A story about "V for Vendetta" — 4 years ago
The Wachowski brothers, creators of the Matrix, are making a film based on the Alan Moore graphic Novel V for Vendetta.
Note: Do not be fooled. This doesn’t mean they’re directing it, as I first thought. The brothers are producing it. Personally, I don’t like it when the producers, capitalizing on their success as directors, use their name to sell a film. Producers should be like Batman, attacking from the shadows.
Or something.
Anyway, the upcoming film stars Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving and it looks intriguing enough that I picked up the original graphic novel. I haven’t read a lot of Alan Moore, but I LOVED Watchmen. I’ve been meaning to read more of his stuff.
V for Vendetta, written in the 80’s, imagines a 1990’s where a fascist regime takes over England. In the middle of the Neo-fascism is a terrorist with unknown motives seeking to take the government down in order to establish anarchy.
His name is V and he’s our hero.
That’s a pretty cool concept-making the terrorist the hero- making the anarchist the hero. But among Moore’s points, when the alternative is fascism there’s not a lot of room for compromise.
But beyond the idea and skillful interplay of supporting characters, I didn’t enjoy V that much. Moore committed the one sin you can’t do when your book revolves around the actions of one main character: he made V a TOTAL pill. V is always off dancing on rooftops, talking to statues of liberty, reciting poetry, and singing weird little songs. Y’know, cause that’s what anrchists do.
Or something.
I appreciate the notion of taking the action hero into a more Phantom of the Opera direction, but this just didn’t work. Still, we here at the ol’ Mojo appreciate Moore’s effort and will penalize him only with a bland little kitty cat - really no penalty at all-yet hardly an endorsement. V for Vendetta, meet the Meh Cat.
