Kath and I went to a wholly unadavertised 10 PM showing of “V for Vendetta” last night that we stumbled over looking for an early morning showing on Moviefone.com. Maybe 20 people there. Comments with some spoiler aspects follow:
The first question, naturally, is fealty to the book by David Lloyd (I understand Alan Moore also had something to do with it, but he had his name removed from the credits.) Well, it’s not “Sin City,” a film so obsessively faithful to the source material that it might have been directed by Adrian Monk. And it features the types of cinematic flourishes and additions that looks spiffy on film and make little sense from a literary point of view (how the hëll did he have the resources to manufacture and ship a couple thousand “V” masks to the citizenry?) And yes, aspects of the end have changed. Then again, one must consider that a Hollywood which had no trouble giving “The Scarlet Letter” a happy ending would have had no compunction in saying, “Is there any reason this can’t be set in a futuristic America and he wants to blow up the Capitol building instead of Parliament?” So on that basis, the story itself got off pretty lightly.
And while I’m thinking about it, while modern fans howl about decompressed storytelling, let’s keep in mind that Moore’s “1984 meets Phantom of the Opera” tale unfolded–how best to put it–in a fairly leisurely fashion. (As if “Watchmen” wasn’t about twice as long as it needed to be.) The 2 hour, 20 minute film version is powerful in its relatively brevity, and its script hits enough of Moore’s high points that one feels the moviemakers sufficiently “got it” that the movie evokes the feel and spirit of the original. The acting is uniformly top notch, although it does strike me a little odd that apparently they couldn’t find a single actress in Britain to play the lead and required Natalie Portman to put on a Brit accent (which, by the way, she more than capably does. This is easily the best performance I’ve seen her give.) And one cannot overlook the compelling performance by Hugo Weaving as “V,” not an easy feat in a non-moving mask (especially when one considers that, to make emotional moments work, Sam Raimi feels the need to divest Spider-Man of his mask at least once a reel.)
Overall, a well-made, comepelling film that should be experienced on the big screen. And particularly pertient to today’s environment where discussion of a government keeping its citizenry in line through fear has unmistakeable resonance.
However, I’m wondering if the film is going to get slammed because some will perceive it as glorifying, or at least justifying, terrorism. Will V, hiding away in his Shadow Gallery while planning his acts of destruction and murder, be liked to bin Laden entrenched in a bunker somewhere scheming to destroy hubs of industry? Will the producers of the film be accused of siding with terrorists and tacitly endorsing their activities? I’ll be interested to see.
PAD
• 
PAD, it’s already happened; Newsweek, among others, has said that the filmmakers made a mistake in making V too heroic, to the point where the movie seems to condone terrorism.
I never got that from the book and I seriously doubt that the buildings he blows up are supposed to be full of innocent people. One can argue over the definition of terrorist but I would no more put V in that category than I would Von Stauffenberg and the other members of the July 20 Plot.
The movie seems to be getting better reviews here than in England, which is perhaps to be expected.
Do you really find Moore’s work in general to be leisurely paced? I rather enjoy series that take their time getting to the end (so long as the ride is an enjoyable one). Admittedly, this would be difficult to pull off in an established Marvel or DC title. I think that FALLEN ANGEL is one of your finest works for just that reason; you were able to let the mystery unfold at your own discretion.
“Do you really find Moore’s work in general to be leisurely paced? I rather enjoy series that take their time getting to the end (so long as the ride is an enjoyable one). Admittedly, this would be difficult to pull off in an established Marvel or DC title. I think that FALLEN ANGEL is one of your finest works for just that reason; you were able to let the mystery unfold at your own discretion.”
I think if those series were first hitting now, you’d hear bìŧçhìņg from some quarters over the pacing, yeah. If “Watchmen” were just hitting now, you’d probably see endless crabbing about all the pirate sequences, for instance, as being there merely to fill out the series to twelve issues. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Moore’s pace. I’m saying that tastes have changed to such a degree that there would be complaints about it now where there were none back then.
And for every fan such as you who appreciated the pacing of the original run of “Fallen Angel,” there was one (or more) who said, “It’s been two issues and we still don’t know the Angel’s background; I’m out of here.”)
PAD
I’m very much looking forward to seeing it, probably later today.
But for those who “Ooohh” and “Aaaaahhhh” Weaving’s performance because he expresses character so well from behind an expressionless mask, I have four words.
Darth Vader and C3P0.
