20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1954 American Technicolor adventure film and the first science fiction film shot in CinemaScope. The film was personally produced by Walt Disney through Walt Disney Productions, directed by Richard Fleischer, and stars Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre. It was also the first feature-length Disney film to be distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. The film is adapted from Jules Verne's 19th-century novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". It is considered an early precursor of the steampunk genre. The film was a critical
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Prince Dakkar), it is muddied by the presence of several irreconcilable chronological contradictions between the two books and even within "The Mysterious Island." Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later "Facing the Flag". That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completely unscrupulous pirate acting purely and simply for gain, completely devoid of all the saving graces which gave Nemo—for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings—some nobility of character. Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests—but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of