V For Vendetta: The Movie

Mark Kermode on V for Vendetta

arggghhhhhhhhh - way to dismiss an entire medium out of hand. very astute of you.

Now I'm going to reread The Watchmen.

Time Warner promotes terrorism and anti-Christian bigotry in new leftist movie, 'V for Vendetta'

Gospelcom.net: One gets the distinct impression from this film that the true threats to the freedom of man are the adherence to Christian and conservative philosophies..

MensNewsDaily: Too many great quotes from this one to count. Moore was not really writing about Thatcher, Nazis are really Socialists, etc etc

WND: Ironically, points out Baehr, a homosexual character who owns homosexual pornography also owns a banned copy of the Quran.

IRONY!

Plugged In: Nevertheless, V makes blowing up buildings look very cool and very justifiable. It's hard to measure or predict the impact such images and ideas might have in today's culture, where blasting buildings to make political statements has become a raw reality.

(tho the last one is a bit more even-handed/level-headed)

I say BRING ON THE MENTALISTS!

honestly the idea he tosses off in the last paragraph about a US-centric story sounds 100% better than whatever the Wachowskis have come up with

otm!

i'm not posting these due to them surprising anyone, i'm linking them b/c they tend to be funny, revealing, and in the case of that MND one, really weird. It's like documenting the batshit War on Christmas stuff; watching these guys get themselves into a froth over a not-too-sublte cultural jibe holds a bizarre fascination for me.

Also, the one from Plugged In(the movie review site linked up to Focus on the Family, is surprisingly charitable.

V for Vendetta
W for Wrevenge
X for Xtremism

*As I expected, they downplayed the anarchist themes, which was unfortunate. It's easy to make a story where someone opposes an evil fascist government, but for better or worse I think Moore's ponderings on anarchy is what separates the comic from other similar dystopies. So the V's telly speech about how it was the people's own fault for letting their leaders guide them was toned down drastically, the monologue with the justice statue was changed, etc. The only hints of anarchism in the movie were rather subliminal, i.e. the shoplifter saying "It's anarchy in the UK!" and the fact that V's symbol is almost like an upside down anarchist "A".

*The ending with the Houses of Parliament blowing up was probably the weakest part. The comic ended with angry folks uprising against the fascists, which was a much stronger finale. In the film, the bombing carried an enormous symbolic weight, but it was symbolic of what exactly? The failings of parliamentarism? If the film would've included the comic's anarchist themes, that might've been an option, but now the symbolism was kinda weak. Of course V's speech about how bombing a building can be revolutionary act was a brave move, but still... The comic ended with the explosion of Downing Street, which was the fascist government's operational center, but I'm not sure if the movie ever implied the government resided in the Houses of Parliament.

*The scenes with the V masks and the ending with people taking them off was a very nice touch, one of the changes to the comic that I think actually played out fine.

*Another thing where I felt the film improved upon the comic was the final scenes with V and Evey. V says that he must leave the final choice to Eve, and that his work is done. This I think was a better ending than in the comic. In the film V is more of a counterforce to the fascists, a necessary monster they've created, and once the fascists are dealt with he must perish too, and leave people's fate into their own hands. Whereas in the comic Evey becomes the new V, and it feels like her job is to watch that people don't stray from the narrow path again, which is against the very idea of anarchism. Of course, a single person deciding the fate of a nation is rather anti-anarchist too, but since V is supposed to be a symbol of anarchy rather than a real person, it's sort acceptable. Evey, however is clearly a real person and not a symbol.

*Stephen Rea was very good as Finch, but he wasn't given that much to work with. The humanizing scenes with Finch that were in the comic were mostly left out. I can't say whether Natalie Portman was good or bad, since in the film he was mostly V's puppet, and had very few scenes of her own. Again, a lot of the stuff that fleshed her out in the comic was left off. Obviously they couldn't have included everything from the comic, but what I missed the most were all the subplots with characters like Rose Almond, which showed the banal side of fascism. Now, the actual analysis of the workings of fascism was kinda thin, though maybe you shouldn't expect that much from a Wachowski brothers film.

*I'm glad they kept Evey's prison scenes from the comic almost intact, since that obviously was the true climax in both versions. The scenes with Evey reading Valerie's letters actually made me cry. I like Alan Moore the idealist more than the disillusioned cynic he later turned into.

*The human dictator in the comic was more interesting than the Big Brother one in the film. John Hurt's Hitler mannerisms were okay I guess, but it felt kinda silly that he had to use them to his closest men and not just in his public appearances. It was a nice touch that we never saw him in real life until his final scene.

* The Benny Hill tribute was great!

I liked that too, but I was beginning to think I was the only one.

(x-post)

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