They did pretty well, too with just body language and voice tones. Perhaps not quite as wide a range as V’s (haven’t seen it so I can’t say for certain) but this isn’t quite as unique as some would seem to make it out to be. If one adds the rider of “central, leading character”, then that’s another story. But even so …
However, I’m wondering if the film is going to get slammed because some will perceive it as glorifying, or at least justifying, terrorism. Will V, hiding away in his Shadow Gallery while planning his acts of destruction and murder, be liked to bin Laden entrenched in a bunker somewhere scheming to destroy hubs of industry? Will the producers of the film be accused of siding with terrorists and tacitly endorsing their activities? I’ll be interested to see.
Well, here’s a prelude of things to come courtesy of John Podhoretz, movie critic of the Weekly Standard:
THINK OF V for Vendetta, the new movie written and produced by the brothers who made the Matrix pictures, as an Atlas Shrugged for leftist lunatics.
Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel portrayed a dystopic future in which every paranoid libertarian fear of evil statism was fulfilled. V for Vendetta is set in a dystopic future as imagined by Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, dailykos.com, and Michael Moore–a future in which we learn that the “war on terror” was a plot hatched by evil right-wing politicians who used weapons of mass destruction against their own people to create the conditions for a homophobic, theocratic, totalitarian regime in which the only happy people are those who get paid off by a pharmaceutical manufacturer.
In Atlas Shrugged, the message of liberation is delivered by a faceless figure named John Galt, who commandeers the nation’s airwaves to deliver a speech proposing a nationwide strike against the state. The John Galt of V for Vendetta is a man wearing a mask bearing the likeness of Guy Fawkes, the instigator of the early 17th-century plot to blow up the House of Commons. The masked man, known only as V, takes over the British airwaves in 2020 and promises to blow up Parliament.
And just like Atlas Shrugged, V for Vendetta is an exercise in didactic propaganda in the guise of an adventure story meant to appeal to teenage boys and their narcissistic fantasies about being at the very center of the universe. Both works prominently feature a cool, beautiful, and skinny chick who throws in her lot with the nerds. In Atlas Shrugged, it’s the railroad manager Dagny Taggart who joins with Galt. In V for Vendetta, the beauteous waif Natalie Portman plays Eevy, who throws in her lot with V and falls for him even though he wears a ludicrous wig, minces about like the Olympic skater Johnny Weir, hands out flowers like Ferdinand the Bull, and is horribly burned.
Speaking for any adolescent male who feels self-conscious about his skin, V tells Eevy that she needn’t see his scars, because the face under his mask doesn’t represent the real him. V can go anywhere undetected and do anything, but oh, how lonely he is, sitting alone in his basement lair watching The Count of Monte Cristo and listening to music all by himself on his old jukebox, wearing his mask even in solitude. V for Vendetta began its journey to the screen as a comic book, and V is the ultimate comic-book protagonist–the Superhero loser.
Atlas Shrugged is a primer in Rand’s own ludicrous Objectivist philosophy, complete with the full text of Galt’s broadcast speech, which runs longer and is far less interesting than a Fidel Castro stemwinder. V for Vendetta is a two-hour alternative history lesson of the past four-and-a-half years. There was no terrorist threat to Britain, America, or the world. Rather, the threat was entirely the result of a plot hatched by a “deeply religious politician of the Conservative party” whose security chief uses prisoners at an Abu Ghraib-like facility as guinea pigs in a biological warfare experiment he then unleashes on the people of England. A hundred thousand die, “terrorists” are rounded up, and the “deeply religious politician” is elected dictator by a desperate populace that has allowed itself to be seduced into making decisions from unwarranted fear.
“There is something wrong in this country,” V tells the people of Britain in his speech. But he doesn’t just blame the government. Like John Galt, he blames the people: “If you are looking for the reason, you need only look into a mirror. Fear got the best of you.”
If you believe that the entire edifice of the war on terror is built on lies and more lies, then V for Vendetta is for you. Its admirers, like the critic James Wolcott, are throwing around terms like “subversive” and “daring” to describe this film, for which a corporation called Time Warner ponied up more than $100 million and whose ideology is shared by the vast majority of those who make up the cultural community in the West, from the most recent Nobel literature laureate to Michael Moore, bestselling author and Oscar-winning director of the smash hit Fahrenheit 9/11.
It might have been subversive had V’s erotic leanings mirrored those of the movie’s co-screenwriter Larry Wachowski, who left his wife four years ago to become a preoperative transsexual named “Laurenca” living under the domination of a professional sadist named Mistress Ilsa Strix, to whom (according to Rolling Stone) he has transferred most of his possessions. But then, nobody would go see the film.
At this point, the only genuinely subversive Hollywood movie about the war on terror would be one in which Osama bin Laden is the villain, George W. Bush and Tony Blair are the heroes, and al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are in cahoots.
In all this frothing, it’s that last clause in the last paragraph that makes me chuckle.
That and he feels the need to invoke the name of Michael Moore twice.
