With Cat Power AND Spiritualized on the soundtrack, how could you go wrong?
In Natalie Portman’s defense, she was stuck with some pretty awful dialogue in Episodes 2 and 3. It’s hard to sound deep and meaningful when you’re reading one of Lucas’s lines. 
Watch her other roles–Closer, Garden State, Cold Mountain–she’s wonderful.
A quick question–I don’t think I need to spoiler this:
How much of Evey’s backstory do they show?
Fuck, that was a great movie. One of the rare films that’s actually worth paying a kidney and pint of blood for (or whatever they’re charging for movie tickets these days).
I read the comic a few months ago, and although the movie was a bit different, as others have stated, it was still an excellent film.
However, I don’t remember the graphic novel all that well… what exactly was the “Vicious Cabaret” ?
There’s a scene in the comic that is sheet music with pictures describing the content of the lyrics. I wish I could find a performance of it, because I’m lousy at hearing music in my head by reading it.
I picked out “Vicious Cabaret” for myself on the piano a few times. I’d love to find a good recorded performance of it somewhere. I was trying to listen for it, see if they’d slipped it into the background music somewhere, but I couldn’t hear it at all. I was really hoping it would be used, at least the tune as a shoutout to the comic book readers.
I still like the movie a lot, but after reading these posts I really want to read the comic now.
Think there’s any chance of a decent (or any) film version of Watchmen?
And oh man, I nearly forgot: Antony and the Johnsons! ONe of my current favorite things!
I saw it last night and loved it.
I’m going to read the comic now.
A question why does the tv guy (Gordon? Stephen Fry anyway) act so nonchalant about having gone against the censors with his benny hill sketch? He knows he’s going to get black bagged, yet he’s unconcerned. Also, he’s got all his contraband, yet he seems unconcerned about that, too. Was he in denial that he could be captured??
The whole thing kind of struck me as odd.
One thing I noticed…
It’s been a long time since I read the comic, but I don’t recall V talking as he does in the movie… in the movie he quotes Shakespeare a lot, but in the comic his quotes are more contempory. The one that stuck in my mind the most, what I was hoping made the transition to film, was when he emerges from darkness saying “Please allow me to introduce myself; I’m a man of wealth and taste…” one of my most beloved comic scenes, unfortunatly didnt make it to the movie.
Never read the graphic novel. LOVED the movie. I was inspired to look up not only the original graphic novel on Wikipedia, but also the history of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. Not many movies make me misty-eyed but the end of this one did.
My only objection was the old cliche of “rebel somehow is not only a hyper-competent genius at everything but somehow has access to nearly unlimited funding and equipment”. I mean, how the heck do you manufacture several hundred thousand contraband items and ship them out in a police state?
I’ll second that question.
Does anyone know who did the Velvet Underground cover? The voice sounded familiar. I prefer the original version of the song though.
Man, that was one ANGRY movie, almost more than I remember the comic being. Possibly more violent too.
Things I found interesting:
[spoiler]He did seem a little less psychotic, especially with the change in the televised speech. But I did find it very chilling when he laughed as he blew up the statue.
I don’t remember them drawing as many parallels to The Count of Monte Cristo in the comic, I did like the references.
Evie’s imprisonment didn’t seem to be as damaging to her in the movie. She lost a lot more of her identity in the comic, where V destroyed her identity so she could become the new V. Here she had more of a choice of what to do with the future.
I wonder why they decided not to make her attempt prostitution here like she did in the book.[/spoiler]
That’s explained better in the book.
It turns out that he’d had access to their main computer all along. The computer has a big role in running the country in the book, and Sutler is in love with it.
It is odd. He said he didn’t think he’d get anything more than a slap on the wrist, but it’s unclear why he thought that. Probably because he was such a big star that he thought he was safe.
:eek: V says they had to execute him because he had a copy of the Koran. :eek:
As far as I know, masks do not play a big part of Englands November 5 (Bonefire Night/ Guy Fawkes night) celebrations… Instead, kids will make up a life-sized stuffed dummy of Guy Fawkes to be burned on a bonefire. He will be wheeled in a barrow to the fire and be the centrepiece of it, like a ghoulish angel on a christmas tree.
Along the way to the fire, kids collect firework money from people, using the phrase “Penny for the guy?” and this line is used by V himself when he confronts people with the intent of knocking the shite out of them.
Ah, that’s true. But they wouldn’t have found it if they hadn’t broken in and arrested him, which he apparently wasn’t expecting to happen. Also, considering that at the end we see a quick shot of him removing a mask it’s somewhat up in the air what really happened to him, though that shot was at least partially symbolic.
In that same scene, you see masks being removed by Valerie and her girlfriend, and by the little girl in glasses who gets shot in a previous scene,so I think it’s entirely symbolic.
I just saw this yesterday and I really enjoyed it, although I think it was just a tad bit heavy handed in it’s message (just a bit and it’s a message I generally agree with). My girlfriend liked it but had some trouble with the imagery, especially the Holocaust overtones.
It is very troubling. It’s supposed to be.
Something that seems even worse now is the priest guy. That was written before the big scandal of pedophiles in the catholic church, but if you don’t know that it seems like almost an unnecessarily nasty attack on catholics.
Re: the tv producer, I was under the impression that he just didn’t care any more, and was saying he’d be fine to reassure Evie.
Hijack: are Dickens’ works, then, not technically novels because they were originally published serially? This seems to me like a distinction without a difference, at least in V for Vendetta’s case. It’s a single self-contained story, unlike, say, a random collection of Batman stories that all happen to feature the Penguin published as a “graphic novel.” The OED’s definition of “graphic novel” centers around the work’s full-length and comic book qualities (though it also for whatever reason claims they’re usually fantasy or science fiction).
I seem to have been less impressed by the movie than most people in the thread. I thought it was decent, but shallow, and I thought V looked kind of ridiculous in live-action. The mask is more effective in comics, where everyone’s static and you don’t have to watch the face bobble as he talks.