V For Vendetta, Try F For Failure (Spoilers Abound!)

I’d like to invite you all to join Mr. Peabody and me as we hop into the Wayback machine and go all the way back to 2006. It’s January, and I keep hearing about this upcoming film from the Wachowski brothers, directed by their former A.D. (assistant director) and now-puppet James McTeigue. I had been crushed by the Matrix sequels, but still remembered the first installment with devout love, and the news that Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman were the leads only made me want to see it more. However, I don’t like seeing adapted films without reading the book it’s based on (unless it’s just a comic film in general in which case there’s no definitive novel anyway), so I bummed a copy from a friend. So, in 2006, I, for the first time, sat down and read a graphic novel.

V For Vendetta was a deep, complex, question-raising novel that shattered my preconceived notions of comic books and was the first concrete step in getting me into comics. Even to someone who A) had never read more than a few single issues in grocery store newsstands and B) has never understood art and how to interpret paintings/sculptures/etc., I knew that David Lloyd’s art was beautiful and telling, capable of conveying emotions even on a guy who is always wearing a fucking mask. I realized for the first time that comic books–always derided for being for dumb kids who need pictures to read–could tell a story in a way that no novel ever could. It doesn’t make one type of literature superior or inferior to another; it simply means that the method in which comics are moved forward is entirely unique to that medium.

**an outpouring of spoilery venom after the jump**

A great deal of the political, social, and moral questions Alan Moore posed over the course of the miniseries went over my head and the rest simply stumped me. I read through it again before returning it (all Alan Moore books require more than one reading, I’ve found) and found it to be one of the finest pieces of literature I had ever read. I began to work myself into a frenzy over the film due out in March. I knew that it couldn’t match the greatness of the comic, but surely it would be a terrific film. Surely it would entertain.

Did it? Well, to make things short, no. No it fucking didn’t. The Wachowskis’ interpretation is so far off the mark that I’d suspect they didn’t even read a synopsis of the graphic novel if it weren’t for the fact that they at least got the names right. On the first watch, I thought of it as a decent film and a horrible adaptation, but with each subsequent viewing and with each new reading of the novel, I come to hate it more and more.

Beware! This block of bold, boisterous, boasting bullshit borders on becoming an unbearable burden of badly-written bollocks!

V is pretty good, and, along with Portman’s Evey, is pretty much the only thing to recommend the film. Hugo Weaving shits gravitas and manages to be very animated despite the mask, and you can actually buy people being inspired by this mysterious man. He’s so good that not even his inane, alliterative introductory speech (which is beloved by teenagers because we’re as fucking stupid as adults claim) can detract from the character.

The biggest change from the novel is actually the ultimate saving grace of the film: Evey of the graphic novel has been transformed from a hapless moron who is ultimately crafted into the de-facto heir of V to Evey of the film: intelligent, semi-capable, politically aware woman who seems to have been itching for a chance to rebel long before V shows up. It’s probably a smart move not to try to make Natalie Portman try to come off as a moron, as she is one of about three celebrities who actually has some idea what they are talking about when they pontificate about politics. It makes her a more interesting character even if it flies in the face of the novel, or at least it would if they didn’t start making bigger and bigger mistakes.

By making Evey smart, you can’t excuse the dumb decisions she makes. In the novel, V casts her out of his hidden fortress in order to condition her. In the film, Evey, who pepper sprays a Fingerman to save V, is taken to V’s fortress out of necessity rather than V taking her early and generally just to test her. Then, she runs away when he uses her to get to Bishop Lilliman. Wait, she took out a policeman, she knows that her only sanctuary is with V because her connections to V and her aforementioned assault mean certain torture and death, and yet she ran the fuck away? There must be a deleted scene where Evey suffers some sort of blunt force trauma to the head, cause that’s the only reasonable explanation for such behavior.

High Chancellor Sutler demands an "amen."

Gone is The Leader’s solipsism- most evidenced by his affections for a computer and how his fascist programs were borne out of his own loneliness-, and even his name, which was a childish joke and thus all the more surprising in its omission from this simple take on the source material. He knows everything that goes on, but we don’t have the Fate computer system, so I guess he’s old school and hires scalawags and knaves to eavesdrop in the wings of castle walls and in the peasant taverns. Oh, and at the end of the film, rather than being assassinated by a citizen who has grown increasingly resentful of the government for constantly screwing her over (and thus showing that V’s sense of anarchy is truly spreading), he’s taken down by Creedy, the security chief, because he doesn’t like Sutler (Susan’s name in all this) and V promises himself in exchange. Never mind the fact that Admiral Ackbar could spot the trap here even if someone gouged out his giant fish eyes, Creedy knows he’s got V at last and kills the leader of the country because he can’t handle poor performance reviews. Shockingly, V reneges on his part of the deal and kills Creedy, presumably so the next generation is a little less stupid.

