In 2005, the dystopian thriller "V for Vendetta" was released into theaters. Directed by James McTeigue and written by the Wachowskis, the film brought to life onscreen the comic by the same name, which tells the story of a masked anarchist who sets out to destroy a future fascist government in the U.K.
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00:00Differing themes, criticism from the original writer, and an iconic mask, what else could
00:06it be but a comic book adaptation?
00:08Stay tuned to find out the untold truth of V for Vendetta.
00:13During the early 80s, UK publisher and editor Des Skinn left Marvel UK and started his own
00:19imprint, Quality Communications.
00:21In 2004, he told 9th Art that he invited artist David Lloyd and author Alan Moore to work
00:28on a story that would eventually become V for Vendetta.
00:31The first chapter appeared in Skinn's new anthology, Warrior.
00:35Moore wanted to incorporate a lot of themes, including riffs on George Orwell, Aldous Huxley,
00:41Thomas Pynchon, The Prisoner, and many other cultural touchstones.
00:45Each issue featured a single chapter, and the storyline was organized into three separate
00:50books.
00:51Warrior ran for 26 issues, and V for Vendetta ran in every issue but one.
00:56The last two chapters of Book 2 were set to appear in No. 27 and No. 28, but they were
01:01never published.
01:02DC Comics picked up the series, added color, and released the books as ten single issues
01:08before they were collected.
01:10The final issue was published nearly seven years after the first story appeared.
01:15Alan Moore made his disdain for the movie version of V for Vendetta clear during an
01:20interview with MTV, saying,
01:22The comic was specifically about things like fascism and anarchy.
01:26Those words, fascism and anarchy, occur nowhere in the film.
01:30It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire
01:34in their own country.
01:36According to InfoShop News, Moore's interest in anarchism was highly developed, grasping
01:42it in its most basic sense, not a lack of order, but an absence of leaders.
01:47V for Vendetta was an experiment in V understanding that the conditioning of a fascist state in
01:52particular has to be stripped away before its people can choose their own way.
01:56Moore's understanding of this was taking responsibility for one's own actions, as well as acknowledging
02:02that they are part of a larger group.
02:04The ending of the film, which is essentially one big protest with people wearing Guy Fawkes
02:08masks, seems to confirm the idea that it was less about the total destruction of a fascist
02:14state to build something anew, and more about the importance of direct action in a democracy,
02:20which is at the heart of liberalism.
02:22When V dies at the end, Finch asks Evie his true identity.
02:25Who's you?
02:28And me?
02:31Who's all of us?
02:36V uses a Guy Fawkes mask, and wears a wig, to conceal his identity.
02:41His first major act was destroying the Houses of Parliament on November 5th, 1997.
02:47Guy Fawkes was a Catholic conspirator who sought to destroy Parliament by packing it
02:51full of gunpowder and blowing it up.
02:54He was arrested before he could carry it out, and his plot became a patriotic rallying point.
02:59Historically, Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated to burn Fawkes in effigy, which is where the
03:04masks originated.
03:06Farmer subverted this idea when he had V destroying these buildings, and David Lloyd
03:11made effective use of this frozen, smiling face throughout the book.
03:16The film inspired a number of people to don the mask in various forms of protest.
03:21Ironically, according to The New York Times, Time Warner owns the rights to the image and
03:26profits with each mask sold.
03:28The hacker collective Anonymous uses the Guy Fawkes mask as a disguise for its activities,
03:33which have included cyberattacks on the CIA, KKK, Church of Scientology, and various corporations.
03:41The mask was also frequently seen during the Occupy movement and protests in Hong Kong,
03:46protecting identities while symbolizing protest.
03:49V's origin begins in the Park Hill Resettlement Camp, where experiments were performed by
03:54a scientist who wanted to see what would happen when people were injected with an experimental
03:59drug.
04:00It killed all of them, eventually.
04:02Everyone except for one patient, the man in Room 5.