And, the typical conservative wingnut need to potray anything against his orthodoxy as vaguely homosexual.
Oh, and the the utterly ad hominum attack against Larry Wachoski.
I can’t wait to see it tonight.
British comics have a long history of making it fairly clear that the protagonists of these types of stories (V for Vendetta, Judge Dredd, etc.) are not necessarily people to be admired. It’s something Americans (or at least Hollywood) seem to have a problem with. I suspect it’s because we don’t do irony as well as the Brits.
The pacing of “V” (the comic) may have been slow. But those weren’t the empty pages of decompressed storytelling.
Remember, each chapter was about 8 pages. Not much may have happened in any given chapter, but no space was wasted.
More importantly, the plot may have moved slowly. But there was plenty of character development going on. Alan Moore’s work has always been like that. That’s what makes him so good.
—
I can only hope that the “V” film isn’t going to try tying the story to current events.
It will certainly be the cause of lots of political and philosophical discussions. I hope that they dont try to shackle it to a particular issue. It would take the timelessness out of this story, and constrain such discussion to only current events.
Let V be V, and not an editorial cartoon.
I can’t wait to see V, although with the infrequency with which I attend movies in the theatre, I probably will wait. With a 4-year-old and a pregnant wife, I don’t get to the movies often. In 2005 I only went four or five times, and that includes trips to see Robots and Madagascar. However, I did manage to sneak in Batman and Star Wars III.
I’m happy to hear the story wasn’t butchered as much as LoEG which hovered around the barely-watchable mark. V is such an engrossing tale that it deserved to be respected on that level.
Maybe I can work it into my schedule next week.
I think that review is appalling in its homophobic bias and quite telling in its political prejudices, where the present American and British administrations are to be revered as heroes, no questions asked, no criticisms raised, end of story, don’t even talk about it. And the shot at Larry Wachowski is bizarre; what Mr. Wachowski does with his own life is his own business and wholly irrelevant to the artistic merit of the film.
Anyway. I don’t think V is a hero — he is a terrorist. He kills lots of people; the buildings he destroys are undoubtedly full of clerical staff and office cleaners and people whom we might call innocent because they’re not fascist murderers, merely the janitors and paper pushers. But we could just as easily feel they are not innocent as they are most certainly assisting in perpetuating the facism of their government. V is a force of nature; he is anarchism rising against an overbearing dictatorial force drunk on its own power and paranoia; he’s not a villain exactly, because any oppressed people will fight for their freedom and there could be people a lot worse than V fighting his war. V, at the very least, is not interested in causing as much collateral damage as possible, a distinction between him and most terrorists. He directs his attacks specifically upon the government and isn’t engaging in mass slaughter. It doesn’t make him a hero, of course, but it has to be argued that V did not start this war, and has fought as best he can.
I haven’t seen the movie yet. Really looking forward to it.
“More importantly, the plot may have moved slowly. But there was plenty of character development going on. Alan Moore’s work has always been like that. That’s what makes him so good.”
Yeah, well…you just described the first three parts of “The Other,” and the mantra I kept hearing was, “Screw character development; the plot’s too slow.” Granted,I’m not Alan Moore (not enough hair, for one thing), but still…
“But for those who “Ooohh” and “Aaaaahhhh” Weaving’s performance because he expresses character so well from behind an expressionless mask, I have four words.
Darth Vader and C3P0.”
One was a villain who didn’t require audience empathy (and, notably, didn’t really get it until Luke removed his helmet) and the other was comedy relief. And neither was the central protagonist.
PAD
“Anyway. I don’t think V is a hero — he is a terrorist. He kills lots of people; the buildings he destroys are undoubtedly full of clerical staff and office cleaners and people whom we might call innocent because they’re not fascist murderers, merely the janitors and paper pushers. But we could just as easily feel they are not innocent as they are most certainly assisting in perpetuating the facism of their government.”
Substitute Luke for V, and the Death Star as the target, and you have the same situation in Star Wars. Or are we to assume that all of the thousands of beings killed when Luke used the Force were all evil?
Terrorist is a historic label. It’s unpopular to say, but the American Colonials were terrorists, in a way. They didn’t target civilians, but they did engage in acts of destruction against the state. Only the fact that they were able to prevail made them heroes. Had they lost, they’d have been tried as criminals, and executed.
“Or are we to assume that all of the thousands of beings killed when Luke used the Force were all evil?”
I’m reminded of the exchange in “True Lies,” where Jamie Lee Curtis has discovered her husband, Arhh-nuld, is actually a superspy. He’s under the influence of truth serum, and she says, “Have you killed people?” And he replies, “Yes, but they were all bad.”
