Differing themes, criticism from the original writer, and an iconic mask - what else could
it be but a comic book adaptation?
Stay tuned to find out the untold truth of "V for Vendetta."
During the early '80s, UK publisher and editor Dez Skinn left Marvel U.K. and started his
own imprint, Quality Communications.
In 2004, he told Ninth Art that he invited artist David Lloyd and author Alan Moore to
work on a story that would eventually become "V for Vendetta."
The first chapter appeared in Skinn's new anthology, "Warrior."
Moore wanted to incorporate a lot of themes, including riffs on George Orwell, Aldous Huxley,
Thomas Pynchon, "The Prisoner," and many other cultural touchstones.
Each issue featured a single chapter, and the storyline was organized into three separate
books.
"Warrior" ran for 26 issues, and "V For Vendetta" ran in every issue but one.
The last two chapters of book two were set to appear in #27 and #28, but they were never
published.
DC Comics picked up the series, added color, and released the books as ten single issues
before they were collected.
The final issue was published nearly seven years after the first story appeared.
Alan Moore made his disdain for the movie version of "V For Vendetta" clear during an
interview with MTV, saying -
"[The comic] was specifically about things like fascism and anarchy.
Those words, 'fascism' and 'anarchy,' occur nowhere in the film.
It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire
in their own country."
According to Infoshop News, Moore's interest in anarchism was highly-developed, grasping
it in its most basic sense: not a lack of order, but an absence of leaders.
"V For Vendetta" was an experiment in V understanding that the conditioning of a fascist state in
particular has to be stripped away before its people can choose their own way.
Moore's understanding of this was taking responsibility for one's own actions as well as acknowledging
that they are part of a larger group.
The ending of the film, which is essentially one big protest with people wearing Guy Fawkes
masks, seems to confirm the idea that it was less about the total destruction of a fascist
state to build something anew and more about the importance of direct action in a democracy,
which is at the heart of liberalism.
When V dies at the end, Finch asks Evey his true identity,
"He was you…and me.
He was all of us."
V uses a Guy Fawkes mask and wears a wig to conceal his identity.
His first major act was destroying the Houses of Parliament on November 5, 1997.
Guy Fawkes was a Catholic conspirator who sought to destroy Parliament by packing it
full of gunpowder and blowing it up.
He was arrested before he could carry it out, and his plot became a patriotic rallying point.
Historically, Guy Fawkes day was celebrated to burn Fawkes in effigy, which is where the
masks originated.
Moore subverted this idea when he had V destroying these buildings, and David Lloyd made effective
use of this frozen, smiling face throughout the book.
The film inspired a number of people to don the mask in various forms of protest.
Ironically, according to The New York Times, Time Warner owns the rights to the image and
profits with each mask sold.
The hacker collective Anonymous uses the Guy Fawkes mask as a disguise for its activities,
which have included cyber attacks on the CIA, KKK, Church of Scientology, and various corporations.
The mask was also frequently seen during the Occupy movement and protests in Hong Kong,
protecting identities while symbolizing protest.
V's origin begins in the Parkhill Resettlement Camp, where experiments were performed by
a scientist who wanted to see what would happen when people were injected with an experimental
drug.
It killed all of them eventually.
Everyone except for one patient: the man in Room V.
Though completely insane, the survivor was also a genius, and after killing dozens in
his escape, he no longer had a name.
When he introduced himself, he told people to call him "V" — an identity he took to
the extreme.
"Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's
my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V."
V's headquarters are located under the defunct Victoria underground station, one of only
two stations in London that start with "V." He is drawn to vaudeville.
He uses Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to drown out a conversation, the first five notes of
which spell out "V" in Morse code.
Every chapter of the comic starts with "V," from the introductory "The Villain" to the
concluding "Valhalla."
V quotes from the Thomas Pynchon novel "V.," which is about a man obsessed with a mysterious
person known only as "V."
Apart from the divergent themes, the main difference between the film and comic versions
of "V For Vendetta" is the relationship between V and Evey Hammond.
In the comic, Evey is a naïve 16-year-old with no education.
In the film, Evey is an employee of the British Television Network.
In both cases, V rescues her from vicious Fingermen.
Emotionally, the comic version of V is a kind of surrogate father for Evey, but he is also
cruel to her.
He always does it in a way that he calculates will help make her his ideal replacement,
but he still manipulates her into helping murder the Bishop, abandons her on a street
when he knows it is time for her to live life as an adult, and then kidnaps and tortures
her to achieve the same kind of liberating, transformational experience he had.
In the film, the relationship between V and Evey is more romantic in nature.
However, he still kidnaps and tortures her for similar reasons.
The political jumble makes this relationship make a lot less sense.
V wants someone morally pure to take his place, someone whose choices aren't rooted in violence.
In the film, everyone gets a Guy Fawkes mask, and Evey's role is far less important.
V knows that he is a killer that has chosen destruction.
He doesn't see another way to bring down the fascist order.
However, it is strongly implied that it would be all too easy for him to simply insert himself
as a new leader — the last thing he wants.
V knows that he has no role in the new world, but the symbol of what V represents is important.
