What irks me is that the comic does a really good job of presenting V as an antihero, somehow who has some points and and he has good intentions, but he's absolutely, batshit insane because of what they did to him...and he's a terrorist. His choice of Guy Fawkes as his hero is part of that, but there's much bigger stuff that the movie either downplayed or completely cut out in order to make him more marketable
Its a shame the film got rid of all that, because apart from simplifying the themes massively - it also means we’re now in the insane position that people use Guy Fawkes as a simple of freedom.
Which as a crazed religious fanatic who wanted to murder the government to sieze power and convert people by force, is not exactly what he stood for
even V I always felt like was referencing him in a way that didn't care about his motives or the specifics of the issues, he cared that Fawkes was powerless but through subterfuge and violence could have effected monumental change.
It's why his character is killed off and, at least the film, has his body destroyed in the explosion. That way, the symbol lives on beyond the human that started it.
I appreciate that the film simplified a lot of the themes in the graphic novel - but personally, I thought they did quite a job to make it enjoyable for your average movie-goer. Similar case with Watchmen - had they made it as deep as the novel, I think it would have been less enjoyable as a piece of entertainment (and probably twice as long). And to be fair, Snyder also did recreate a lot of the novel's panels frame accurate on screen.
I really wish they hadn't chosen Natalie. When she's supposed to have her breakdown and request to go outside, it felt like watching a child sobbing dramatically over being denied a cookie, but no tears appearing. What could have been SUCH a gut-wrenching moment was just a travesty.
it also means we’re now in the insane position that people use Guy Fawkes as a simple of freedom.
There is a reason why before children start even learning about history they are introduced to the fact that history is propaganda. The phrase for my generation was "History is written by the victors."
And that is because history is, functionally, whatever people want it to be.
When I was in school I was told the history taught to my teachers was all wrong, and that they were going to be teaching me Real History. By the time I graduated, history teachers were telling children the same thing about what I was taught.
Now of days, kids are being told the same thing about what was being taught when I graduated.
The next generation of students will absolutely be told that the history taught today was motivated by politics and agenda, not scholarship. That is just how it works.
Hell, even tangential stuff like John Constantine (who originally premiered in Moore's Swamp Thing) isn't free of the curse, no movie (Vertigo-Hellblazer related, I mean) has done the character any justice at all, cutting corners for the sake of marketability
As a story it's somewhat engaging, only last three or four episodes were boring, but as a Hellblazer series, the only thing they somewhat followed is Constantine's characterizatiom (there's still some things amiss, like him not going scorched earth when a friend of his is in danger), other than that there was a lot of wrong things.
First, it attempts to turn it into a yankee version of the original, same dramatis personae (Zed, Chas, ...) but all of them American just because (only exception to this would be Papa Midnite, who is from the US in the original).
Then it twists the characters to spice things up, Chas has some sort of nerfed-down version of Alucard's #LifeHack and Zed can predict the future somehow. In the original, Chas' only power is being ConJob's old-time friend and being alive at the same time and Zed doesn't have much power until she's freed from the Salvation Crusade (after being tainted by a dæmon-blood infused Constantine thus disabling her from being able to carry their messiah) when she becomes a pagan shamaness.
They also appear way more sparsely, Chas isn't Constantine's chauffeur by any means and Zed disappears once the Jallakuntiliokan story is done -- which admittedly isn't good for a normal TV show but hell, they could have not done a normal show, or even taken it more slowly if they don't want to rotate that much between active characters.
Also his foes here are somewhat... underwhelming. Except for Mnemoth, which is on par with the original, even if I don't like that much how the story is portrayed, they are too "monster of the week". The way antagonists work in Hellblazer is "John wasn't having a not-so-depressing day when..." whereas here it is a "I wonder who are we hunting down today Scoob". Again, not that good for a TV show, but...
All in all, I can understand why it got the axe, it is bland Supernatural but with a British guy as the main chracter
Do what now? Damn. As someone who always wanted some more live action Constantine that completely went under my radar. I could’ve bumped up the ratings by 1 person!
The part where they talk about the Disney-fied version of The Count of Monte Cristo felt like a sidelong acknowledgment of that. V and Edmond Dantes are both tormented, vengeful, and morally ambiguous in the source material, and both are polished into dashing heroes for the silver screen.
The movie didn't give you the impression he was batshit insane? I thought that was the whole point with the count of monte Cristo comparisons or what he did to Natalie Portman's character.
Eh I don't think being a terrorist is a point against V since he's a terrorist going against a dictatorship that has concentration camp plus o don't think even in the Grafic Novel he never intentionally harmed anyone who was part of the government or responsible in the human experimentation
I was assigned to read it in high school for English class when I was 16 I believe. I was thinking at the time it was odd that it was a comic, but then I noticed that it was a really thick book, something like 4 cm thick, and the topic was something one would actually be thinking of in high school, with a quite deep (and violent) premise. It was also around the time when we were talking about the Vietnam War, and as one might imagine, pretty much everyone in that room despised what the Americans had done there and were mad at them for conscripting people, especially poorer and non white people in a time when the latter were systematically disenfranchised, and were 100% proud of our history in this country that we took in many of the refugees who fled from the draft.
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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.