PAD
Well, there is a difference, in that the characters involved in “The Other” are already well known. The relationship of Peter to his family is well mined territory. For many readers, it may have seemed redundant. I’m sure that played a factor in the criticism.
On the flip side, I felt the sudden introduction of the new costume immediately afterwards was a bit too quickly handled. Especially since it also means new powers, and a new status quo.
Don’t forget (as Dante and Brodie famously pointed out) the non-Empire contract workers on the second Death Star…
And why’d he have to go dragging Ayn Rand into this? (Although I will grant him that “Galt’s Broadcast” does drag on and is a bit of an anchor on the story. Even Ayn’s fans joke about that.)
Does Podhoretz have any axes to grind that he didn’t bring up in his review?
If you are working on something called THE DEATH STAR, and it’s only puprose is to blow up planets, it’s a little hard to complain that you are just a low level flunky. I’m sure somebody was a dishwasher at Auschwitz but I wouldn’t feel bad if the Allies had killed them in a bombing raid.
I have one question before I decide whether to watch this film.
At any point, does the audience see V’s face?
Part of the point of “V” was that it wasn’t really important who V was, or what he had done or been to wind up in Larkhill in the first place – whether he was black, gay, Jewish, or what – what was important was what he did afterward.
And no, he wasn’t a “hero” – as you may recall, V devoted himself to anarchy because he felt justice had betrayed him. He had no trouble killing anyone who got in his way. The only plus was that he didn’t enjoy the murders, and he always killed people in the quickest, least painful way possible (well, except the bishop, but he was a special case…).
I am mildly disappointed to hear that the tone of V’s broadcast was apparently made a little less sardonic in this version – I enjoyed the fact that he had delivered it in the tone of a performance review, threatening that unless humanity started doing its job better, it would have to be “let go”.
No, “V”‘s face is never seen. The closest we come is, as per the original book, a heavily shadowed view of his severely burned body as he emerges from the fire. But they were wise enough to avoid the classic horror film reveal (and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there were studio notes demanding to know why there wasn’t one.)
PAD
so, last thursday I went to see the stage version of 1984 here in LA, directed by Tim Robbins.
sitting there (and having never read the book) I was astounded by the references that come from it, like V or that episodeof the Next Generation, “There are FOUR lights!!!”
it sort of made me think that V takes place in the same universe. like the story in V is on its way to 1984. after the ministry deals with its terrorist it decides to take even harsher control of its citizenry.
just pointing it out.
Tim Robbins did a fantastic job of directing BTW.
“although it does strike me a little odd that apparently they couldn’t find a single actress in Britain to play the lead and required Natalie Portman to put on a Brit accent”
And Hugo Weaving is Australian, so neither of the leads is actually a Brit. Well, at least they did the accents. That’s better than what the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie did. Waaaaay too many Americans in that movie.
I think the American with a British accent thing is done to get Americans into the theatre. I think almost every movie has production people saying that they need a big star or nobody will watch it. With films set outside America, they probably go one step further and say that it has to have a big American star, too.
“If you are working on something called THE DEATH STAR, and it’s only puprose is to blow up planets, it’s a little hard to complain that you are just a low level flunky. I’m sure somebody was a dishwasher at Auschwitz but I wouldn’t feel bad if the Allies had killed them in a bombing raid.”
Now extend that to every riveteer that’s ever worked on a battleship or an aircraft carrier.
I loved the comic and I am looking forward to the film.
And I hope this gets played in the following countries:
Cuba
Iran
North Korea
Myanmar
China
Syria
Saudi Arabia
Venezuela
Now extend that to every riveteer that’s ever worked on a battleship or an aircraft carrier.
Well, at some point the reductum becomes ad absurdum. I’ve got no grudge with the bricklayer who built a wall in Auschwitz; he would have had little idea as to what would eventually go on behind that wall. But if you’re a cafeteria worker on the DEATH STAR and you hear that you are going to Alderaan, what do you think the mission is? Delivering vaccines? I’m just saying…
I know PAD wasn’t saying he thought Alan Moore’s story was too slow, but that today’s readers would. I’m not so sure. There’s a difference between decompressed stories and slowly developing plotlines.
PAD’s issues of “The Other” were the only good ones precisely because they did have character. I don’t mind good character development over plot. Fallen Angel is full of character development. McKeever’s Mary Jane is a great book exploring characters and not plot. At times, Bendis does a noce job with the Peter and Mary Jane characters in Ultimate Spider-Man. Other times it is six issues of a thin plot going nowhere.