04:07Though completely insane, the survivor was also a genius, and after killing dozens in
04:12his escape, he no longer had a name.
04:15When he introduced himself, he told people to call him V, an identity he took to the
04:19extreme.
04:20Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's
04:25my very good honor to meet you, and you may call me V."
04:29V's headquarters are located under the defunct Victoria Underground Station, one of only
04:34two stations in London that start with V. He is drawn to Vaudeville.
04:38He uses Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to drown out a conversation, the first five notes of
04:43which spell out V in Morse code.
04:46Every chapter of the comic starts with V, from the introductory The Villain to the concluding
04:52Valhalla.
04:53V quotes from the Thomas Pynchon novel V, which is about a man obsessed with a mysterious
04:58person known only as V.
05:00Apart from the divergent themes, the main difference between the film and comic versions
05:05of V for Vendetta is the relationship between V and Evie Hammond.
05:10In the comic, Evie is a naive 16-year-old with no education.
05:14In the film, Evie is an employee of the British television network.
05:18In both cases, V rescues her from vicious fingermen.
05:23Emotionally, the comic version of V is a kind of surrogate father for Evie, but he is also
05:28cruel to her.
05:30He always does it in a way that he calculates will help make her his ideal replacement,
05:35but he still manipulates her into helping murder the bishop, abandons her on the street
05:40when he knows it is time for her to live life as an adult, and then kidnaps and tortures
05:45her to achieve the same kind of liberating, transformational experience he had.
05:50In the film, the relationship between V and Evie is more romantic in nature.
05:55However, he still kidnaps and tortures her for similar reasons.
05:59The political jumble makes this relationship make a lot less sense.
06:04V wants someone morally pure to take his place, someone whose choices aren't rooted in violence.
06:10In the film, everyone gets a Guy Fawkes mask, and Evie's role is far less important.
06:16V knows that he's a killer that has chosen destruction.
06:19He doesn't see another way to bring down the fascist order.
06:22However, it is strongly implied that it would be all too easy for him to simply insert himself
06:28as a new leader, the last thing he wants.
06:31V knows that he has no role in the new world, but the symbol of what V represents is important.
06:37That's why he grooms Evie to be his replacement, one who isn't stained as a killer and whose
06:42integrity is also impeccable.
06:44"...beneath this mask there is more than flesh.
06:47Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof."
06:54It seems, perhaps, like a bit of bravado, but it is also true.
06:58V creates a new persona, a new symbol, that now exists outside of himself.
07:03He tells Evie,
07:04"...you must discover whose face lies behind this mask, but you must never know my face."
07:09Evie realizes he meant that his actual identity is irrelevant, because it is now her face
07:15behind the mask.
07:17In V's carefully designed crusade to kill or leave comatose everyone who knows his true
07:22identity, his second victim is Bishop Anthony Lilliman, who was present at the Larkil concentration
07:29camp where V was imprisoned.
07:31When Evie volunteers to help, V uses her as bait for the bishop, who is secretly a pedophile.
07:37She distracts him while V slips in.
07:40V uses this as an excuse for a series of riffs on God and the Devil, positioning himself
07:45as the latter.
07:46"...as I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen forth from holy writ and seem
07:52a saint when most I play the devil."
07:55In the comics, when V reveals himself to the bishop, he says,
07:58"...please allow me to introduce myself.
08:01I am a man of wealth and taste."
08:03That's the famous first line from the Rolling Stones song, Sympathy for the Devil, wherein
08:08Lucifer recounts history from his perspective.
08:11V also tells Lilliman,
08:12"...I'm the Devil, and I come to do the Devil's work."
08:16A similar line was reportedly spoken by Charles Denton Tex Watson Jr., a Manson family associate,
08:23on the night of the Sharon Tate murders.
08:25Alan Moore was the writer of V for Vendetta, and David Lloyd was the artist.
08:29Both had rather divergent feelings about the film.
08:32Lloyd was supportive of the film and pleased by the result.
