Reviews for 'V for Vendetta'

[Edward Yee]

lgot, the TIME review points out that V was not all hero.

[lgot]

I am talking obviously about the First critics - i even said it. Before the TIME review.

[Edward Yee]

Marfle, sorry about that.

[lgot]

Not the end of the world, right ?

[fgalkin]

I've just seen it, and I liked it. Political considerations aside, it was a nice movie. Better than most tripe that passess as movies recently.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Patrick Degan]

SPOILER:

link

This image pretty much confirms my worst fears about the ending.

It's every SF convention for the next six months!

[fgalkin]

SPOILER:

link

This image pretty much confirms my worst fears about the ending.

Y'know what's the saddest part?

They probably saw the end of the book, and thought this is what it meant....

No they didn't. Because the maks come off at the end.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Ghost Rider]

SPOILER:

link

This image pretty much confirms my worst fears about the ending.

Y'know what's the saddest part?

They probably saw the end of the book, and thought this is what it meant....

No they didn't. Because the maks come off at the end.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Ah, so it was pointless.

This doesn't exactly raise any hope of my ideas of the film beyond it's a bad adaption...and thus at best it'll be a lot of explosions, yabbering and miss most of what Moore did for the sake of pleasing the average person.

Ah, well...perhaps they'll rape Watchmen and I'll have a full house of Alan Moore's work destroyed.

[fgalkin]

Y'know what's the saddest part?

They probably saw the end of the book, and thought this is what it meant....

No they didn't. Because the maks come off at the end.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Ah, so it was pointless.

This doesn't exactly raise any hope of my ideas of the film beyond it's a bad adaption...and thus at best it'll be a lot of explosions, yabbering and miss most of what Moore did for the sake of pleasing the average person.

Ah, well...perhaps they'll rape Watchmen and I'll have a full house of Alan Moore's work destroyed.

I have not read the original comics, but the film was not a mass of explosions, or pointless yabbering (of which there was very little). I was surpised myuself, I know, but the Crapowski brothers managed to not fuck up a movie (in terms of cinematic quality at least. I'll leave the judgement of the failthfullness of the adaptation to others).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Ghost Rider]

No they didn't. Because the maks come off at the end.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Ah, so it was pointless.

This doesn't exactly raise any hope of my ideas of the film beyond it's a bad adaption...and thus at best it'll be a lot of explosions, yabbering and miss most of what Moore did for the sake of pleasing the average person.

Ah, well...perhaps they'll rape Watchmen and I'll have a full house of Alan Moore's work destroyed.

I have not read the original comics, but the film was not a mass of explosions, or pointless yabbering (of which there was very little). I was surpised myuself, I know, but the Crapowski brothers managed to not fuck up a movie (in terms of cinematic quality at least. I'll leave the judgement of the failthfullness of the adaptation to others).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

That bullshit near alliterative opening by V, and the timed explosions(of which sounds greatly amusing...still) is what I am speaking of.

Like I said even before all the reviews, I'll be happy if it's at least above popcorn, but by no means do I even believe this is even an adaption to the original beyond name only.

As for fucking up, I'll literally wait and see...but even the good reviews paint more a eh movie to me.

[LadyTevar]

CNN's reviewer gave it a solid B, but called it 'not like the comic'.

[fgalkin]

Ah, so it was pointless.

This doesn't exactly raise any hope of my ideas of the film beyond it's a bad adaption...and thus at best it'll be a lot of explosions, yabbering and miss most of what Moore did for the sake of pleasing the average person.

Ah, well...perhaps they'll rape Watchmen and I'll have a full house of Alan Moore's work destroyed.

I have not read the original comics, but the film was not a mass of explosions, or pointless yabbering (of which there was very little). I was surpised myuself, I know, but the Crapowski brothers managed to not fuck up a movie (in terms of cinematic quality at least. I'll leave the judgement of the failthfullness of the adaptation to others).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

That bullshit near alliterative opening by V, and the timed explosions(of which sounds greatly amusing...still) is what I am speaking of.

Like I said even before all the reviews, I'll be happy if it's at least above popcorn, but by no means do I even believe this is even an adaption to the original beyond name only.

As for fucking up, I'll literally wait and see...but even the good reviews paint more a eh movie to me.