I was reading the “Hollywood” arc of Ultimate Spider-Man and somehow missed an issue. The problem was, I didn’t notice. I found it in a trade and saw that absolutely nothing happened in that missing issue. No plot progression, no character development. The story worked fine without it. Decompressed stories in comics lately are really spreading out panels, using many splash pages for a more cinematic effect, which comes off very empty. In each 8-page installment of V for Vendetta, Alan Moore has more story and development than in whole arcs of some titles. Bendis gets a lot of criticism, not because he isn’t a good writer or that his stories are too long, but because he tells so little story in each installment that I feel like I wasted money on an issue where nothing happens. The last New Avengers that I read had Tony Stark for a few pages and not a single other Avenger in it. But he spent something like six pages showing someone crashlanding on earth. That’s an awful lot of wasted space for $2.99.
I think an audience today would be just fine with V or Watchmen because things do actually happen. It’s more in the vein of Lost that way. (Some will complain, but some will complain about anything.) I am rereading V and it is a dense, thought-provoking graphic novel. I am captivated by the stories, the characters, and the themes. Reading Moore’s epics is one of the great joys of reading.
But Bill, it’s not like the cafeteria worker really has any choice in the matter. He’s probably a contractor, just trying to make a living.
And while the conversation does lean toward the ridiculous, I only bring it up to counter the “glorifying terrorists is wrong” dicussion. I’m sure, when the Imperial grunts and supporters gather around, they don’t mention Luke in glowing terms. More like “criminal” and “evil.” It’s all perspective. If any of the political support for the Empire that was shown in Episode III has continued, then the Rebellion is most likely seen as a terrorist organization but at least some portion of the population.
I read the Watchmen in the late 90s. After a couple of issues I started skipping all the stuff with the pirates. I just didn’t care.
I think that people sometimes look a little too hard for things. There are definitely some stories that are padding out for the Trade. However, I think people sometimes say that even when it isn’t true. Sometimes the slow moment or the character building moment really is necessary for setting up the next part.
The funny thing is, I don’t think this is a new phenomena *at all*. 20 years ago when I was 10, I would buy a Spidey comic and be quite upset that only a few pages were spent on the fights. I would get really upset about all the time spent on what I thought of as “soap opera stuff”. Today I call “soap opera stuff” character development, and I can look back and see that MJ revealing that she knows Peter’s secret identity really is more important that the fight with Puma. So my tastes have changed, and some of the things that people call padding are the primary reasons that I’m reading the comic.
“Does Podhoretz have any axes to grind that he didn’t bring up in his review?”
IMO Podhoertz’s review loses all credibility when he cites Micael Moore twice (?) and NEVER mentions Allen Moore.
If you’re going to criticize the story of the film, shouldn’t you at least do a little research and find out who wrote it?
I loved the casting in this film (though I have to disagree about Portman. Her accent was off too many times that it was hard not to notice.
I lked Rea as the rumpled Detective and it’s always great to see Stephen Fry in a film. (I wish he’d do a guest star on “House” some day.)
I especially liked the casting of John Hurt as the 1984esque Chancellor, harkening back to his turn as Winston Smith in the 1984 version of… “Nineteen Eighty-four”.
Well, the main thing to remember when comparing Death Star to battleships, submarines, etc. is that those are military vehicles/targets. The people working on them know they are on a battle station and they come with the appropriate risks. Now, are they there voluntarily or are they conscripts of the Empire? Good subjects for a debate, but meaningless when Luke destroys the Death Star – they were on a military vessel.
Now, if Luke had traveled to Coruscant and destroyed the Imperial Palace, replete with diplomats, clerical workers, cooks and servants, who were in a civilian area trying to make a living, then he would be a terrorist. Like V. Parliament is a civilian target. And, as others have pointed out, V is not a hero to be admired in the original novel.
Also, back to PAD’s original comments, yeah, there are people clamoring that this is an indictment of the Bush Administration. To which I say, if you think that the totalitarian fascist regime depicted in this movie reminds you of the Bush Administration, I think that says more about you than it does about the Wachowski Brothers or Alan Moore.
-Joe
You know what I love about this film? Conservatives in the media are setting themselves up to look so stupid (more so then usual) over this. I’ve already seen many of the national ones and the local radio goon talking about how “liberal” Hollywood is trotting out this film to attack Bush and to “glorify” terrorists. There is an easy way to shut them down and make them look really stupid. I did this with a couple of the local newspaper guys at the Capitol the other day and had so much fun.
1) Ask them if they’ve ever read the book or if they’ve seen the film. Most will have to admit that they haven’t.
2) Point out that the bad guys in the film version are molded in the vein of Hitler, Stalin and others of that nature and that the country that they run is very much the type of police state that conservatives criticize other countries for having. Point out that this government is the type that pulls people off of the street and makes them disappear forever for “offenses” such as criticizing or questioning government policy and has agents that will rape women before killing them in the name of “justice”.
