V For Vendetta: The Movie

Quickly designated "a melodrama in sixteen parts," the prologue first appeared in Cerebus #124, published by Aardvark-Vanaheim in 1989. The chapters proper began appearing in Taboo, edited by Stephen Bissette (Alan Moore's former collaborator on Swamp Thing) beginning in Taboo #2. Taboo was published intermittently and stopped publication with #7, which featured chapter 6 of From Hell.
These early episodes were collected in From Hell volumes 1-3, first published from 1991-1993, alone with Moore's appendices. After the demise of Taboo, this series continued with new material, beginning with volume 4 in 1994.

DC bought Wildstorm once the contracts were signed and development work done, first issue or so drawn etc. Moore stuck around because it would be depriving a dozen artists of work if he flounced off on principle. He'd been doing work for hire solidly for six years at that point (Spawn, Violator, Bloodfeud, Badrock, WildCATs, Majestic, Fire For Heaven, Vampirella, Supreme, Youngblood, Shadowhawk, Glory), largely because he needed the dosh after going broke on Big Numbers. [Note to small business owners: when publishing a comic book that comes out once every three years as your sole source of income, do not pay regular salaries to your wife and her lesbian girlfriend for running the office.]

Independent of that, as a movie on its own, a little comic book thriller - yeah I guess it was okay.

how can you manage to make a bad film when for £10 off amazon you can get 200 pages of ready-made storyboards? FFS

how can you manage to make a bad film when for £10 off amazon you can get 200 pages of ready-made storyboards? FFS

how can you manage to make a bad film when for £10 off amazon you can get 200 pages of ready-made storyboards? FFS

i mean i know he's wearing a mask but it doesn't mean he has to be like "mfmfmfmffmmmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmfmmf" for the whole film, i can suspend my disbelief

the more I've thought about this the more I think Moore's assessment of the film's politics is essentially correct - its not that the movie is bad, its just that if they wanted to make a movie about the contemporary political landscape (US, War on Terror, Iraq, etc.), then the only ostensible reason for using the UK/V plot as a basis for the film is because they're pussies

otm

i mean for example V spends about 5 minutes introducing himself, the main purpose of which seems to be to show off the wachowski's ability to use a dictionary rather than introduce the character - he gets 9 short lines in the book

pffft - the graphic novel's great, particularly the latter soap-opera half with multiple narrators. the movie, albeit for fairly understandable reasons, jettisoned all that.

and they weren't shot of running time either, most missing material seems to have been replaced with stephen rea moping round corridors in records offices, hold tight on this roller-coaster ride of an action thriller

(soap opera isn't quite OTM though)

Was Arthur Miller a pussy for writing The Crucible instead of dealing with McCarthy head-on?

Also, would anyone go see an explicit critique of the current war / government? I doubt it.

Oh yeah. *sheepish grin*

I would think its pretty obvious that Miller/the Crucible and Wachowskis/V are not analogous situations,

Does that change the fact that Miller critiqued a current issue through allegory instead of doing so head-on? Is it somehow less "cowardly" to levy a critique with your own allegorical construct instead of awkwardly appropriating someone else's?

not least the fact they dont seem to understand how BRITISHES actually speak!

The operative word is "inept," not "cowardly." This is the only point I'm trying to make.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c30/explodingkinetoscope/vendetta.jpg

Actually, anarchism is never mentioned in the comic. V has one speech about anarchy, but that's it. Though I agree the comic is much more about anarchism than the movie, which is about more vaguely defined anti-fascism. However, I find Moore's handling of anarchism rather problematic as well: the idea of a single mastermind, V, working alone to change the society, forcing Evey into her anarchist "enlightenment", killing lots of people on the way, etc, seems kinda problematic with the ideas of anarchism, even if V himself thinks he is an anarchist freedom fighter. Moore tries to solve this problem by making V a symbol of anarchism, i.e. he's not a real person rather than an idea (which is why we see Evey's face when she takes the mask off), but V for Vendetta is still more of an fantasy superhero take on anarchism rather a story about what a real anarchist revolution in a fascist state might be like. But I guess stories like this are always parables, so I really like the comic still. However, what I didn't expect the movie to do was make V less of an hero than in the comic - it actually criticized his deeds more.

the policeman storyline is good, the imagined britain is good, the plot is okay, though the flashbacks are needlessly confusing. it's not totally clear what order things happened in and why.

but it was much clearer about v being fucked-up than the comic. the only problem there is, we still have to spend lots of time with him.

i'm not an anarchist and the ending failed to fill me with hope. i did like seeing parliament blown up though.

also, i think it was invented for big summer movies like 'independence day', but i never like those 'scenes of random people in their homes/pubs watching tv' scenes.

i did read the comic but forgot that. they all had flat-screen tvs. this obscurely annoyed me. perhaps it needed more 'brazil' type oddness.

How did you feel about the ending in the comic? Because I think the very final scene (with the policeman) was actually grimmer than in the movie, i.e. there was nothing to suggest that the people were actually gonna build a better anarchist society.