V for Very Good
Mar. 21st, 2006 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugee****1/2 out of *****
Just back from seeing "V for Vendetta", and I have to admit, I may need to see it again, since the pace was way faster than the book. The Wachowskis and company changed quite a bit of the details, to make it more relevant to our times (I have to admit, the book was a leetle dated), but the basic plot and the spirit are still intact. What I got out of it:
Violent anarchy and totalitarianism are basically the flip sides of the same disordered coin.
I do have a few minor carps: in some ways, the film is a bit more Michael Moore than Allan Moore (neither of whom I can tolerate as human beings, but I admit to being less annoyed with the latter), which is a little aggravating, but I'm not going to pull a hissy fit over it. And I can't help thinking that in some ways V's fangs and claws got the edge taken off them, but it doesn't spoil it for me. Thankfully, Hugo Weaving managed to blend a little extra human-ness into V's personality without dumbing the character down too much. My only concern is that the fanbrats will latch onto it and run with it. I've already seen one fanfic that kinda fluffy-fies the movie ending, but not horribly so. ::Has the throwing knives ready under her cloak, to hurl at any worse ones that show up::
There were a few teenagers that showed up at the showing I went to, and they sat right in back of me, but they appeared to be college students. Thankfully no squeeing over Hugo; they were suprisingly well-behaved: One girl was even explaining the whole thing with Guy Fawkes, to the others who hadn't a clue about him or the Gunpowder Plot.
One thing I *will* admit to is noticing the "Matrix" similarities, but these were thankfully minor (and only a "Matrix" geek like me would think of them). The climatic fight scene might earn the nickname "knife-time", since it utiliized the "bullet-time" effect, only translated for V's throwing knives. And I couldn't help thinking that John Hurt's Adam Suttler (Adam Susan, in the graphic novel) reminded me of a wierd three-way combination of the Architect, Adolf Hitler and Nikolai Lenin; if they'd just had a scene with Suttler sitting in a room full of monitors, the way Adam Susan often appears in the book, the comparsion would have been eerie. Maybe it was just the art designers, but the Shadow Gallery looked oddly like what you might expect a back hallway in the Merovingian's Chateau to look like.
And am I the only one who noticed that the Party emblem is a (somewhat Frank Lloyd Wrightian) Cross de Lorraine, or who realizes that this emblem is associated with the Prieurie de Sion, the secret society supposedly attempting to restore the Merovingian dynasty in France (and of extending that regime to embrace all of Europe)?
Just back from seeing "V for Vendetta", and I have to admit, I may need to see it again, since the pace was way faster than the book. The Wachowskis and company changed quite a bit of the details, to make it more relevant to our times (I have to admit, the book was a leetle dated), but the basic plot and the spirit are still intact. What I got out of it:
Violent anarchy and totalitarianism are basically the flip sides of the same disordered coin.
I do have a few minor carps: in some ways, the film is a bit more Michael Moore than Allan Moore (neither of whom I can tolerate as human beings, but I admit to being less annoyed with the latter), which is a little aggravating, but I'm not going to pull a hissy fit over it. And I can't help thinking that in some ways V's fangs and claws got the edge taken off them, but it doesn't spoil it for me. Thankfully, Hugo Weaving managed to blend a little extra human-ness into V's personality without dumbing the character down too much. My only concern is that the fanbrats will latch onto it and run with it. I've already seen one fanfic that kinda fluffy-fies the movie ending, but not horribly so. ::Has the throwing knives ready under her cloak, to hurl at any worse ones that show up::
There were a few teenagers that showed up at the showing I went to, and they sat right in back of me, but they appeared to be college students. Thankfully no squeeing over Hugo; they were suprisingly well-behaved: One girl was even explaining the whole thing with Guy Fawkes, to the others who hadn't a clue about him or the Gunpowder Plot.
One thing I *will* admit to is noticing the "Matrix" similarities, but these were thankfully minor (and only a "Matrix" geek like me would think of them). The climatic fight scene might earn the nickname "knife-time", since it utiliized the "bullet-time" effect, only translated for V's throwing knives. And I couldn't help thinking that John Hurt's Adam Suttler (Adam Susan, in the graphic novel) reminded me of a wierd three-way combination of the Architect, Adolf Hitler and Nikolai Lenin; if they'd just had a scene with Suttler sitting in a room full of monitors, the way Adam Susan often appears in the book, the comparsion would have been eerie. Maybe it was just the art designers, but the Shadow Gallery looked oddly like what you might expect a back hallway in the Merovingian's Chateau to look like.
And am I the only one who noticed that the Party emblem is a (somewhat Frank Lloyd Wrightian) Cross de Lorraine, or who realizes that this emblem is associated with the Prieurie de Sion, the secret society supposedly attempting to restore the Merovingian dynasty in France (and of extending that regime to embrace all of Europe)?
