Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gunpowder treason
and plot.
Most people remember this iconic anti-hero
being played by Hugo Weaving.
However, that almost wasn't the case.
What you might, however, remember
is that the Wachowskis' adaptation
of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's seminal classic V for Vendetta
almost looked very different.
Believe it or not, Hugo Weaving was not
the original actor cast as the film's titular vigilante.
James Purefoy from HBO's Rome and Fox's primetime horror
drama, The Following, was initially the man in that role,
but dropped out just after filming for a few weeks.
Fans have cast a wild speculation
as to why he was let go from the film--
creative differences, arguments with the director,
scheduling conflicts.
Well, let's take a little bit of a deeper dive
into what exactly went on behind the scenes of what many
consider to be a modern cult classic
and attempt to parse out what really
happened to V for Vendetta.
At this point, the character of V
is recognized around the globe for his iconic mask
design inspired by notorious British insurrectionist Guy
Fawkes.
Its existence as a comic book is a far second life
it's had as a symbol for mass unrest
and a desire for political change across the globe.
It's a film that has spawned a political movement
unlike any film in history.
Or let me rephrase that to be much more succinct.
It's a film whose look and aesthetic
has taken shape within political movements
unlike any film in history.
Freedom fighters, activists, and political dissidents
alike have all adopted the iconic Guy Fawkes mask
as a means of protesting corrupt systems.
The personification of anarchy, this mask
was modeled after the design created by illustrator David
Lloyd and writer Alan Moore.
Many readers and filmgoers alike think of V for Vendetta
as a single self-contained work, a shrieking howl
about the evils and repressive tactics
that authoritarian governments use to subjugate their people.
However, the book was originally serialized in 1982
in the English anthology comics magazine titled Warrior,
aiming to be the answer to England's beloved 2000 AD.
Warrior sought to give their creators more artistic freedom,
ownership of their rights, and an audience that
was seeking mature storytelling in a medium often thought
of as being for children.
So this didn't start as a political movement.
Alan Moore was one of the breakout writers
who was published by Warrior.
Thanks to the double whammy of V and his postmodern reimagining
of Marvel Man, Moore skyrocketed to the top
of the British comic book scene in a few short years.
Meanwhile, the 1980s saw a massive uptick
in interest in English writers from American publishers.
Alan Moore was quickly courted by DC Comics
to bring his skills in V for Vendetta across the pond.
Legend has it that Moore was so impressed with the overtures
and promises that DC editors Karen Berger and Paul
Levitz made that when offered a contract for both Watchmen
and V, which at the time, he owned outright,
he signed them on the spot.
Moore was assured full ownership, creative freedom,
and a respectable payday.
He signed right then and there without showing the contracts
to a lawyer.
And as you might imagine, being that we're here,
talking about this very moment, this
would prove to be a big mistake for Moore
and his collaborators.
The way the contracts were worded
is that after the comic books went out of print,
the rights would revert back to Moore and Lloyd.
This was prior to the graphic novel being an industry staple.
However, both Watchmen, co-created with Dave Gibbons,
and V for Vendetta sold so well that DC
began to reprint the books in the collected format.
This quickly propelled both books
into being perennial bestsellers.
And the rights therefore have literally never
reverted back to the creators.
This allowed Warner Brothers, the parent company
of DC Comics, to make attempts at exploiting both V
and Watchmen on the silver screen,
regardless of what the original creators wanted,
which brings us to the Wachowskis and James McTeigue.
He established a working relationship
with the Wachowskis by working as the assistant director
on the Matrix films.
And this is where things start to get muddled.
Much like the perennially in-development Watchmen
film, V for Vendetta languished for many years,
despite Alan Moore stating that he did not
want a film to be produced.
Joel Silver jumpstarted the project as producer
and enlisted the Wachowskis to write it,
despite the creator stating, no, thank you.
Development on this endeavor started back
before the Matrix films were even released.
After completing production of Matrix Revolutions,
the group decided to revisit the idea
for V, which, again, had been sitting basically dormant,
and used their post-Matrix cachet
to push the film out of development hell
and into production finally.
