we saw v for vendetta last night. i was a huge fan of the comic, at least the DC american printing of it, when it came out in the 1980s. if you'd ask me about it back then, i probably would have gone on and on about how v for vendetta represented some kind of paradigm case of what the medium was capable of. (back in my philosophy major days, i would occasionally use words like "paradigm case" in a sentence)
anyway, the initial buzz about the film was good. alan moore, the comic creator, took his name off the film, but he always does that. it seemed like finally one of moore's comics could be adapted without turning into a complete travesty. then the movie opened and other reviews came out. they were decidedly mixed. some said it was good, others seemed to hate it. unfortunately, the reviewers i tend to like were drifting decidedly into the negative column.
but i wanted to see it anyway. i couldn't help it. the story still had a tremendous pull on me 17-18 years after i read it. but i had low expectations. my friend, another comic fan, reminded me repeatedly that it would suck when we arranged to meet at the theater. not that he wasn't going with me. he was subject to the same fanboy tidal forces as i was. he and his fiancee even arrived at the theater with a guy fawkes mask that he was too embarrassed to wear. i put it on before we walked in.
i liked the movie a lot more than i thought i would. it wasn't perfect: there were a couple of plot holes, they didn't have to add a love-interest subplot (though as tacked-on hollywood love interest subplots go, this one was surprisingly understated), they hit you over the head with a couple of the symbols in the story rather than let you draw the parallels yourself, and the sprinkling of references to islam were completely unnecessary. but overall, it did a good job of capturing the feel of the comic story, and stuck to its basic themes better than i thought it would. it's definitely worth seeing even if you've never caught a glimpse of the comic. four of the six people in our group last night never read the original, and they had no problem enjoying the film in its own right.
in short, what mr. corey said. he seems to remember the details of the comic better than i do. but i'll remedy that as soon as i can dig the old issues out of that box upstairs.
