oh dear... an origin story was touted a few years back, where Nemo is a southern plantation owner or something... all very meh and hollywood and ignoring exactly what Verne created so perfectly...
"Journey to the centre of the earth" adaptation I watched on telly recently - no machine at all!!!
Verne's book never had a machine... iirc, it was a hike into an Icelandic volcano... Burroughs At The Earths Core had a machine if memory serves...