The opening was rather "ugh" but the timed explosions were actually quite awesome. Besides, there were only two of them, the Old Bailey in the beginning, and the Houses of Parliament in the end.
It is above popcorn, IMHO, and like I said before, I cannot judge if it is a faithful adaptation or not.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[LadyTevar]

I doubt it's a 'faithful' adaptation. that would be extremely hard.

[Ghost Rider]

I doubt it's a 'faithful' adaptation. that would be extremely hard.

Yeah, I've given up on that.

And I have great fears for Watchmen.....very great fears.

[Sriad]

I doubt it's a 'faithful' adaptation. that would be extremely hard.

Yeah, I've given up on that.

And I have great fears for Watchmen.....very great fears.

I'll hope for the best for Watchmen. Paul Greengrass directed Bourne Supremecy, which didn't shy away from characters confronting hard truths, and David Hayter did a good job (afaik, but hard to say in movies with lots of writers) in X-men I&II. Cautiously Opimistic all the way through.

[Joe]

The Watchmen movie is off right now. The studio wouldn't take it.

Which is good, I say. Watchmen is too fucking dense for a goddamn Hollywood movie. It might work as a limited TV series.

[Sriad]

The Watchmen movie is off right now. The studio wouldn't take it.

Which is good, I say. Watchmen is too fucking dense for a goddamn Hollywood movie. It might work as a limited TV series.

Eh, if it never happens I won't be disappointed anyhow. It is, after all, perfectly sufficient as a graphic novel.

Back OT, I'll probably see V over the weekend sometime.

[Ghost Rider]

Saw it.

Two sides to my idea of the movie. As a movie...like Constantine, was not wrenching, overall I did like it better then Constantine. Had some moments I thought were too slow and honestly did not fit the pace of the film, also they had that just ugh fight scene at the end that I cared nothing for. The ending was also just changed for the damn weirder...but eh. But the I did like Hugo Weaving and the movie was a bit of fun.

As an adaption....I will not lay in the 12 Kb of profanity, thus sparing you from that rant.

[Jadeite]

Saw it tonight, thought it was kickass. I've never read the comic, so I didnt have anything to piss me off with "But that's not how it is in the comic!!111one"

Parliament being taken out with timed explosions to the 1812 Overture was simply awesome.

[Joe]

OK, I just saw it. My thoughts (SPOILERS, SCROLL DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!)














































I have to say that it does indeed succeed as popcorn entertainment. The action set-pieces, though they are fairly uncommon, are excellent. The last one uses the slow-motion choreography that was present in the Matrix films to good effect, and it doesn't feel like a rehash of a Matrix-style battle like I feared it would. Hugo Weaving is really good as V - I don't approve of everything they did with the character, which I'll get to later, but even in the best of all possible VfV adaptations I think Hugo Weaving is the man I would have wanted behind the mask. Natalie Portman did a good job as Evey, I thought, but the English accent just didn't work out, sadly. The movie does a fairly good job creating a dystopian atmosphere and the cinematography is pretty damned good - there are a lot of shots in this movie that would make excellent wallpaper. The Larkhill scenes were great. The score is also really good, by a newcomer I've not heard of. The Benny Hill-style comedic montage was pretty damned funny, even if it was pretty thoroughly out of place as an adaptation (more on that later). It was a really good idea for the Wachowskis to not direct this - McTeigue does not appear to be in love with his own legend as the Wachowskis were by the second Matrix film, and the film benefits because of it.

Was I entertained? Yeah. Did it make me think? I suppose, but you'll get more of a brain workout by observing an SDN debate or hell, just watching the news. Was it worth the eight bucks? Yeah. I may even get it when it it goes on sale for cheap at Blockbuster.

Now for the problems I had with the movie, both as a movie and as an adaptation of Moore's work...

