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Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" on its 70th anniversary | How legendary writer Jules Vernes defined a Hollywood golden age of Sci-Fi movies

From the depths of the ocean to the center of the Earth, Jules Verne's impact on science fiction remains massive today.

Wells was represented by George Pal’s classic productions of The War of the Worlds(1953) and The Time Machine(1960), while seven films based on Verne’s work appeared during the same period, most notably 1954’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, now celebrating its 70th anniversary, and 1959’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, just reaching its 65th birthday. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is still the definitive version of Verne’s classic 1869 novel, which has been filmed numerous times for both the big and small screens, while the DNA of Journey to the Center of the Earth can be found in everything from The Descent to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire to the 2008 and 2012 adaptations (starring Brendan Fraser and Dwayne Johnson, respectively) that draw far more loosely from the book. The Disney production of 20,000 Leagues, then one of the studio’s biggest live-action films, headlined James Mason as Captain Nemo, commander of the advanced submarine Nautilus, who captures three survivors from a ship he rams: Professor Aronnax (Paul Lukas), his assistant Conseil (Peter Lorre), and roguish harpooner Ned Land (Kirk Douglas).

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