I love this image, which is from the silent movie where the stuntman/storyteller got injured by falling off a bridge. It's so preposterous, and so evocative of the bizarre splendor of early-twentieth century film.

Here you can see the band of heroes fighting one of the bad guys.

And finally, here is a showdown between the alter-ego of the stuntman in his story, and the alter-ego of the man who ran off with his wife — recast as a villain in a land that is a perfect cross between old Hollywood and some fairy tale realm. You can see that the hero is wearing a kind of magician's cloak and has drawn his pistol, while the bad guy looks perfectly 1915 in his striped blazer and white trousers.

The Fall opens later this month in the United States. Although advance reviews say the story is sometimes confusing and thin — which could also be said of Tarsem's previous effort in The Cell — I'm still completely excited to see it. I'm just a sucker for superheroes in color-satured, freaky environments. Plus, I love silent movies. So I'm basically the weird-ass target market for this film.

The Fall [official film site]

The Fall unites an unlikely band of steampunk-era heroes — The Indian, The Ex-Slave, The Explosives Expert, The Masked Bandit, and Charles Darwin — to fight a common enemy, Governor Odious. Director Tarsem is best known for his movie The Cell, which was gorgeous eye-candy with a story that dragged. He's also been attached to the remake of Westworld and Nautica, but was either replaced or left those projects. The Fall was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, and has taken its sweet time to make its way around the world.

It looks to be equal parts Big Fish and Pan's Labyrinth as well as The League. That's a good start. Plus, Charles Darwin as a fictional science hero? We're there.