• As an adaptation of Alan Moore's highly literate story, it is unquestionably dumbed-down for mass consumption. Leader and Fate are both gone, replaced by a screaming Big Brother/Hitler clone named Sutler. Shame on the critics for not calling the Wachowskis on this. It works as this is a Hollywood movie, and a Hollywood movie needs a clear villain. But the portrayal of Sutler in this movie is indeed, as Alan Moore would say, "imbecilic." I realize this is a two-hour movie and time constraints would have been a problem, but I would have liked to see at least a somewhat more sophisticated portrayal of Alan Moore's vision of fascism.
• The conflict between anarchy and fascism that was present in the graphic novel isn't really here, as Gil pointed out. They did manage to grasp the notion of personal responsibility that V espoused, but not the individualist anarchy. Honestly, the ending felt almost like a cheat - when I read the comic, I was ambivalent about the way it ended. I was glad the fascists were gone, but the descent into anarchy combined with V's rather abstract notion of ideal anarchist society did not really leave me comfortable, either. I think that's how it was supposed to be. With the movie though, I was completely comfortable. The bad guys lost, the good guys won. Yay. Acceptable for a commercial movie? Yeah, OK.
• The St. Mary's virus subplot - I hated this, I hated every minute of it and I wanted it gone. It felt shoehorned in, it didn't really go anywhere, and it was superfluous. Yes, we know the government was bad - the Larkhill scenes more than adequately demonstrated this while actually tying in with the plot quite strongly. We didn't need a tangent an hour later to fuck with the pacing.
• The Guy Fawkes scene - OK, I realize that it was absolutely necessary for this scene to be in the movie - the movie was not just made for British audiences, and a lot of people in America as well as other countries are absolutely not going to know who Guy Fawkes is. But Guy Fawkes was a bloody religious nut who tried to blow up Parliament to give the finger to the Scots, not make some statement about freedom. Evey's narrative, I feel, may have left viewers with the impression that V was somehow the ideological cousin of Guy Fawkes, but it's clear for those familiar with the graphic novel that V only adopted Fawkes' guise as it was a potent symbol of terrorism and defiance. I wish the movie would have gotten this across better, because I feel that some previously uninformed viewer may leave with the impression that Fawkes was a freedom fighter, when really nothing could be further from a truth. This is pretty damn nitpicky now that I've gone and typed it all out and can read it, but it still bugs me.
• In the comic V was not a person. He was an idea, something akin to an unstoppable ideological force. Scenes like the alliterative introduction and the one where V cooked eggs in an apron may have been good comedically, but they only undermined the idea of V as they had the unfortunate side effect of humanizing him a bit too much. The scene where he cried after Evey left was the worst of all.
• It's funny - for all the controversy this movie will attract, it is highly sanitized compared to the comics. Evey does not try to work as a prostitute in the beginning. Evey does not shack up with a gangster and fuck him (one of the few changes which I can't say I'm unhappy was made, the panels where Evey was in bed with the gangster were pretty damn unpleasant). V does not force the priest to eat a tainted, transubstantiated wafer (imagine the outrage from the Catholic League, it would made Brokeback look like the fucking Passion). Finch doesn't drop acid at Larkill.
• The scene with Gordon and the Koran made me angry. I'm sure the filmmakers were trying to make some snide little comment about intolerance towards Islam or whatever, but still one can appreciate the irony of a gay man embracing one of the most homophobic texts ever written to stick it to the government, I suppose.

[Stark]

That's a shame. Some of the stuff they left out is so important! The movie really needed to include the line, 'And you know what? It was still cyanide when it reached his stomach'.

[Ghost Rider]

That's a shame. Some of the stuff they left out is so important! The movie really needed to include the line, 'And you know what? It was still cyanide when it reached his stomach'.

Which is why most who've read the comic and seen it, will not call it a good adaption.

I still find it somewhat akin to Constantine. They essentially took ideas from the story, added dashes of their own, and decided to use a name that will attract a few leftover fans.

Basically when Moore said it was idiotic, I do agree with him. It was as an adaption of his work and fits perfectly in the mold of a popcorn movie.

[Davis 51]

According to the below souce, about 20-something good reviews, 9 lukewarm reviews, and 3 bad reviews, with Washington Post scoring the lowest, (though I always thought the Post's movie reviews were crap.)

Link

[Admiral Valdemar]

Just got back from seeing it. As far as movie adaptations go for Moore's work, this ranks up there with From Hell in my mind. There were parts that the graphic novel did better and that you couldn't get from even an over 2 hour movie, but I find it hard to imagine this was the horrid trainwreck some expected. Weaving, despite the mask, performed well as did Portman, who I questioned as Evey. The only character that seemed a little too different was DI Finch, but only because I thought he should be older and I forget the actor I had in mind who looked like the novel's original.

All-in-all, the Wachowskis have succeeded in not sucking here and giving something more than a kung-fu movie with crap philosophy 101 quotes. It was entertaining, and hopefully will get more people to read the graphic novel if they want the full story and content that cannot be put to celluloid.

