On "V for Vendetta" and Alan Moore
To Mark Dansereau, April 12, 2006
I kind of didn't know what to make of "V." I very much wanted to like it and was rooting hard for it. I remember Alan Moore & David Lloyd's 1990 (?) comic series as being exceedingly bleak and dark in both narrative tone and illustration, but I don't remember it well enough to judge if they screwed it up or not. Lloyd has said the Wachowskis' script adaptations were pretty faithful, though they changed the Evie character from a tiny teen waif into a 20-something woman for Natalie Portman. I don't remember a lot of knife-throwing in the books. Alan Moore completely disassociated himself from the film, and asked that his name be removed from the credits and his share of the $$ given to Lloyd -- though I think all in all this is a much better adaptation of his work than either "From Hell" or the execrable "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," which captured none of the dark and funny perversity of Moore's books. (In the LXG comics, the Invisible Man is a psychotic who is discovered molesting girls at a private school. Eventually, after he betrays their group to the invading Martian tripods in Book 2, Mr. Hyde traps the Invisible Man at their hideout, reveals that he has always been able to see him, and, laughing, merrily proceeds to rape and then dismember him.) So, I was disappointed that Moore had taken such a hard line on the movie given that in the Wachowskis, he had two guys who appreciated his immense stature as a comics writer and were willing to work with him -- but Moore is an eccentric who has made it clear that he wants nothing to do with Hollywood any more, forever.
I think they handled the deepening mystery of who V is pretty well, but the Wachowskis have a tin ear for overly speechy dialogue (one of the things that brought down the two Matrix sequels). But they're so powerful that nobody in the production process can tell them that -- so their crappy writing ends up on the screen. Poor Hugo Weaving had to find a way to deliver that droning stuff on and on, and it may have worked in the comic but not really in the movie. It's a rare situation in which I find myself rooting against auteur-type freedom for directors (or producers in this case) because normally the accursed pablum-churning studio system would have at least provided a check upon lousy writing -- but they have no power against the Wachowskis, who can write their own ticket and preserve final cut for themselves. Still and all, I'm glad they're around -- they are huge comics enthusiasts and they publish two rather funny/violent titles called Shaolin Cowboy and Doc Frankenstein. W
I kind of didn't know what to make of "V." I very much wanted to like it and was rooting hard for it. I remember Alan Moore & David Lloyd's 1990 (?) comic series as being exceedingly bleak and dark in both narrative tone and illustration, but I don't remember it well enough to judge if they screwed it up or not. Lloyd has said the Wachowskis' script adaptations were pretty faithful, though they changed the Evie character from a tiny teen waif into a 20-something woman for Natalie Portman. I don't remember a lot of knife-throwing in the books. Alan Moore completely disassociated himself from the film, and asked that his name be removed from the credits and his share of the $$ given to Lloyd -- though I think all in all this is a much better adaptation of his work than either "From Hell" or the execrable "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," which captured none of the dark and funny perversity of Moore's books. (In the LXG comics, the Invisible Man is a psychotic who is discovered molesting girls at a private school. Eventually, after he betrays their group to the invading Martian tripods in Book 2, Mr. Hyde traps the Invisible Man at their hideout, reveals that he has always been able to see him, and, laughing, merrily proceeds to rape and then dismember him.) So, I was disappointed that Moore had taken such a hard line on the movie given that in the Wachowskis, he had two guys who appreciated his immense stature as a comics writer and were willing to work with him -- but Moore is an eccentric who has made it clear that he wants nothing to do with Hollywood any more, forever.
I think they handled the deepening mystery of who V is pretty well, but the Wachowskis have a tin ear for overly speechy dialogue (one of the things that brought down the two Matrix sequels). But they're so powerful that nobody in the production process can tell them that -- so their crappy writing ends up on the screen. Poor Hugo Weaving had to find a way to deliver that droning stuff on and on, and it may have worked in the comic but not really in the movie. It's a rare situation in which I find myself rooting against auteur-type freedom for directors (or producers in this case) because normally the accursed pablum-churning studio system would have at least provided a check upon lousy writing -- but they have no power against the Wachowskis, who can write their own ticket and preserve final cut for themselves. Still and all, I'm glad they're around -- they are huge comics enthusiasts and they publish two rather funny/violent titles called Shaolin Cowboy and Doc Frankenstein. W
posted by Will @ 4/13/2006 01:37:00 PM
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