3) Point out that V is a lone voice against that government who is trying to wage a war by himself to both wake up the people to the freedoms they can have and to undermine the tyranny of the Stalinist style leaders.
4) Discuss the nature of the issues in the film and book and how vile the film/book’s government is as well as the principals that V stands for.
5) Point out that the Republicans and Conservatives in America must really have a bad self-image issue if a film like this can come out and the first thing that they do is identify themselves with the film’s government and its movement and see it as an attack on their beliefs and the leader of their party. Point out that, when they say that that is not the case, it is conservatives making that claim I the media while most other “liberal” media reviews seem to see the Hitler/Stalin links rather then claiming that it’s all about Bush and Cheney.
6) Keep the conversation going in the direction of the “self identifying with the Hitler/Stalin like bad guys” track whenever they try to claim that the film is attacking conservatives.
It took about 20 minutes before a mini lunchroom full of people who didn’t care one way or the other before we started talking were on my side of the debate and thought that the two newspaper guys were acting like really extreme wingnut twits.
Try it around the office. Try it with your local radio wingnuts. It’s soooo much fun to make them short their little circuits over the issue. You’ll love it. ;p
Now, I’m out the door so my wife and I can go see the film. Later.
Hey Peter I just picked up Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6. And I got to say I’ve got a little nit to pick with you.
The Piledriver is an illeagle manauver in Lucha-Libre dang-it!
I ordered a beat-up copy on either Amazon or ebay months ago, intending to read it before I saw the movie, and since I didn’t get around to reading yet, I started today. I’m around Chapter 4 or so, and even though it’s a worn copy, I’m really liking it. Even though this is the third movie based on an Alan Moore story that Moore has disowned, I’m looking forward to seeing how the movie has adapted the material. Already I can see that Evey will be a girl in her 20’s instead of a 16-year old, but since it’s Natalie Portman, I’m willing to go with that.
I haven’t read any part of this thread yet, because of spoilers, but can someone tell me how is it that Moore presumably sells the rights to his properties and then disowns them? Doesn’t he have the ability to stipulate conditions regarding input into the films when he sells the rights?
It was only after he was sued for supposedly ripping of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN at the studios request that he totally soured on movies. I believe he has said that any future efforts will be immune from adaptation
For an interesting view of the Star Wars saga, check out the work of Cheeseburger Brown:
http://mfdh.ca/starwars/darth-vader/
(Sorry, I’ve no idea how to do links in HTML.)
I strongly advise downloading and reading sequentially – I don’t think you’ll be sorry…
The ‘Valerie’ part of the story is/are some of the best scenes I’ve seen in a movie in a fair while. Real emotional whallop to them.
Portman’s accent…decent to tose of us who live in the UK, rather than wholly brilliant.
“Portman’s accent…decent to tose of us who live in the UK, rather than wholly brilliant.”
Honestly? “Decent” is better than I’d expect.
Big Fish was a great movie that was a little hard to take sometimes because of the bad accents. “Cold Mountain” was just painful, I mean literally painful to listen to because of the horrible accents.
OK, saw it.
Wow. They managed not to screw it up. Who’d a thunk it? Not only that, but I honestly think I liked it better than the Moore version and I liked that one a LOT. Yes, there were changes made in the ending, but I honestly think they worked better. Less – to my mind – wholly unnecessary ‘filler’. I was a little surprised at what they did with Finch, though it really isn’t that much different than in the comic, if one really thinks about it. Jus how it was expressed cinematographically.
>(how the hëll did he have the resources to manufacture and ship a couple thousand “V” masks to the citizenry?
By V’s own admission, it took him at LEAST ten years to prepare his big finale. Given his obvious intellect and skills, I can easily see him preparing those masks over several years, using funds appropriated from ther Party or other questionable sources. The police/army were not looking out for these things before V made his debut relatively recently, story-wise. He might just have needed to ship sealed boxes by then at which point no one might have been in a position to put two and two together. They were also concerned with V in London, and maybe his trying to leave London. It makes sense they wouldn’t have been as attentive to what was coming INTO London.
>The closest we come is, as per the original book, a heavily shadowed view of his severely burned body as he emerges from the fire.
I thought about that and wonder if one reason he wears the mask is that a face burned possibly beyond recognition would be more scary to James Q Public than it would be charismatic. And, given that the latter is what V would likely wish to inspire …
> “Cold Mountain” was just painful, I mean literally painful to listen to because of the horrible accents.
Not just in the movies. One of the only false notes in an otherwise solid WW II first person game – CALL OF DUTY 2 – occurs in a couple of places where Russian soldiers suddenly develop suspiciously Irish-sounding accents.