That's a shame. Some of the stuff they left out is so important! The movie really needed to include the line, 'And you know what? It was still cyanide when it reached his stomach'.

I agree, plus something on how V actually escaped Larkhill would've been nice, since it just went "then there was an explosion", which is a bit odd. I feared they'd leave the Valerie memoir as only that first bit when it cut back to Evey's torture, but thankfully, they played out the whole diary. There are a few things they omitted or altered somewhat that I preferred in the novel, though the BT tower siege was done well and better than just having V vanish (the many V clones to confuse the cops was a nice touch).

Wasn't V for Vendetta a thinggy about reptiloid aliens that came to earth asking for water but were actually eating people or something?

That almost warrants being punched in the face for by any Moore fan. I suggest getting the graphic novel and seeing what a real comicbook is like. It's not the usualy crap you see in American, British or Japanese comics with superpowered heroes and camp villains. It's an intelligent story.

[Gil Hamilton]

Just got back from seeing it and I give it a solid Blah.

As a standalone movie, it was OK. It wasn't terrible, it didn't blow my socks off. It was certainly not shit, so it's a step up from Wachowski fare, but Alan Moore was right to take his name off of it. It didn't really make me think or anything like that.

Incidently, alot of my talking points are kind of going to echo Joe's, but that's coincidental.

-They really cleaned up totalitarian England. It was no longer a decaying sordid run down dump that just survived nuclear war... I'm sorry, not nuclear war... "America's War". *cough* No longer is Evey working in a munition plant and a would-be hooker. There aren't doles or food shortages. It's a bright sunny totalitarian state. Which is kind of odd, since it's run by people who are depicted as such brutal thugs. Like Sutler (I suppose they didn't want to refer to him as Susan) and Creedly, which exhibited none of the strength and control they did in the comics, but somehow everything was clean and bright. Like it was controlled by a giant supercomputer except they removed the damn supercomputer.

-They removed all the philosophical discussion about anarchy. No discussion about justice or order or any of that. To me, that's unforgivable, since that's half of the point of the book, coupled with individuality and responsibility, which they barely touched on. Worse, they removed any point to Evey's transformation. Sure, she doesn't have fear anymore, that's fine and good, but they didn't give her personal growth to become the creator or to no longer seek vengence. Didn't even really become V. She just pulled the lever to Vs plan. She didn't piece together V's will or anything. There was huge amount of symbolism to Evey putting all of V's explosives on to the train with his flowers to give V a viking funeral, not only to complete V's plan to destroy the head, but to give up violence and bombs once it was over. They wouldn't be needed any more. They screwed up Evey's character further by making her a huge fucking sellout for most of the movie till after her transformation.

Furthermore, I felt that it was really freaking stilted that they made Evey's parents big political dissents. It's good they feel that Evey was too weak a character to do what she did because of her own self and for V, they had to give her a history. I seem to recall that Evey's dad was merely a guy who went to some socialist meetings in college, not a big political dissent.

-Removing Rosemary made alot of sense, since there is only so much real estate in the move I suppose, but having Sutler just be killed in a coup as part of a deal was kind of weak.

-I thought the girl with the who spray painted "V" on the wall in the movie was a cute edition, no matter what happened to her.

-Just having him kill Plethero and the Bishop was really shitty. Didn't they understand the important symbolism of the dolls being thrown in the oven and the transubstantiation? They were actually relevant to Vs character, not just gallow's humor or V being twisted. The cyanide remaining cyanide in particular.

-I agree with Joe on the St. Mary's Sub-Plot. The whole concentration camp thing, murdering all the "darkies and yids and queers and beatniks" and Valerie's message more than adequate illustrates that Norsefire are the bad guys.

-Speaking of which, I really wish they hadn't altered Valerie's message and just left it whole, rather than changing it as they did.

-They made V humanized, again as Joe pointed out, which is the exact opposite of the idea in the comic. He wasn't human, he was too big for that. He was nothing at all, except an idea and a plan. The government took everything else from him.

All in all, it was what I feared most as an adaption. It was politically incorrect in an ultimately politically correct way. All the ideas and images that would really offend people in the comic were removed. The movie was positively tame. Sure, they had the concept of one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, but they did it very safely. Even altering the symbol of Norsefire to something that wasn't the Christian cross was kind of unnecessarily safe. All of it kind of irritates me. It wasn't really all the contraversial at all.