One of the main issues at hand was
that studios were nervous to greenlight a film that featured
a lead character who wore a mask for the entire runtime
of the said film.
They were not convinced an audience would embrace this
at all, especially in the era of star power
and faces driving box office numbers.
Silver, the Wachowskis, and McTeigue, however,
considered this an interesting creative problem to solve,
which is literally what every movie and every script is.
So there's obviously a big difference
between Darth Vader stomping around on set
and then later being ADRed over by James Earl
Jones and a leading actor, arguably
the star of the picture, carrying
an entire film with a 2-inch piece of plastic
over their face.
Here, we had a challenge one of the core creatives
all thought James Purefoy was capable of meeting.
They felt his onscreen performance was unique
and that his intensity as an actor
would provide exactly what they were looking for
to make that mask pop like, well, a maskless person would.
The Wachowskis have often been hailed as industry auteurs.
The auteur theory, first coined by the French film critic,
Andrew Sarris, states that in film, the director
is the central creative voice of the project.
V for Vendetta was their attempt at taking a step back
to let James be the central creative voice,
to remove the veil of auteur theory.
They operated on the film only as writers and producers.
Despite their intentions of remaining passively involved
throughout the project, they were quickly
called in to fix a major issue.
After only a few weeks of shooting,
Joel Silver called everyone together
with one big central concern.
And well, it was one that the film would live or die by.
Was V scary enough?
Was Purefoy projecting through the mask?
Were they succeeding in this kind of weird experiment
that even the creator of the character
himself didn't even want to exist?
According to many reports, the Wachowskis, Silver,
the director, well, they felt the answer was no,
that James Purefoy was not delivering
a performance that was communicating
what they had hoped.
They were worried that their very, very expensive play
was going south.
So they made what was essentially
the most dramatic decision you can make at that point
in filming.
They fired him.
The Wachowskis then reached out to their old Matrix
friend, Hugo Weaving, and he agreed to take over the role.
And then things get weirder because budgets get involved.
Much of Purefoy's footage was reshot.
However, there are a few shots in the film that have survived.
His performance, his body, is there.
Weaving just dubbed the dialogue.
And the Wachowskis and Purefoy have
remained pretty tight-lipped about the specific details
surrounding their creative differences,
but the truth is leaked out here and there.
To this day, whenever V for Vendetta gets brought up,
Purefoy's consternation is--
well, it's visible.
He's not the only person that was
upset about the release of the V for Vendetta film, however.
Alan Moore was so disgruntled by his treatment by Warner and DC
that he requested his name be taken off the film, the guy who
created V for Vendetta, and his share of the royalties
be given to David Lloyd.
He has said repeatedly in interviews
that he will never watch the film
as he feels the rights to his book were stolen from him.
So what you ended up getting on screen,
well, wasn't exactly what was intended
when this whole story was first being
written by the people that first sat down to write it.
Risks are a funny thing, which is what all of this
is to really say.
And film is a weird industry to take them
in a lot of times, which is kind of how
we've ended up in this very homogenized space we're in.
V for Vendetta was a risk.
Not only were they taking a risk and basically alienating
the person that created it and not
allowing their voice to be heard,
which, in a project like this, might have made it even better.
So I think the real lesson here isn't don't take risks.
That's not it at all.
I think it's that taking risks should be maybe a little bit
more calculated.
And sure, sometimes risks that aren't so calculated,
risks that end up a little messy,
turn out to be beautiful pieces of art.
But most of the time, they end up like Josh Trank's Fantastic
Four.
The battle for the Earth is being converted to energy.
We need to stop Victor.
He's the source.
And that's because when dealing with many people,
instead of working by yourself, everybody has to be on board.
And in the case of V for Vendetta,
the guy that created the titular character wasn't.
Your lead actor wasn't, at least not in the way
you'd expect him to.
And being put on the ropes doesn't always
create something good.
So if you're creating, if you're working with others,
if you're taking risks, make sure you
know what you're getting into.
Make sure you know exactly how to define that risk.
So when you get on set, so when you
get in front of that audience, and things aren't going the way
you planned, you have the voices that matter behind you,
working with you to find that backup plan.
That's it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
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