“I know PAD wasn’t saying he thought Alan Moore’s story was too slow, but that today’s readers would. I’m not so sure. There’s a difference between decompressed stories and slowly developing plotlines.”
I don’t think a lot of readers distinguish.
“The Piledriver is an illeagle manauver in Lucha-Libre dang-it!”
Y’know, there’s only so much research I’m going to put into something. And at least I can spell “illegal” and “maneuver,” so there, nyaah.
PAD
Just got back from the movie and….Wow. Much better then I thought they would do with it. The story fit quite well into the two plus hour run time and most of the high spots of the book were hit bang on. I even thought that a few of the characters’ story arcs worked better in the movie’s Cliff Notes version of the story. I think that Gordon came out much better in the film then in the comic book version. Did miss the psycho with the blade and the ice queen though.
The only three points that I had any real issues with (not counting what the theater volume did to my ears half way through the film) were where the musical score in a few areas didn’t seem to fit the scenes that they were accompanying, I missed the monkey bit and sarky dialogue from the book’s TV takeover scene (minor quibble) and I can see more then a few people getting confused by the last 60 seconds of the film. *****BIG SPOILER SENTENCE FOLLOWS***** There were lots of people at the showing I was at that were “what the hëll?”ing as many of the people removing their V masks at the film’s end were dead people. I don’t think that they got that it was kinda symbolic with what was being said at the same time. I thought it was a nice touch but a little strange none the less.
Overall, I think it was awesome.
I enjoyed the movie, but can’t say I loved it.
It’s not the action movie “by the makers of the Matrix” that it’s being sold as — and that’s fine, but it does get awfully talky at parts (a blown speaker in the cineplex didn’t help, cuz you couldn’t understand some of the talky).
Even more than “why isn’t his face revealed?” there has to be the studio wonk saying, “Can we have a happy mask for when he’s happy, and a sad mask for when he’s sad?”
*** SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ***
The big reveal for me is that although his speeches and his results make him a freedom fighter, his true MOTIVE is entirely a personal vendetta (hence the name) in the mode of his model, Edmund Dantes, The Count of Monte Cristo. The difference between V and ED, though, is that V *knows* that his revenge will bring nothing good for him.
Bill Mulligan: It was only after he was sued for supposedly ripping of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN at the studios request that he totally soured on movies. I believe he has said that any future efforts will be immune from adaptation
Luigi Novi: But what about From Hëll? That came before LoEG, and he disowned that one too. Why did he do that? And why would being sued over LoEG cause him to disown a movie based on a series he wrote in 1982?
And who was the person who supposedly wrote the material which Moore ripped off for LoEG?
All The talk about the Death Star reminded me of this exchange written by Kevin Smith in the original film, “Clerks”:
Randal: So they build another Death Star, right?
Dante: Yeah.
Randal: Now the first one they built was completed and fully operational before the Rebels destroyed it.
Dante: Luke blew it up. Give credit where it’s due.
Randal:And the second one was still being built when they blew it up.
Dante: Compliments of Lando Calrissian.
Randal: Something just never sat right with me the second time they destroyed it. I could never put my finger on it-something just wasn’t right.
Dante: And you figured it out?
Randal: Well, the thing is, the first Death Star was manned by the Imperial army-storm troopers, dignitaries- the only people onboard were Imperials.
Dante: Basically.
Randal: So when they blew it up, no prob. Evil is punished.
Dante: And the second time around…?
Randal: The second time around, it wasn’t even finished yet. They were still under construction.
Dante: So?
Randal: A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I’ll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers.
Dante: Not just Imperials, is what you’re getting at.
Randal: Exactly. In order to get it built quickly and quietly they’d hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average storm trooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.
Dante: All right, so even if independent contractors are working on the Death Star, why are you uneasy with its destruction?
Randal: All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed- casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. (notices Dante’s confusion) All right, look-you’re a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia-this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn’t ask for that. You have no personal politics. You’re just trying to scrape out a living.
(The Blue-Collar Man (Thomas Burke) joins them.)
Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
Blue-Collar Man: Well, I’m a contractor myself. I’m a roofer… (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer’s personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
Randal: Like when?
Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
Dante: Whose house was it?
Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino’s.
Randal: “Babyface” Bambino? The gangster?
Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
Dante: Based on personal politics.
Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface’s house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn’t even finished shingling.
Randal: No way!
Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I’m alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn’t so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this… (taps his heart) not his wallet.
Interesting comments on V for Vendetta. I am hoping to see it tonight. Personally I am hoping the movie is not to faithful to the book. I read the book for the first time last month and frankly I was bored for most of it and I am a fan of the so-called king of “decompressed storytelling”, Bendis. It was just a lot of dead pages that may have had lots of words but many did nothing to advance the story or the characters.
