V For Vendetta: The Movie

From what I've heard, all versions of the script up to now have taken out the big alien and the ending. Don't ask me how. One screenwriter (I forget who) said, "You can't have a movie end with four million people dying in Manhattan. It's too ugly."

x-post Fuck, yet another depressing yet believable cop-out.

The only ostensibly positive thing about either movie getting made would be raising Moore's profile/making him a bunch of money and giving him a modicum of financial stability.

and, more importantly, james purefoy

(if he has any say in the matter, I mean)

oh I can think of a way they replace the original work. A SHIT LOAD MORE PEOPLE SEE IT, WTF.

haha - good for him. he's an upstanding chap.

"oh I can think of a way they replace the original work. A SHIT LOAD MORE PEOPLE SEE IT, WTF."

but the original books are still there, perfectly unmolested, available for all to read if they so wish. Movies are not comics. One does not replace the other - they exist parallel to each other.

let's face it - the best hope for a decent Watchmen movie was when Gilliam wanted to make it. But then Munchausen bombed and Gilliam got cold feet re: translatability of the script...

At the bottom of the Aronofsky Watchmen thread linked above there's another link to an interview with the guy who IS directing Watchmen that might allay some concerns.

Easy to say when it isn't your words putting bacon on the table. PK Dick was so damn broke at the end of his life, he would have been elated if they cut him a check to turn one of his movies into a musical comedy.

Moore has already had one movie not translate from the comic very well with "From Hell".

One?! Can we get the full list of bad Moore adaptations? I'll start with LXG and SWAMP THING!

LXG was awful.

"It's a common device for serial killer films to let you know who the killer is right away."

Please tell me what these movies are, because I disagree. Obviously Jason/Mike Myers/Freddy etc are not analogous with Dr. Gull. I guess there's "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and the various Gacy movies, but those don't involve a cop/investigator as the main protagonist - they feature the killers themselves as the protagonists (an approach which also wouldn't have worked with From Hell, I don't think).

*this has always vaguely annoyed me abt moore's "from hell" actually: gull is the easily least interesting of the various proposed rippers; a "from hell" based round james maybrick wd have been better

It would've been nice if they'd squeezed Oscar Wilde and the Golden Dawn into the movie, but what can ya do... at least they managed to get the Elephant Man in there (tho not the reference to Ganesha, the Opener of Ways, sadly. Actually that's what I missed most from the movie - the depth of magical/mystical ref. points)

Dick's being thoroughly mined now Mark, don't worry. He wrote enough trash to fuel a million crappy sci-fi flicks.

Anyone, turns in to more counterfactual nazi pron. yawn. Still, Natalie Portman eh? Can't all be bad.

Henry, Silence of the Lambs, The Minus Man, American Psycho, Felicia's Journey (arguably), Eye of the Needles (arguably), Freeway, Natural Born Killers, I Was a Teenage Serial Killer, Summer of Sam, Bonnie and Clyde...

Wow. I missed that. This thread makes me want to reread those comics...

If the screenwriters had rewritten the movie so that Stephen Fry was the Big Brother, then it would have been awesome.

i saw it with friends and said something like, "well that was a turd" as we walked out and they were all >:[. it turned out they all liked it. i learned a valuable lesson about stfu that day.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 9:15 PM (4 minutes ago)

i learned this same lesson at a little movie called 300

ok to be fair i didnt actually lean the lesson of stfu, but i was given the opportunity and squandered it

but yeah tacking on a trad fist-in-the-air we-the-people ending to a story that ended on a vague, disquieting, totally unresolved note was always gonna be an ugh.

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 3:28 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha yeah before i realized how much i was alienating everyone i was like, "isn't that ending kind of...fascist?"

i saw it with friends and said something like, "well that was a turd" as we walked out and they were all >:[. it turned out they all liked it. i learned a valuable lesson about stfu that day.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, June 15, 2011 5:15 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hope you learned a valuable lesson about friends too

the answer is yes, totally

xp

It's an unpleasant experience watching a would-be blockbuster with the wrong kind of friends.

aw they're nice people! seriously, i have learned that many people don't want to jump into an impassioned argument about whether a movie was horrible/the best ever immediately after seeing it.

have there been any other recent movies about mass uprisings/civil unrest/rebellion (or whatever)? this is the only one i can think of, which might explain why its imagery's been coopted by contemporary protest movements/scientology-hating nerds

horseshoe i had the same experience as you after seeing the matrix 2 at midnight with a bunch of people. there is a photo somehwere of me w/ like a dozen people and they are all giving a thumbs up and i am the only person in the group giving a thumbs down

i feel as though i have been vindicated by history

i feel like you have posted about that before and it made me lol on that occasion as well

haha probably. it was a formative experience in my time as a young contrarian. i have to find that photo

have there been any other recent movies about mass uprisings/civil unrest/rebellion (or whatever)?

there was that one about the aliens in south africa and that one about the blue people lol

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01577/avatar_1577367i.jpg

t/s "THE END?" vs "THE END" followed by a 5 second pause at which point the question mark dissolves into view

― lemon kerrang! (jjjusten), Wednesday, 15 June 2011 20:26 (47 minutes ago) Permalink

it really depends on the film. If you're talking Inception the former, Black Swan the latter.

― da croupier, Wednesday, 15 June 2011 20:28 (45 minutes ago)

This comment is fantastic imo

i learned this same lesson at a little movie called 300

― lemon kerrang! (jjjusten), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 4:20 PM (28 minutes ago)

I learn it all over again every time Sandra Bullock makes a movie.

You have friends who go to the theater to watch Sandra Bullock movies? (I understand DVD)

My wife is a Bullock fangirl.

http://www.channel4.com/news/v-for-vendetta-the-man-behind-the-mask

What images immediately embody rebellion in recent decades? Let me suggest two: the smiley face for the ecstasy generation in the late 80s and early 90s, and the V mask which is currently the icon of global anti-capitalist protest. Both images have spread beneath the level of corporate dictat: neither were concocted by an advertising agency. Both were, and are, recognisable across the planet, and were communicated as memes from user to user.

More remarkably, both emerged from the work of one man - Alan Moore, a working-class Northampton comics writer with a polymath's range of references, and a really rather scary beard. It is hard to suggest another creative artist - certainly not a British one - who has had such an impact on popular culture and above all popular protest.

The smiley face came from Watchmen, his seminal counter-factual exploration of superheroes and politics...

that is all wrong

OG smiley face was created by an advertising agency, V's Guy Fawkes mask is obviously more of a folk thing but is owned by Time Warners.

yeah, i'd intended to cut the last couple sentences out of the first quote block. i'm okay, for the sake of argument, with the suggestion that these are important symbols of rebellion.

you know who should have directed this? the ghost of alan clarke.

was gonna go for whoever did that 60s Batman movie

sorry is that what happened irl?

adam west/burt ward v for vendetta would be good too

burt ward has a look of skinheady sadsack about him

If the screenwriters had rewritten the movie so that Stephen Fry was the Big Brother, then it would have been awesome.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 2:17 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have never seen this movie but knew stephen fry was in it and until now had assumed he was the big brother, just like how when i heard he was in sherlock holmes 2 A GAME OF SHADOWS i assumed he was moriarty. but he wasn't. what the hell. how hard is this.

Somehow I never got around to watching this until last night. Mild head trip watching it now in 2018 looking back at 2006 potential future history but it is as politically astute and timely as pages 4-5 of the Maximum Rock & Roll letters column from 1985. Commodify your dissent!

this is a funny thread.

this was better than decent tbh, I'd much lower hopes for it but flung it on last night to good effect personally speaking

I really liked it!