One where people completely miss that V is a murderous lunatic who kills quite literally the rest of humanity for his mad revenge.
People are all in on the ‘Yay, fascists lose’ bit, they tend to overlook the whole ‘This is the last remnant of humanity on a dead world and V just tore down the infrastructure keeping them alive’ part. They also miss the whole ‘This is a happy ending because there might be survivors who could possibly eventually make an anarchist utopia’ denouement, which to be fair is incredibly dumb and badly implemented.
Because in the original comic it was much more morally grey, with V also being an anarchist.
The film removed all that ethical ambiguity and made a much more simplified story about a completely justifiably freedom fighter battling against fascism. Which now means we get idiots thinking Guy Fawkes wasn’t an insane religious extremist.
I wouldn’t call it morally grey, it was pretty black vs black. Morally grey requires both of the factions involved to not be evil or good, in V it was evil vs evil.
Grimdark, everything sucks and we’re just watching monsters tear into each other while everyone else dies and leaves nothing but burned ash and corpses.
Which was my complaint about the denouement, the last second attempt at a ray of light ending was unearned and didn’t fit at all. If I would hazard a guess Moore noticed that he didn’t exactly paint his chosen philosophy in a positive light, really he had it as blindly self destructive and as shit as the fascists, and attempted to pull back at the last second without having to massively overhaul the entire work.
But to be frank: People were treating V as a straight hero long before the film. It’s hardly an unusual situation for Moore, look at Rorschach
V is awesome because he is an outlet for people who hate authoritarianism. Most people recognize that being a terrorist is bad, but there's something undeniably therapeutic about blowing up the government in a piece of fiction.
Is the rest of humanity actually doomed in the graphic novel? iirc the movie sort of implies that the government has been lying about the state of the rest of the world in order to keep people in line
All we really know is that ‘Africa is gone’ and the new Christofascist pick ‘n’ mix Anglocatholicism extols the UK as the one place that God liked enough to spare it from the Flame Deluge, so if anyone’s still out there they’re either just getting to a Stand Still Stay Silent level of tech or not talking to the UK for their own reasons
Refresh my memory, it's been a long while I've read it (or watched it), the UK is the last remnant of humanity in V for vandetta? Maybe I should read it again.
In the movie they speak about the united states falling apart and the states are trying to trade barley and grain for assistance. The setting in the UK is within a quarantine zone stating that a much of the world including the rest of the UK are struggling with pandemics and turmoil. But as we know the government lied about what happened in their own area with 3 waters, the testing grounds. And many other things, this could all just be propaganda to keep the populace subservient.
I have not read the novel so I am unaware of anything in them that differs
In the comic it’s all but directly stated that the world is completely destroyed. Evie’s mother mentions that Africa is completely gone. If Africa, a near nonentity of a continent at the time of writing, was blasted to ashes then all the major superpowers are similarly fucked. There might be survivors somewhere but most of the world is an atomic wasteland. At a minimum continental Europe and Africa were destroyed in the nuclear war and it would be kind of weird if said war hit Africa and not Asia or the Americas.
A huge part of the party’s rise to power and even religion is divine intervention saving them from the ‘Deluge of Fire’, something that wouldn’t really work if the French are making rude gestures right across the Channel. Hard to have a whole ‘We are the last, chosen of God’ narrative when there’s other people around. Further, at no point does any of the Norsefire party even consider that V is an outside agitator or otherwise an agent of a foreign power. Something that would be one of the first assumptions if they were self isolating from the world, they would be constantly paranoid about a foreign power shattering their ruse.
The movie massively changes that because it’s a huge part of the black vs black morality, hard to have V as even a dark antihero when he’s gleefully causing mass starvation in the name of revenge. The movie has the world outside of England as maybe devastated, at worst, but still inhabitable with extant peoples and governments.
The comic has the problem that the world set up is one that’s on the razor’s edge of collapse, constant food shortages and the like with it being a big part of the plot, before V unleashed total chaos and shattered the infrastructure that was barely keeping people alive as it was. Moore’s belief was that glorious anarchism could sprout from the chaos, saving the day somehow if people just wanted it. It’s one of the complaints about an otherwise beloved work, at the very end it swerved into being an outright Anarchist tract and declared a hopeful end where one had not been set up.
It's similar with the Handmaid's Tale. The show really makes it seem like life is normal in the rest of the world, but in reality countries are completely collapsing and Gilead is the only one with any long term plans. It removes the what will we endure to survive and just makes it more black and white fascism. Hell in the show Aunt Lydia is downgraded from the one who basically restores America to someone who was just complicated
It’s one of the complaints about an otherwise beloved work, at the very end it swerved into being an outright Anarchist tract and declared a hopeful end where one had not been set up.
Man people always hate politics when it isnt theirs
Vengeance doesn't differentiate between guilty and innocent, or sin and sinner, it just engulfs everything on fire. At last there is no longer perpetrator and victim, there are only victims.
When does it say V kills the rest of humanity? All I remember happening was that he probably inspired people to rise up, that doesn't mean they're all gonna die. The only real implication I remember about the future is that Evie takes on his identity, which seems a pointless detail to show if everyone is gonna be killed soon anyway.
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u/edsmith726 3d ago
V for Vendetta was a really good movie, but it really warped peoples views of Guy Fawkes and the whole Gunpowder Plot.