the Attraction of the Sets of 20,000 in 1962 at Disneyland, and was fascinated by them, but I never saw the film until 1965 when it was re-Released!!! Also, Percy Helton, though his scenes were drastically cut, did have one line left in the beginning also!! Finally a Made for tv Movie was made in 1999 with Ben Cross As Nemo and Richard Crenna as Arronax with a daughter, instead of an Apprentice!

[@AtheistOrphan]

That’s a whale of a tale to tell!

[@linuxophile]

I did not remember the movie (which I have seen time immemorial ago); the scene where Kirk Doublas flees the tribe seems to have been the inspiration for Indiana Jones' similar scene. I would bet.

[@ironcladalibi]

Movie versions of "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" were made in 1916, 1954, 1972 (animated), 1985 (animated), 1997 and 2004 (animated).

[@thunder8512]

Fun Fact- Nemo is German for unknown. His name wasn't Nemo, it was mistranslated to meaning no one knew his name.

[@mikehughes4969]

Not my favorite Disney film. That would be Fantasia. But it is my favorite live action Disney film.

[@whiterabbit1632]

My fave is The Black Hole

[@rockywatchesmovies]

I watched it for the first time in about 20 years the other day. Still a good film.

[@lefantomer]

@@whiterabbit1632 Sorry, ripped off too much of "Leagues" for me.

[@marcoantoniogarcia38]

The scenes from the Nautilus interior attraction are from the 1990’s one at Disneyland Paris. I don’t think that the 1950’s Disneyland attraction with the original sets from the movie had an animatronic octopus at the window inside the submarine.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

Starting at about 7:10 in this video: I have a 2-DVD box set for this movie. It includes behind-the-scenes footage, including images of the two gentlemen who had _"EAT AT JOE'S"_ and _"I ATE JOE"_ written on their foreheads...🤭

[@PointyTailofSatan]

No mention of the fact that 20,000 leagues is roughly 60,000 miles. So this distance "under the sea" would not only extend out of the opposite side of the Earth, but would end up being roughly a quarter of the distance to the Moon.

[@lefantomer]

Um, it means sailing across the sea, not straight down to the bottom of it!

[@eddysmith5902]

There were two remakes in 1997. One was a movie with Ben Cross as Nemo and Richard Crenna as Aronnax. The other was a miniseries with Michael Caine as Nemo and Patrick Dempsey as Arronax. (Note the differences in the spelling of the Professor’s name.)

[@lefantomer]

Poor Ben Cross, who should have made an excellent Nemo, was robbed by the dumarse storyline and script. Michael Caine's series was all over the place but for some of us the satisfaction of Ned Land finally getting his due made up for it.

[@brianhanley1903]

Captain Nemos Underwater World.

[@lefantomer]

@@brianhanley1903 Was that the one with I believe Robert Ryan? I think it was "City Beneath the Sea" or something like.

[@lefantomer]

Then Jose Ferrer got into one in which Nemo is brought to the present through cryrogenics or whatever. Ferrer - the most brilliant Cyrano ever -- managed to work a sword fight into it!

[@jjayjones8852]

A fantastic film.... Unfortunately, these days, literally nothing is safe from the dire and trite treatment of "Rise of Skywalker" and "Rings of Power".... No one wants to see this film remade with "Guy-ladriel" and "Mary Sue Skywalker".... The classics should either be left alone, or remade faithfully to the original material...

[@lefantomer]

I understand the most recent "remake" plan got shelved and agree wholeheartedly that I hope it stays that way!

[@ExTexan]

I generally like your videos, except for the interruption in the middle asking viewers to subscribe. People who are inclined to subscribe are going to do so even without a reminder, so it’s unnecessary to annoy the rest of us by including it. Just sayin’.

[@wayneandrews9298]

True but at least he doesn't do it at the beginning before you even WATCH the vid like most channels

[@biakabutooka]

Disney is going to remake 20,000 Leagues where Captain Nemo and Ned Land become lovers, get married and Nemo undergoes sex change procedures and subsequently gets pregnant. Will Smith will play Ned Land opposite Chris Rock/Jada Pinkett as Captain Nemo before and after. I don't know about y'all,but I plan on camping out by the ticket booth for this one.

[@Francesc2000]

Are you alright? Your pills need a refill?

[@biakabutooka]

@@Francesc2000 I've steadfastly maintained that reality is for pansies who aren't tough enough to deal with drugs.

[@ahhamartin]

Wish you'd hush. Somewhere there's an executive going "Genius! Why didn't I think of that?"

[@rojasbazan]

and white guys will play the island's cannibals.

[@puggle9983]

​@@ahhamartinclassic GOLD, !!!

[@unfundedopportunities7278]

J.J. Abrams should do a remake. Or, Tim Burton. Or save the money and just throw the whole thing into the trash.

[@lefantomer]

Oh no, please, no more "remakes". They screw it up every time. The Disney is not perfection but larges parts of it are.

[@davidanthony4845]

' muck GEE '

[@newlam7958]

All remakes suck! And these days, all the lead actors has to be black!

[@SonicBoom00]

Hopefully Disney starts leaving woke in its wake. I couldn’t help but notice that they have been getting their clocks (tick-tock) cleaned at the box office in the last couple of years.