Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea the book from the initial concept is a portrait of Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish national hero, leader of the uprising against Russia in 1794, with an inscription in Latin: "Finis Poloniae!" ("The end of Poland!"). Margaret Drabble argues that "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" anticipated the ecology movement and shaped the French avant-garde. Theodore L. Thomas in 1961 said that "there is not a single bit of valid speculation" in the novel and that "none of its predictions has come true". He described the depictions of the diving gear, scenes, and the "Nautilus" as "pretty bad, behind the times
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