It often times had reminded me of turn of the century literature where the writer was clearly being paid by the word. Just like those literature books, with V the book, you have to sift through a lot of garbage to get to the core themes and moments that make you go “oh yeah! thats why its a classic.”
“Conservatives in the media are setting themselves up to look so stupid (more so then usual) over this. I’ve already seen many of the national ones and the local radio goon talking about how “liberal” Hollywood is trotting out this film to attack Bush and to ‘glorify’ terrorists. There is an easy way to shut them down and make them look really stupid.”
Good luck with that; you’ve already lost your typical neoconservative Bush apologist after step #2. Easier instead to just say, “So, you’re admitting the Bush Administration is no different from the fascist government in the movie, eh?”
–R.J.
Luigi Novi: But what about From Hëll?… snip
This might be some good reading.
It’s an article on ComicsPriceGuide.com (via the NYT) regarding Alan Moore’s works and the subsequent adaptations: Link.
Larry Cohen, the guy behind some great shlock classics like IT’S ALIVE and Q was the one who claimed that Moore was hired by the studio to rip off a treatment that he had submitted. The studio eventually paid to make the suit go away, which Moore took as a personal affront. I don’t think he was happy with FROM HÊLL–neither was I for that matter–but the League experience, complete with deposition by lawyers apparently left scars. The disrespect given to him by Joel Silver over V didn’t help. It’s too bad, because V looks like something worthy.
(Cohen’s claim, btw, looks totally bogus to me. Some of the elements of his idea were in the movie but not the comic–Tom Sawyer, for example. At any rate, this is not the first time this idea has been done–Phillip Jose Farmer with TARZAN ALIVE and ODC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPITIC LIFE spring to mind as well as a fine book I remember from years ago that teamed Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger as they helped fight the War of the Worlds.).
shortie review: awesome movie, so-so adaptation. Its pretty telling that some of the movie’s most powerful moments are the direct translations from the graphic novel.
basically, if the comic is dark, cerebral, and anarchistic, the movie is loud, bombastic, and pìššëd øff. Moore, in an interview on MTV.com (may post later, kinda drunk now), called the film a “impotent liberal Hollywood fantasy”. May be kind of close.
Not to say the movie isn’t good, hardly, it kicks ášš. Its great. Hëll, its worth it for about 900 different reasons. (one of the higher ones is seeing the performance of V. The way Weaving manages to emote, robbed of his facial ticks and behind the mask, through just body language is stunning. If there was any justice in the world, møŧhërfûçkër would get an Oscar)
But, yeah, go see. Just, if you love the comic, keep your preconcived notions at the door
spoilers!!!– the ending kind of ticked me off, and here’s why: the synchronistic beauty of Evey becoming V in the graphic novel (he spent the whole book training her to become the new V), as opposed to *everybody* becoming V in the last 5 minutes of the movie … I say the ending of the book works better. I think the story is more powerful of only Evey inherits the V persona at the end, as opposed to the entire country becoming V at the end.
“Good luck with that; you’ve already lost your typical neoconservative Bush apologist after step #2. Easier instead to just say, “So, you’re admitting the Bush Administration is no different from the fascist government in the movie, eh?””
Yeah, but they’re not the ones that I’m really making the argument for. The exchange that I had with the newspaper guys was in a small break area with other people around. These two were talking about how this movie was this big attack on Bush and how Hollywood had made a terrorist the hero with people in earshot who really didn’t know better. Our little mini debate made them look dumb and had more then a few people sitting around adding their two cents in after they heard what the basic concept really was VS what they had been hearing up until then.
It’s the same with the local radio wingnuts. The argument isn’t really meant for them. It’s for their listeners. That’s the other reason that you can’t just shoot for the kill shot you would go for. It’s the sure way to get hung up on and blown off as just another rabid, Bush hating nutcase. You’re out of the conversation and they get to keep banging their misinforming drum to a bunch of people who may not know better and who might actually go see and like the film if they didn’t pass it by because they thought that it was just a hate filled, anti-American, anti-Bush and pro-terrist Hollywood lefty screed.
Plus it’s more fun to make them look stupid in front of others in the slow burn way then it is to just tick them off.
Best. Movie. Ever.
ALthough the best part of the movie came at the end when the credits started to roll and I stood up and applauded in a theater packed with comic book geeks and teenagers (not that the two are mutually exclusive.) The fat guy in front of me started applauding thinking it was the whole theater and then realized it was just one fat guy behind him applauding and promptly stopped. A poignant ending to a great movie.
Remember, in the comic, V had the resources to build a supercomputer, so the mask thing probably isn’t too far off.
I mentioned to a friend that they changed the ending in regards to Evey, and he said it was probably beacause “Saw” had a similar ending.