Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea of the premiere adventure novels and one of Verne's greatest works, along with "Around the World in Eighty Days" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth". The description of Nemo's ship, the "Nautilus", was considered ahead of its time, as it accurately describes features on submarines, which at the time were very primitive vessels. A model of the French submarine "Plongeur" (launched in 1863) was displayed at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where it was studied by Jules Verne, who used it as an inspiration for the novel. The title refers to the "distance traveled" while under the sea and
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne Diabolic Tenant" (1909). Zeman freely used details from Méliès's style as inspiration; for example, the piston-powered steam engine and submarine in "Vynález zkázy" are creatively adapted variants of those in "The Impossible Voyage". Other possible cinematic sources include Fritz Lang's 1927 film "Metropolis", Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film "Battleship Potemkin", and possibly even Stuart Paton's 1916 version of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". The film has long been noted for its unique visual style, which faithfully recreates that of the Victorian line engravings (by Édouard Riou, Léon Benett, and others) featured in the original editions of Verne's novels. According to Karel