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
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film) come to pass, in God's good time". In 1950 Sig Rogell announced he had bought the rights to the novel as well as to an adaptation prepared by Robert L. Lippert's production company. He was going to make the film independently. The rights eventually went to Disney. "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" was filmed at various locations in The Bahamas and Jamaica, with the cave scenes filmed beneath what is now the Xtabi Resort on the cliffs of Negril. Filming began in spring of 1954. Some of the location filming sequences were so complex that they required a technical crew