D for Done. or F for Finished
Apr. 5th, 2006 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_ytWell, I did it - I finished reading V for Vendetta.
Yeah, it's good stuff. A lot creepier and denser than the movie, of course. And Alan Moore and David Lloyd's dystopian society doesn't pull any punches. The only thing that really irked me was the art - I heard it was originally drawn in black and white, with color added later, and it sort of shows. But it was great to read. I recognized parts of it from the movie, but they were often in a different order. It was also missing something that I expected to see - in the film, Evey says her father told her that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use lies to cover up the truth. I was sure that Moore had come up with that one, but it doesn't seem so.
Speaking of the movie, I do not find it as awful in comparison to the book as some other people seem to. This is odd, because usually I can't stand the way films butcher books (Like Secret of NIMH or The Neverending Story). The Wachowskis weren't willing to make the setting of the film as Orwellian as Moore and Lloyd did: they didn't address V's anarchic political agenda, which is a great loss. But at least they didn't turn "anarchy" into "democracy," the way they were apparently planning to. Or so![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shinyhappygoth tells me.
The whole film is like that. While the Wachowskis didn't get everything in, and I can see why Alan Moore was upset, they didn't simply take the story and chop bits off to make it fit movie length. They reinterpreted it, the way filmmakers have reinterpreted other comic books such as Superman and Batman, for better or for worse. This time, it was more towards "for better," although not perfect. Moore's V for Vendetta dealt with the concerns of the era in which it was written, and doing so in the film would have made it dated[1]. The Wachowskis' version addresses the concerns of our time, while still keeping the spirit of the story mostly intact. And I think, if they thought they could get away with it, the Wachowskis would have pulled out the stops, made the future Britain look like a real totalitarian nightmare of a place, and put back in all the stuff about anarchy. I honestly think they pushed the envelope as much as they were able. Considering some of the subtler and more impressive ideas that were in the first Matrix film, I think they understood and have a deep respect for the message inherent in V for Vendetta.
You can disagree with me if you like, but I really don't care.
Contrary to what I thought, reading the book seems to have settled me somewhat, so I don't have the movie on the brain. It's odd.
Going to bed now...
PS: I don't wonder about V's identity. I have heard that there are many theories floating around: the only certain thing (because Alan Moore said it himself) is that V is not Evey's father (she thought he was for a while, or she wanted him to be). And it doesn't really matter who he was. Whoever he used to be died at Larkhill: afterwards, he was just rebellion incarnate. He was a masked hero, or rather anti-hero, without a secret identity. And that's fine: he doesn't need one.
[1] Not to mention that, as Moore admits in the introduction to the book, not even a limited nuclear war would be survivable. The way the Wachowskis handled that - attributing the collapse of the world to unrest caused by American involvement in the Middle East - was sort of vague but a good substitute, and seems as scarily plausible now as nuclear war did in the 80s.
Yeah, it's good stuff. A lot creepier and denser than the movie, of course. And Alan Moore and David Lloyd's dystopian society doesn't pull any punches. The only thing that really irked me was the art - I heard it was originally drawn in black and white, with color added later, and it sort of shows. But it was great to read. I recognized parts of it from the movie, but they were often in a different order. It was also missing something that I expected to see - in the film, Evey says her father told her that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use lies to cover up the truth. I was sure that Moore had come up with that one, but it doesn't seem so.
Speaking of the movie, I do not find it as awful in comparison to the book as some other people seem to. This is odd, because usually I can't stand the way films butcher books (Like Secret of NIMH or The Neverending Story). The Wachowskis weren't willing to make the setting of the film as Orwellian as Moore and Lloyd did: they didn't address V's anarchic political agenda, which is a great loss. But at least they didn't turn "anarchy" into "democracy," the way they were apparently planning to. Or so
shinyhappygoth tells me.The whole film is like that. While the Wachowskis didn't get everything in, and I can see why Alan Moore was upset, they didn't simply take the story and chop bits off to make it fit movie length. They reinterpreted it, the way filmmakers have reinterpreted other comic books such as Superman and Batman, for better or for worse. This time, it was more towards "for better," although not perfect. Moore's V for Vendetta dealt with the concerns of the era in which it was written, and doing so in the film would have made it dated[1]. The Wachowskis' version addresses the concerns of our time, while still keeping the spirit of the story mostly intact. And I think, if they thought they could get away with it, the Wachowskis would have pulled out the stops, made the future Britain look like a real totalitarian nightmare of a place, and put back in all the stuff about anarchy. I honestly think they pushed the envelope as much as they were able. Considering some of the subtler and more impressive ideas that were in the first Matrix film, I think they understood and have a deep respect for the message inherent in V for Vendetta.
You can disagree with me if you like, but I really don't care.
Contrary to what I thought, reading the book seems to have settled me somewhat, so I don't have the movie on the brain. It's odd.
Going to bed now...
PS: I don't wonder about V's identity. I have heard that there are many theories floating around: the only certain thing (because Alan Moore said it himself) is that V is not Evey's father (she thought he was for a while, or she wanted him to be). And it doesn't really matter who he was. Whoever he used to be died at Larkhill: afterwards, he was just rebellion incarnate. He was a masked hero, or rather anti-hero, without a secret identity. And that's fine: he doesn't need one.
[1] Not to mention that, as Moore admits in the introduction to the book, not even a limited nuclear war would be survivable. The way the Wachowskis handled that - attributing the collapse of the world to unrest caused by American involvement in the Middle East - was sort of vague but a good substitute, and seems as scarily plausible now as nuclear war did in the 80s.
