Really liked the movie. For some reason I seem to enjoy anarchic movies that go out with buildings getting blown up, e.g. The Fight Club.
I think you could have a great weekend film festival with Brazil, Fight Club, Equilibrium, and V For Vendetta, which all cover some similar subject matter from different angles (and are all badass movies).
That was cool, but I liked that part better in the comics. I imagined it with the buildings blowing up at the booming parts of the song, like “da da da da da da da da BANG”. I really like his laughing during that part though, it always creeps me out.
My biggest gripe with the movie relates to the torture scene. It seems played down compared to the comic. Evey seems perfectly fine not long afterward. What I took from the comic was that it more or less broke her, putting her into his control. It did have an effect on her. It doesn’t seem like as much of a big deal in the movie, and that’s incredibly dumb because it’s a movie that condemns GWB.
Also, Evey’s mini speech at the end should not be there. It feels tacked on, like it’s from a rushed essay by a high school student.
That Vicious Cabaret was recorded by David J (from Bauhaus) some time in the 80’s. I managed to find an mp3 online around the time the movie first came out, and it looks like the site’s still there. It’s the first hit if you google “hidden city vendetta” without the quotes.
I heartily agree with this. The first time through the movie, I was dreading the inevitable “unmasking” scene, which in typical Hollywood style, probably would have preceded a bad sex scene. Leaving V masked was a huge help to the movie.
I may be mis-remembering the comic, but in it, after she’s freed from the prison, she keeps working with V, right? If my recollection is correct, I like the way the movie did it much better. The torture broke her and then rebuilt her as someone who realizes that she does not need to look to anyone else for purpose, protection, or leadership. Which means that as soon as she realizes that V himself was behind her torture, she rejects him entirely. This sets up the final leg of V’s character arc, where he becomes struck by indecision over completing his grand scheme. Because of how he treated Evey, he can no longer tell if he still has the moral highground over the government he’s trying to topple, and cannot tell if blowing up Parliament is the right thing to do anymore. Evey, because of her experience at V’s hands, still has that moral clarity, and the strength of character to do what she thinks is right, not what V (or any other authority figure) tells her is right.
I also think John Corrado is right when he says V was lying about the government’s complicity in the early virus attacks. That bugged me for the longest time, and it wasn’t until his post that the pieces fit together. The cool quotient of this movie just went up by about 75%. I don’t see how Kytheria’s quote proves that they were working on creating new strains of viruses: her statement of the importance of germ warfare supports the idea of them creating a cure or vaccine as much as creating a new weapon.
Yes. I thought that was brilliant and possibly the best part of the book. Why it was cut out/changed wonders me.
Not a huge fan of either the book or the movie though. I thought the book was pretty cluttered with lots of indistinguishable characters and things happening at once. But when the movie tried to correct that, it just went ahead too harshly.
I got the impression the movie had set up Finch to become Evey/V’s new apprentice, just as Evey was rescued by V and became his apprentice at the beginning.
I liked it.
Thge breakfast V and Gordon cooked is a traditional camping breakfast (we called them “bull’s eyes”) in my family. Don’t remeber having them when not camping.
Brian
No one in my family had read the book, and the movie wasn’t really on our radar until one of my wife’s friends strongly recommended it. She went with my 3 HS kids, and all of them loved it. Really appreciated the message, especially in today’s political climate.
When they came home, my wife had them all watch Fight Club (which we own), and they enjoyed it as well.
They bought V the day it came out, and I watched it with them. Excellent flick - both enjoyable entertainment and a good message. But I note that both V and Fight Club were pretty much box office bombs.
Most of the criticism I heard of V was from people who were either comparing it to the book, or from folks who had certain preconceptions based on the trailers and ad campaign.
I didn’t much care for it.
It seemed to be saying that terrorism is ok as long as the government is bad enough. It was like the movie was trying to get us to root for parliment to get blown up. The government itself seemed to be nothing more than a bunch of cliches of tyrannical government (seen 1984?). Normally I like John Hurt a lot, but it was just over-the-top all the time in this role.
V himself was goofy. Why did he have to talk to people so much before he killed them? It was hard to hear him quoting Shakespeare and whatnot behind that mask and it was all pointless anyway. After awhile it just seemed to be rambling. Are we meant to admire Guy Fawkes? What kind of a freak tortures his closest acquaintances? The fight scenes were corny as hell. The blood spray looked like red gatorade and, come on, if you take dozens of hits to a bullet-proof vest you aren’t going to be hopping up back up anytime soon - let alone acrobatically dispatching anonymous henchmen one at a time (as movie cliche mandates).
Kytheria - How is that quote in any way proof? One could take it in exactly the opposite way: that all of the might and wealth of Britain is useless against the terrorists until a cure is found.
No spoiler boxes in this post. They don’t seem necessary.
Not terrorism so much as a revolution. Rather than being scared, the English citizens were completely behind him at the end of the movie. That earns him the “freedom fighter” label instead of “terrorist”.
Cliched perhaps, but logical given the personalities involved. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that such a fascist state could emerge, after all.