08:36In particular, he was impressed by the attention to detail in trying to make the movie look
08:40a lot like the comic, telling Ain't It Cool News,
08:43"...they used the original graphic novel as storyboards, practically.
08:48Owen Patterson, the designer, was concerned about getting things looking exactly like
08:52the original."
08:54Regarding the changes the director made, Lloyd thought it turned out well and said he understood
08:59that alterations had to be made.
09:01He also disagreed with Moore, and thought the film's message and philosophy stuck to
09:06the original source material.
09:08Lloyd was especially impressed by the work of Adrian Biddle, the cinematographer for
09:12V for Vendetta, telling Ain't It Cool News,
09:15"...it's really extraordinary seeing something that you've created come to life like that."
09:20The scene he thought bore the closest resemblance to the original was when Evie emerges from
09:24her jail, realizes that V has been her torturer, and the moment between them that followed.
09:30For Lloyd, drawing something as close to real life in the comics was important to him,
09:34adding that much of the film felt faithful to his original art, and saying,
09:38"...I think that speaks volumes to me about the dedication of the filmmakers to the original
09:43work."
09:44Alan Moore's disdain for all of the film adaptations of his comics is well-known.
09:49He rejects the very concept of TV or film adaptations, saying in an interview with Ian
09:53Winterton,
09:54"...just because something worked as a comic book, that didn't mean you should make it
09:58into a film or a television series or a whole franchise."
10:02Moore's reaction to his works being adapted has always been twofold, removing his name
10:07from the film and distributing any money made to the artists who worked on it.
10:11However, his requests were frequently ignored.
10:14Moore explained that he got a phone call from one of the Wachowskis and politely told her
10:18that he, quote, "...didn't want anything to do with the V for Vendetta film."
10:23Moore went on to say a friend had told him that in the press, producer Joel Silver had
10:28claimed that Moore was excited about the film and was working directly with the Wachowskis.
10:33Moore wryly noted that the studio respected his request to not get paid, but went on to
10:38add,
10:39"...the side of the deal where I actually got what I wanted, which was utter non-involvement
10:43with these films, that somehow didn't seem to have worked out."
10:47In discussing writing V for Vendetta, Alan Moore specifically talked about fleshing out
10:52every character, even the villains, saying in an interview with Blather.net,
10:57I was very pleased with the characterizations in V for Vendetta.
11:00There's quite a variety of characters in there, and they've all got very distinctive characteristics."
11:06That was true of even the most despicable characters, which was important to Moore because
11:10they felt emotionally credible to him.
11:13He thought writing about fascists as stereotypical villains would do little to establish just
11:18how commonplace and easy it is for fascism to arise, adding,
11:23Whereas in fact, fascists are people who work in factories, probably are nice to their kids.
11:28It's just that they're fascists.
11:30They're just ordinary.
11:31They're the same as everybody else except for the fact that they're fascists.
11:35V for Vendetta was director James McTeigue's first film at the helm after assisting the
11:40Wachowskis with The Matrix franchise.
11:43And although it's quite faithful in many respects, that doesn't mean the comics were sacrosanct
11:47to the filmmakers.
11:49In fact, as McTeigue recalled to the website Little White Lies,
11:53"...we decided to do a rewrite because the original script was very unwieldy and slavish
11:58to the graphic novel."
11:59Regarding the film's legacy, McTeigue mused,
12:02"...it has come to mean something different now.
12:05I'm glad there's a lot of people who understood the message of the movie in the way that it
12:09had its part in Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the Hong Kong protests.
12:14The notion that I are we is strong, and we can't control everything."
12:20He said that the V masks get misappropriated at times, noting that he saw a lot of them
12:24at the Capitol building riot on January 6th, 2021.
12:28But he recognizes that it's the risk every creator takes.
12:31Once you put a piece of art out into the world, it's no longer yours.
12:35People find meaning in the way they want to.
12:37V is one of those films, and I'm happy for that.