That's why he grooms Evey to be his replacement, one who isn't stained as a killer and whose
integrity is also impeccable.
"Beneath this mask there is an idea Mr. Creedy… and ideas are bulletproof."
It seems perhaps like a bit of bravado, but it is also true.
V creates a new persona, a new symbol, that now exists outside of himself.
He tells Evey -
"You must discover whose face lies behind this mask, but you must never know my face."
Evey realizes he meant that his actual identity is irrelevant, because it is now her face
behind the mask.
In V's carefully-designed crusade to kill or leave comatose everyone who knows his true
identity, his second victim is Bishop Anthony Lilliman, who was present at the Larkhill
concentration camp where V was imprisoned.
When Evey volunteers to help V, he uses her as bait for the Bishop, who is secretly a
pedophile.
She distracts him while V slips in.
V uses this as an excuse for a series of riffs on god and the devil, positioning himself
as the latter.
"And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen forth from holy writ and
seem a saint, when most I play the devil."
In the comics, when V reveals himself to the Bishop, he says -
"Please allow me to introduce myself.
I am a man of wealth and taste."
That's the famous first line from the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy For The Devil," wherein
Lucifer recounts history from his perspective.
V also tells Lilliman -
"I am the devil, and I come to do the devil's work."
A similar line was reportedly spoken by Charles Denton "Tex" Watson Jr., a Manson family associate,
on the night of the Sharon Tate murders.
Alan Moore was the writer of "V For Vendetta" and David Lloyd the artist.
Both had rather divergent feelings about the film.
Lloyd was supportive of the film and pleased by the result.
In particular, he was impressed by the attention to detail in trying to make the movie look
a lot like the comic, telling Ain't It Cool News -
"They used the original graphic novel as storyboards, practically.
[...] Owen Paterson, the designer, was concerned about getting things looking exactly like
the original."
Regarding the changes the director made, Lloyd thought it turned out well and said he understood
that alterations had to be made.
He also disagreed with Moore, and thought the film's message and philosophy stuck to
the original source material.
Lloyd was especially impressed by the work of Adrian Biddle, the cinematographer for
"V For Vendetta," telling Ain't It Cool News -
"It's really extraordinary seeing something that you've created come to life like that."
The scene he thought bore the closest resemblance to the original was when Evey emerges from
her jail, realizes that V had been her torturer, and the moment between them that followed.
For Lloyd, drawing something as close to real life in the comics was important to him, adding
that much of the film felt faithful to his original art, and saying -
"I think that speaks volumes to me about the dedication of the filmmakers to the original
work."
Alan Moore's disdain for all of the film adaptations of his comics is well known.
He rejects the very concept of TV or film adaptations, saying in an interview with Ian
Winterton -
"Just because something worked as a comic book, that didn't mean you should make it
into a film or a television series or a whole franchise."
Moore's reaction to his works being adapted has always been twofold: removing his name
from the film and distributing any money made to the artists who worked on it.
However, his requests were frequently ignored.
Moore explained that he got a phone call from one of the Wachowskis and politely told her
that he, quote, "didn't want anything to do with the 'V For Vendetta' film."
Moore went on to say a friend had told him that in the press, producer Joel SIlver had
claimed that Moore was excited about the film and was working directly with the Wachowskis.
Moore wryly noted that the studio respected his request to not get paid, but went on to
add -
"The side of the deal where I actually got what I wanted, which was utter non-involvement
with these films, that somehow didn't seem to have worked out."
In discussing writing "V For Vendetta," Alan Moore specifically talked about fleshing out
every character, even the villains, saying in an interview with Blather.net -
"I was very pleased with the characterizations in 'V For Vendetta.'
There's quite a variety of characters in there and they've all got very distinctive characteristics."
That was true of even the most despicable characters, which was important to Moore because
they felt "emotionally credible" to him.
He thought writing about fascists as stereotypical villains would do little to establish just
how commonplace and easy it is for fascism to arise, adding -
"Whereas in fact, fascists are people who work in factories, probably are nice to their
kids, it's just that they're fascists.
They're just ordinary.
They're the same as everybody else except for the fact that they're fascists."
"V For Vendetta" was director James McTiegue's first film at the helm after assisting the
Wachowskis with the "Matrix" franchise, and although it's quite faithful in many respects,
that doesn't mean the comics were sacrosanct to the filmmakers.
In fact, as McTiegue recalled to the website LittleWhiteLies -
"We decided to do a rewrite because the original script was very unwieldy and slavish to the
graphic novel."
Regarding the film's legacy, McTiegue mused -
"[It] has come to mean something different now.
I'm glad there's a lot of people who understood the message of the movie in the way that it
had its part in Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the Hong Kong protests.
The notion that 'I are we' is strong — and we can't control everything."
He said that the V masks get misappropriated at times, noting that he saw a lot of them
at the Capitol Building riot on January 6th, 2021, but he recognizes that it's the risk
every creator takes.
"Once you put a piece of art out into the world, it's no longer yours.
[…] People find meaning in the way they want to.
'V' is one of those films and I'm happy for that."
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