'Cuz he’s culchured. 
Sure, the dude had issues, but looking at it from his skewed perspective it makes sense. V cared for Evey and wanted to give her what she desired. To his mind, there was no other way. You can’t face your death if you don’t actually believe you’ll die, and this way she was still out of the hands of the gummint.
There’s a very offhand comment in the movie that’s easy to miss, but apparently V, instead of dying from the treatments administered to him at Larkhill, actually improved physically. He essentially was a superhuman, they just didn’t make much of it in the film. That plus a single-minded obsession, and it’s not too hard to suspend disbelief. Look at Inigo Montoya in Princess Bride.
I like this film a lot, but not so much for the plot as for the visuals and Hugo Weaving’s acting. Sure, I could barely understand him when he went off on soliloquys, but it was just fun to hear him talk.
I don’t think the movie takes a stand on this issue. The whole point, at least of the graphic novel, was to present a sympathetic terrorist and ask “is there a point where you agree with terrorism?”. There is no obvious answer, in my opinion.
That’s exactly what it’s saying, and I think it’s absolutely right. The government in V has completed a succesful campaign of genocide, eliminating every non-white face from the British Isles. Against such a regime, isn’t “terrorism” not only acceptable, but a moral imperative? Can a person of good conscience living in such a society not do everything in his power to overthrow it?
What makes the question particularly interesting in this case is that the government’s great crime is already behind it. The genocide is over, and the nation is insular, not expansionistic. While the government is still repressive and murderous, the population is fairly prosperous. Most of the people we see are middle class. They’ve got nice homes, fancy TVs, there’s mention early on that there are some food shortages, but no one in the movie seems to be starving or malnourished. This creates an interesting dilemma: the government is evil, and deserves to be toppled, but is it worth the stablity of the society to overthrow it in payment of past misdeeds? Are the people themselves willing to sacrifice what they have to hold their government accountable for what it’s done?
I never had any problem understanding him. Maybe there was a problem with your theater’s sound system? As for a point, most of what he quotes ties in thematically to the film itself. It establishes his character as someone who is both well educated, intelligent, and clearly unstable. Having the dangerous madman quote classical literature is cliche, sure, but this film did a great job pulling it off.
I don’t think so. There’s really not much context given to Fawkes in the film, so I don’t think the audience is meant to draw any sort of opinion about him just from the movie. He’s there mostly for the symbolism.
That’s precisely what you’re supposed to wonder. Were V’s actions towards Evey evil? Good for her? Unfair? Insane? Evey emerges from the experience a stronger person. Does that excuse what was done to her? V is trying to overthrow the government for doing precisely what he did to Evey. Can you justify one without justifying the other?
It wasn’t marketed as one, but V for Vendetta is a superhero movie, based off a superhero comic book. V has superhuman powers as a side effect of the tests done to him at Larkhill.
I swear to God, nobody on this board gets my name right…
But you guys are right; her words could be taken as supportive of searching for a cure / vaccine. I thought her tone and inflection, plus the whole setup of the oppressive fascist government and V-as-William-Rookwood’s testimony, added up to a strong suggestion that they were responsible for the plagues, but the opposite argument is compelling as well.
In answer to the OP, no, I didn’t care for it.
I haven’t read the comic, but V was another of these magical characters who can do things just because it advances the plot or makes some philosophical point or other. We aren’t supposed to ask how V set all the bombs to go off in tune with the music, or how he planted the bombs to blow up the building at the start of the movie, or why he happens to have a complete prison suite in his apartment (and a functioning train in his basement, or whatever it was). It just happens, that’s all. And the end where he gets shot ninety-three times and then carves up the bad guys with his magic knives was silly. And darn it, the sai is not an edged weapon.
Where the dickens did he get all the costumes? How did he know who to deliver them to? Wouldn’t somebody at the post office notice a guy in a funny mask backing a truck up to the loading dock filled with boxes?
Maybe if I were paying rapt attention, I could figure some of this out, but the pseudo-intellectual banter didn’t draw me in to the point where I wanted to.
Sorry.
Regards,
Shodan
I would certainly look at this thread if I was thinking about seeing it.
There was a thread like this one when the movie was in theaters that prompted me to go see it. I’m glad I went, and I’m glad I knew as little about it as I did.
It’s my understanding that V was a master of disguises. He could become anyone he chose to be and mimic their mannerisms and voices exactly. This granted him access to many places and allowed him the opportunity to plant the explosives as well as gaining him access to the emergency broadcast channel.
However, that being said, the movie isn’t supposed to be realistic. It’s based upon a comic book. When watching a movie based upon a comic book, typically a strong suspension of disbelief is required to enjoy it.
Kythereia.
Better?
I don’t get why everyone is calling V a terrorist? Terrorists typically target public places full of innocent people in order to scare the populace. V was clearly targeting government buildings and agents of the government in order to incite revolution, not terror. The government was trying to spin it as terrorism, because it was terrorizing the government, but the real directive was revolution, not terrorism.