I went to see this yesterday, and I really loved it.
Ok, I've never read the comic book, (something I regretted and still do.) thought that in a few places the film was pretty slow, but wow, by the end I thought that it was amazing.
I know that Alan was unhappy with it after scanning through this, and that for those of you who have read the comic book there must have been a ton of stuff that's been changed, omitted, things that make you pissed off, want to scream, etc, and yeah, I get that, but once the end had arrived, I think that the film had it's own spirit. That it had turned into it's own thing.
It felt like it stood out on it's own, that it had been written by a genius, put on the screen and changed around in however many all too numerous ways, seeing as you just cannot fully translate a comic book onto the big screen, and then born as something shocking, new, poetic, mythic, and euphoric.
I saw that someone said further back here about the dominoes scene remaining intact. Well I have to say thank the universe that it did, because when that was mixed in with the marching people in the masks, it ended up being the bit I loved the most. There's just something about the way that whole scene turned out that made it one of the best things I've seen in a long time.
It was like.......and I can write for ages here, but I'll spare you........you have this government.......these brutal, fascist, controlling, crazy people, that have got together, and have opressed, tortured, controlled, used, maimed, raped, and killed these people over and over again, but once it gets to the point where you have soldiers pointing guns at their faces and they're walking towards them, and it looks like the whole thing is about to turn into a bloodbath, the guns go down, and they just walk past them. They're not bothered about hitting out at, attacking and killing these people that are enforcing this mess, they're not bothered about starting a war on the streets and killing them out of revenge, they walk past them and don't lay a finger on any of them because they are here to see V's idea, his vision. That's why they've arrived.
The old vision get's blown to bits and they stand there and watch a fire, a light of hope, and when that whole scene took place I completely loved it.
It wasn't V for Vendetta the comic, probably in so many ways that's it's beyond count, but it emerged as it's own V for Vendetta, and despite the way it had probably been made into something that didn't really touch the comics, I think that it still mananged to stand up on it's own, and it worked.
Yes, I'm the type of person that gets over enthusiastic about things, and yes, I'm a jerk at times, but I feel that after seeing something that had such an effect on me with it's presence, the least I could do was write here about how brilliant I thought it was. I hope that Alan can...........and it must be tremendously fucking hard to do this when he's written the thing and seen it changed so much........at somepoint, see through the crap that he feels he's had thrown all over his work and realize that something amazing had the chance to shine through, and that in some places, it truly has done for some of us. |
Actually, I just read it was number 1 in the US box office, taking in about $26 million. Hey, look at it this way, maybe people who like the film will buy the comic. We've been seeling a lot of it over the last few days at the bookstore I work at.