20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is one of my favorite books of all time. As a movie and book lover, I have no mercy for filmmakers who take too much liberty when adapting wildly known works. Even though it is not an adaptation per se, since here we only focus on Captain Nemo, the character himself is the main interest of the original story. Therefore screwing this up would be the same as screwing up Jules Verne's masterpiece.
And after watching the whole series, I'll put it with simple words:
It is BLASPHEMOUS as an adaptation but ENJOYABLE as entertainment material.
Captain Nemo's backstory as a fallen indian wealthy Prince is accurate but...that's it. Really. Apart from that, everything else is pure invention like how he built the Nautilius or how he assembled his crew. There are no women in his original crew but in modern society that would not slide, so they had to include that one typical smart independant woman to serve as a love interest and as a sort of challenger for Nemo's genius. Surprisingly, as much as I hate the modern feminism agenda in modern filmmaking, I realy liked the main female character. Instead of being that arrogant I-know-everything-more-than-anyone-else type that we all hate, they pulled off a character that has a nice balance betweem being feminine and intelligent. Nice job...for once.
The rest of the cast is a nice heterogenous mix of cultures and ethnic backgrounds, that in the context of the story does not feel forced like other films and series we see today.
The acting is descent and the cinematography could have been better if they focused more on the beauty and the wilderness of the ocean instead of the inside of the submarine. I didn't find the CGI to be as terrible as I some other viewers think. There were great and you can see that they put a lot of effort in the underwater sequences.
As a complete fanatic of the original book, I actually enjoyed it but I had to give in after the first episode and admit that it won't be a faithful backstory of our beloved Captain Nemo and his Legendary Submarine.
My advice for you is to watch it as a high-budget fan fiction and not as an actual adaptation. That way you'll get through all episodes without any high expectations and just enjoy the journey with the characters.
