Shame he's not going to finish the tale though.

[ Parent ]

superficial similarity but I think therein lies a lot of its problems. One of the issues for me was that the film-makers had removed ambiguity at every possible instant. I don't think it's fair to call the politics immature as, if you look closely, there's actually very little politics in it (apart from the fundamental dichotomy of fascism versus anarchy). This ties into the ambiguity issue; the film essentially sanitized V; the book is far more non-commital over his true motivations. Sure, he spouts passages from Voltaire, Orwell, Blyton etc., but the book is careful to walk the line between asserting that's what he believes, and implying that he just says it to justify his homicidal schemes; it asks the reader to see him in a similar way to poltical stance of the insurgents in 'The Dancer Upstairs'; sure, it's more seductive and interesting than mundane procedure, but is it actually good?

One of the things I liked was that the book allowed the reader to project their own preferences and political oppositions onto V, whilst constantly working to subtly undermine the easy interpretation. The film didn't allow for this; it was "stock" -- you knew exactly who V was and what he believed, which side he was on, and his emotional resonance with Evey. The V of the book was a ruthless question mark; you couldn't fit him easily into any of the characterisations offered. That's just one example; it happened throughout the film (the domestication of Inspector Finch etc.), and that dragged the politics into an inane swamp of totalitarianism versus liberal democracy. That's not even a fight; it's a pat and settled issue.

The other thing I disliked was the way that the film undermined the nuts-and-bolts nature of the graphic novel format itself. The section where V raids the television station in the book is absolutely brilliantly constructed; the panels are designed to impart information in a deliberately drip-feeding and atmospheric way, allowing the reader to piece together what's happening for themselves. The film turns it into the lobby scene from the Matrix; no mystery, no uncertainty, just 'Tom and Jerry'. It's pretty poor.

I think Moore's done better work (Watchmen, specifically - but then I've not read "From Hell"), but I think V is subtler and more interesting than most people give it credit for.

If anything, I got bored with a lot of the "dwelling on character" sections and was hoping something else would explode. Maybe it's because I watched it just after 'The Fantastic Four' that I found it pretty decent.

That was one of my favourite plot holes. I loved the, probably unintentional, implicit diss at Boston, because the only possible way of ret-conning or justifying that element is to consider that the aliens felt it was more of a priority to clear and fertilise vast areas of open farmland than it was to take care of the posh end Massachusetts ["They're not dangerous; that shit can wait until we've mopped-up these three farmers ..."].

I heard an interpretation that the final reconciliation takes place after they're dead, but it sounds like more post-hoc justification to me.

Nasty business. I'll take a look later on with a spare spam account and see what they need; maybe have a look at other options as well.

It's interesting that many of them have shut down (Yahoo was apparently running one until last year), and it can't have been for lack of popularity; the last time I entered the BBC one was five years ago, and half a million people had signed up. I wonder whether the PL have been throwing their legalistic weight around.

Don't worry. I'm crap at them, too -- always seem to swap strikers two days before the one I dropped scores a hat-trick and the goal-demon I switched-to dries up.

new Daredevil franchise.