Beware Humorless Nemos and Roburs

And yet if they were invested with more of a sense of humor we would consider them more flip with human lives, and therefore a more serious class of monster.

I've always admired the Nemo/Robur type of antihero. I'm not sure I buy into the idea that they're morally flawed; such arguments usually put forth the notion that they're arrogating to themselves what belongs to God alone, an argument that depends on the existence of a god. Perhaps the tellers of these stories are afraid of the consequences of authoring such persons without following it up with a pious little pedantic moral: don't buck the system - you'll go down in flames. Under this sort of reasoning, the French and American Revolutions would never have happened.

In the real world such men, on the rare occasions when they appear, always sell out.

§« The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. »§

Humorless or chock-ful-o-nuttiness, these types of men are MEGALOMANIACS who want to control the lives of men and the destiny of human civilization.

They should not be trusted or assisted, even if they offer nice salaries, health benefits, vacations, stock options and pension plans.

Bail out of their company plans even if you don't have a golden parachute.

Nemo dies of an illness surrounded by castaways that he helped in The Mysterious Island. The fate of Robur was ambiguous.

Funny, I engaged in an exchange on Yahoo a few years back with a person who told me that he was at the same time a supporter of the Bush and Cheney "War on Terror" and a long time admirer of Jules Verne's character Captain Nemo. He became somewhat upset when I pointed out that Captain Nemo was an anarchist terrorist who sank the United States naval vessel Abraham Lincoln in an unprovoked attack. I thought it very odd that he, along with many others, seem to be blind to the fact that Nemo and Robur seemed to be operating on a program of deliberately attacking the American military machine with intent to ultimately destroy it.

I saw both this movie and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea in original theatrical release.