V for Vendetta, Essay Example

Introduction

The Wachowski brothers, Andy and Larry Wachowski developed V for Vendetta basing it on the 1980s graphic novel written by John Moore and David Lloyd. This was more of a sacred successor than an adaptation of the original work. Having all these modifications, a comparison has to be made between this movie and the movie “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. This can be viewed as the most notable version of Alan Moore’s book, and finding a book more butchered as a result of the shift to film than that is difficult.

On the face of it, a similar format seems to be followed by both the film and the book, which is after the world’s devastation by the nuclear war, there is the emergence of a fascist regime in Great Britain, based on genocide acts and total power over the general public. V, a mysterious character who is dressed in a grinning Guy Fawkes facade, is carrying on a terrorist campaign against the government having been assisted by Evey Hammond, who is a young lady whom Guy rescues from the secret forces. The case is assigned to an investigator known as Finch, but Finch discovers that getting into the mind of V may lead to the breaking his own mind (Wachowski 25).

As the film goes on for twenty minutes, it is apparent that despite the mask looking alike, what is underneath the mask is very different. The regime here is portrayed as a government, which is ultra-conservative rather than a government with ethnically clean dictatorship, with its leader being a figure such as that of a Big Brother and airwaves being controlled by Bill O’ Reilly’s imitators. There is a change in the opposition, as well (Wachowski 61). In the book, V was portrayed as a rebel who is mostly interested in stabbing his opponents’ views. On the other hand, the V in the film acts as a romantic revolutionary, who is out to set the people free, and to take vengeance of his own bad treatment at the regime’s hands.

There is a fundamental alteration to the line of the story and the alteration is on the ambitions of V. In the book, V openly admits that anarchy is his new love and not justice (Moore 71). The statement is made just prior to him blasting the Old Bailey. He has a desire of encouraging just one person to take on his cause as opposed to encouraging masses to turn against their regime. In the film, V instead works towards encouraging all people and not only an individual. The basis is more magnificent, and its conclusion, which has many people dead and alive dressing as V, manifests a higher bond of the people’s belief that many people are capable of doing much more. There is less of this feeling left by the book, and more of an individual owning an idea.

The other key difference between the film and the graphic novel is the depiction of the primary actors. Despite their actions, their names and in other instances their looks being exact duplications of the novel, the personalities of most of them are adjusted considerably. These make V and Evey portray the biggest differences. Evey was transformed to a strong-minded twenty-something year old with a decent job and a moderate self-sense, from a sixteen-year-old who had no education or had very little of it. Although the variation of Evey in the film is not that of rising up against the regime, Evey’s parents had already planted this seed in her head. Her parents acted as political activists in the film. In the novel, Evey is depicted as a soul that is already lost and has no ambition, but with just a feeble will of survival, to the point of her engaging in prostitution. On the other hand, V was transformed to the common person who was laid-back as everybody else, from practically a doll-like person. In the novel, V is not engaged in watching movies, and he puts on a pink apron when he is cooking breakfast (Moore 276). All humanity in him is lost, and what he is left with is merely what he had at some point in his life. In the film, V’s appearance is just that of a caricature that is huge compared to any average human being, just as big.

The movie does exceptionally well when looking at the adjustments. This is evident in the manifestation of horrors of the dictatorial regime, and what it is capable of doing against its own population. The St. Mary’s virus used to instill fear in people, anyone seen as defiant being black-bagged, and absolutely controlling all media forms are all perfect ways of illustrating how terrifying, yet shown realistically, this regime is (Wachowski 190). Though the regime in the novel was just as terrifying, it retained a very slight layer of humanity flowing at the back of its evils. This thin layer of humanity is not in the film. Therefore, it thus portrays the regime as even more monstrous and inhuman.

There is maintenance of the order of events from the novel to film, with little switching around of significant moments, like blowing up of parliament, and adding of more scenes into the tale to ensure that the revised timeline and the intention in the film are supported. There are numerous cuts in the story as demonstrated in the film. This is done to a point of thinking that the Wachowski brothers set their V stuntmen loose and gave them knives to make the edits on the novel. There is the removal of the subplot, which was talking about political intrigue seen in the regime as this was the bulk of the speech given by V seizing the airwaves to challenge the populace directly and an epiphany induced by LSD from Finch. Almond, who was a brutal police officer, is removed. His wife Rose who was battered and an important player in the climax of the story, and Almond’s replacement by Creedy is advanced to the main rogue of the movie and is similar to Dick Cheney being the head of the Gestapo.

Within the film, parliament is blown up at the end instead of being blown up in the beginning, V kills Lewis Prothero instead of being made crazy, and Creedy and his men killed V, not Finch. Additionally, Creedy killed the Head, not Rose, and Almond’s wife who was not even featured in the movie, along with several other actors who were not featured at all in the film or their names were changed. Above all, everybody became the next V in the film as opposed to only Evey becoming the next V.

The major explanation for making changes in the film V for Vendetta is that the changes have a reason to be made, which is using the core characters in narrating a message that has been updated. The target of the story is the differences between conservative and liberal, doing away with the unsympathetic edges of the original story or film. The tagline of V, which states that regimes are supposed to be afraid of their populace, is not a chaotic tone. However, it is a populist tone, in some instances going towards V’s role setting up Evey to take it at the end of the book.

However, the film keeps to the outline of the original film. Evey’s rebirth scene that has been previously mentioned, using background music from Beethoven’s Fifth lines like “Ideas act as bullet-proof” and Guy Fawkes’ image of revolutionary to blow up figures of failed power. The Wachowski brothers’ intentions were to modernize the tale, and transform it to a universal story, which is less vague. V for Vendetta is somewhat set in the future. Moore and Lloyd who were the creators of V for Vendetta were influenced by the times of their lives.

Conclusion

The film V for Vendetta’s transition does away with what is important to the novel, and makes an addition to what is appealing on the screen. Other people with divergent opinions may not like this, but many people who have watched the movie and read the novel later found out that the film was much more effective and uplifting. Either way, both the film and the book have their own excellences. The book tells the same story as the film; however, they do this within two dissimilar ways.

Works Cited

Moore, Alan and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. Oklahoma: Paw Prints, 2008. Print.

Wachowski, Andy and Larry Wachowski. V for Vendetta: From Script to Film. New York: Universe Publishers, 2006. Print.