Sean Connery's Career Effectively Ended After This Superhero Box Office Bomb

2003's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was the film that finally brought down Sean Connery. 40 years after he appeared in "Dr. No," the film that kick-started cinema's most enduring franchise, Connery became so miserable working on Stephen Norrington's terrible superhero flick that he retired from acting. So repulsed by his experience on the film was the Scottish star that even a call from Steven Spielberg about a potential return to the Indiana Jones franchise couldn't coax him back.

Connery took the long road to acting, finally ending up in show business by way of a short-lived soccer career and a stint in the Navy. When he did become an actor, he became one of the biggest in the world, mostly after taking on the mantle of England's greatest spy. But even more impressive than defining a cultural icon was the way Connery managed to break out of the typecasting that inevitably came from that very role.

Landing James Bond was a double-edged sword for Connery, who was capable of far more than portraying the debonair spy. In 1973's "The Offence," Connery played a jaded and beleaguered policeman who unwittingly kills a suspect. It was one of many films in which the actor attempted to so brazenly play against type, and while it took some time, the star eventually managed to disentangle his name from 007's. As "The Offence" director Sidney Lumet once put it for a The Hollywood Reporter profile of Connery, "Most actors are either leading men or character actors, but Sean is one of the few stars who encompasses both." Eventually, Connery proved as much to the masses.

After charting such an impressive course and overcoming such seemingly insurmountable odds, however, Connery's seemingly unshakable passion for acting would eventually be undone by crappy comic book movie.

The "Watchmen" series and "V for Vendetta" aside, Hollywood hasn't proven all that adept at adapting works by Alan Moore. Sure, Roger Ebert loved Zack Snyder's controversial "Watchmen" adaptation, bestowing a perfect score on the movie, but nobody else thinks "Watchmen" is perfect. "Constantine" was ok, and so was "From Hell." But by far the worst film based on a comic book storyline by Moore is "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

This 2003 steampunk superhero slog uses characters from Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comic book series of the same name but follows a completely original plot. In retrospect, that was a mistake as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is widely regarded as one of the worst superhero movies ever made, even if it did become Tubi's obsession in 2025.

At the head of this certified stinker was a 73-year-old Sean Connery, who played the leader of the titular group, Allan Quatermain. That group was made up of several super-powered figures from literary history, including Mina Harker from "Dracula," Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, secret service agent Tom Sawyer, and Captain Nemo. The superhero team are tasked with thwarting a terrorist group led by a mysterious figure known as The Fantom (Richard Roxburgh), who has managed to bring the world to the brink of a world war. With Connery at the forefront, you might think the film had at least something going for it. What's more, Stephen Norrington — who had delivered one of the best and most overlooked superhero movies ever made with "Blade" in 1998 — was directing. Alas, the film was so bad it prompted Connery to quit acting altogether.

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" wasn't the biggest box office disaster, but it wasn't exactly a hit, either. The film made $179 million against a $78 million budget. Worse still, it was savaged by critics, with Jamie Russell of the BBC writing that the film was "nothing more and nothing less than an extraordinary waste of time and money." Roger Ebert complained about how it "plunges into incomprehensible action, idiotic dialogue, inexplicable motivations, causes without effects, effects without causes, and general lunacy," surmising that the film was nothing short of "a mess." With that in mind a 17% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes isn't actually too bad.

No wonder Sean Connery had enough by that point. The actor told British Paper The Times (via Den of Geek) that making "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was "a nightmare," adding: "The experience had a great influence on me. It made me think about showbiz. I get fed up with dealing with idiots." Clearly, it wasn't necessarily the reception to the movie that prompted his retirement, but the experience of making it, with Connery accusing Stephen Norrington of being "insane." So averse to ever appearing on a movie set was he, that when Stephen Spielberg contacted him about appearing in 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" Connery turned him down, writing the director to say, "In the end, retirement is too damn much fun."

Sadly, that means "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was the Scottish star's final live-action film role. Connery did deliver a surreal final James Bond performance in a 2005 video game and even came out of retirement to lend his voice to one of the worst movies in the Connery oeuvre with "Sir Billi" in 2008.