Evey meets the slowest detective in Britain

One of the absolute worst screw-ups is the sodomizing of Finch’s storyline. Eric Finch, the head of Scotland Yard, spent much of the graphic novel trying to figure out V’s identity, over time discovering pieces to the puzzle and hating the government more with each revelation. Here, he figures out about two little things before V himself puts on a different mask, meets with him, and gives him the whole story. To fully understand how retarded this is, let’s turn to the World’s Greatest Detective, Batman. Imagine if you cracked open a comic and saw Batman arriving on scene and finding a note that says

“Dear Batman, I have captured 12 hostages and placed them in the Gotham Bank and tied them to a bomb. It will explode at midnight; however, you can disarm it by cutting the red wire. Also, come in through the roof; there’s no guards that way. I’ll be outside and won’t put up a fight when you take me into custody. Sincerely, The Joker.”

When I was a kid I used to read those little Clue mystery children’s books, but I always got bored 20 pages in and skipped to the end to see who did it. Can I run Scotland Yard too? They must be the dumbest detective agency in the world, but I always knew that; after all, Scotland Yard is neither a yard, nor is it located in Scotland. Giving Finch all the answers completely invalidates the quest and even the character, since V is fatally wounded in the fight with Creedy, not by Finch in an act of catharsis.

But hands down the worst part of the film is how all the political messages are bungled. Rather than let the horrors of Norsefire’s actions eat at you, the Wachowskis make the film as didactic as possible. Alan Moore’s comics present you with tough moral choices and force you to weigh them; this film, however, has already judged for you. It’s so heavy-handed in its attempts to update and become relevant to the post-9/11 world that it doesn’t stop and realize how almost all of the original novel is still relevant. I’m actually surprised that the actors don’t suddenly break the fourth wall and deliver a PSA about the importance of political awareness before handing it over to Diddy and the Vote or Die van or whatever those dumb fucks ride around in when they try to get out the vote to people too young to cast a ballot.

Saddest of all, the concept of anarchy is replaced with liberalism. Sure, V says he stands for anarchy, but at the end of the film, seemingly all of England apart from the military and the surviving members of the government, meet at Parliament dressed in Guy Fawkes masks. They’ve swapped one faceless leader for another without thinking. The Wachowskis were so afraid of making a true anarchist that they just made a radical liberal and an actual leader rather than simply a catalyst. I’ve seen a few anarchist groups tie the film to their cause, which just goes to show that some of these groups don’t have a fucking clue what anarchy is and just like the sound of it because they heard it in a Sex Pistols song (which is even referenced in the film to please the easily pleased).

After years under a fascistic dictatorship, England suddenly decides to non-conform together.

Ultimately, the only scene that works without Portman or Weaving driving it is the scene in which Evey discovers the old bit of toilet paper with a sort of memoir of a lesbian prisoner. In the novel, her testimony and resignation was the emotional climax of the story, resulting in an epiphany for Evey that she is already dead, and therefore has nothing left to fear. It frees her, not only from V’s twisted indoctrination, but from the barriers she set up for herself. In the film’s only moment of skilled adaptation, it transplants the scene perfectly, giving it just the right amount of pacing even if it moves quicker than the novel’s exposition.

Of course, the scene would have meant even more if the torture sequences retained their power. The novel doesn’t linger on the torture, but the reader does, freezing in horror at the ordeals Evey is put through. The film, on the other hand, presents it as a quick montage; at a certain point I began to wonder if “Eye of the Tiger” would start playing or perhaps a guard would force her to run up the stairs of City Hall in a perverse Rocky tribute. It’s so poorly handled that I don’t feel shocked; hell I don’t even feel sorry for Evey because me putting up with this film is more torturous than her trials and tribulations. Boo-hoo! You got your head shaved and dunked in ice water! At least you don’t have to sit and watch something you love dearly be murdered.

In the future, Locks Of Love become real assholes.

So, what are we left with? Two great leads can’t salvage the fact that the Wachowskis simplified one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking books of the latter half of the 20th century into a summer blockbuster that name-checks political issues to fake depth. The novel, though not advertising itself as purely for adults, presents incredibly complex questions on the role of government and how Thatcherian conservatism (or Reagan-era conservatism for Americans) was rooted in fear, be it xenophobia and homophobia or just general fear of change. Thus, any government built upon it would be run with and filled with fear. But it wasn’t a simple condemnation of conservatives; Moore wasn’t pulling for Mondale or the Labour Party. He recognized that when too many people get into a room and start blindly agreeing with each other that it never means good news. Now, I understand that most people, especially us Americans, don’t like to be presented with a problem without a concrete solution, and Moore loves to present people with impossible moral and political choices. However, just because Hollywood assumes (quite rightly, judging from the success of some films) that the general public is an idiot doesn’t mean they should savage intelligent work to make a quick buck. Either do it right or make another Lethal Weapon* film.

Film adaptations should be good movies first and good adaptations second, and V For Vendetta is neither. You might enjoy it if you haven’t read the novel and if you just plain have low standards, but anyone who has read the comics and/or expects a film of higher intelligence will be sorely disappointed. Nay, sorely doesn’t even begin to describe it. It hurts on that personal level that the Matrix sequels hit, the kind where you place your trust in filmmakers only for them to spit in your face. Of course, the Matrix sequels also come from the Wachowskis. Coincidence?

*no disrespect is meant towards the incredible first two installments of the Lethal Weapon franchise, which are action classics.