The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
Beneath the sea, freedom becomes a locked room.
Professor Pierre Aronnax
A learned naturalist finds the world he most wants to study inside the vessel that has taken away his freedom.
The Sea
The same water is Nemo's homeland, Aronnax's museum, and Ned Land's prison wall.
Sailors face a terrifying question: what force outruns every ship and defies belief?
Read →The Enormous Thing
For some time past, vessels had been met by “an enormous thing,” a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale.
The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed.
Verne begins not with a person but with a rumor already in circulation among sailors: something has been seen, and no one can say what. The careful hedging, "an enormous thing," a "creature in question," refuses to commit to whale or monster, which is exactly the confusion that will drive the world's naturalists and navies to hunt it. What ties the scattered reports together is not the object's appearance but its behavior, its speed and the strange sense that it is alive. That living quality is the hook, since a fast object is a puzzle but a fast living thing is a threat.
The sea monster terrifying shipping lanes is a submarine
The "monster" that has been ramming ships turns out to be a machine - and the man who built it has removed himself from the human world entirely.
The Nautilus
A steel submarine mistaken for a monster is one man's home, weapon, prison, and country.
Captain Nemo
A brilliant exile commands a hidden submarine world where freedom and imprisonment are the same steel enclosure.
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.
The Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea World, as it plays on your phone
- Meet the people. 15 characters, each with a portrait, who they are and what they want.
- Walk the places. 32 places, each pictured, and what happens there.
- Follow the plot. The turns of the story, in order, so you always know where you are.
- Taste the original. 30 key passages in Jules Verne’s own words, each with a short reading of what it is doing.
- The complete book. Every word, in a reader made for your phone. From any passage, one tap opens the book at that very page.
Step inside Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
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