This is one movie I just don't understand Alan Moore getting all pissy and Alan Moore-ish about. Of all his properties that have been turned into films, I thought this was the most true to the source.

I wonder if, because when it came out it was sort of being touted as being anti-Bush, when, in fact, it's just pro-anarchy or at least anti-totalitarianism.

Yeah, I think I may end up loving the V movie. I am toying with buying the DVD...but I will apparently have to make my own soundtrack album, as the full 1812, Street Fightin' Man, and EKAB are not on the official one.

We had to dodge a few flying anvils, but overall I was tolerant of the anvils because the movie retained the very stylized nature of the book (thanks Wachowskis!). However, I'm not sure what they have against the American Lung Association (making their logo the symbol of the fascists). More Christian Than Christian, I'm guessing.

Sitting in a cinema surrounded by (well-to-do, Westernised) Muslims, all of us watching this film about terrorism...that was distinctly odd.

I remember catching the end of FIGHT CLUB not long after 9/11, which wass freaky, but I think this may top the disturbingness of that.

I think it was a straw/camel's back thing.

I think it was a "Moore finally going completely off the deep end into crazy hermitdom" thing.

The V/Evey relationship was the big thing that didn't work for me in the movie. I didn't think they sold the romance very well, and so I had trouble putting the father/daughter stuff from the book out of my head, which meant that the "I fell in love with you!" scene was just kind of, "Wait, what? You did? When?"

But they win big points for making Evey an adult with a real personality and some agency, so it all evens out.

The romance angle was bizarre. I still stifle a giggle when she kisses the mask. And still I love.

I really need to watch V for V again. I've been wanting to give it a second viewing, but I liked it the first time through, and I agree with MM, re Mr. Moore's pissiness.

Jessica hit my problem with the movie on the head.

However, all things in perspective: Next to the unforgiveable bastardization of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the stupid tacked-on romance subplot of V for V was barely a blip. Also, for comics in general, I watched Superman Returns last night, which was so hokey and terrible and anvillicious that I longed for the relative subtlety of V for V.

(my memory on b might not be reliable, but I thought he said he hadn't and didn't want to see it).

Yeah, Moore saw a script and didn't like it, but he'd decided to have no part of any movie adaptations after getting sucked into a lawsuit over the LoEG movie.

Short version:

Moore felt that enough was enough and decided that if something was worth reacting to, "it was worth overreacting to." He stated "I'd have nothing to do with films anymore. If I owned the sole copyright, like with 'Voice Of The Fire,' there would not be a film. Anything else, where others owned copyrights, I'd insist on taking my name off future films. All of the money due to me would go to the artists involved. I'd divorce myself from the film process, the film industry and any adaptations. And I felt a sense of moral satisfaction."

There's a sidebar with his complaints about the V script as well, but I think he'd already decided he wanted no part of it before then. He did get pissy because the PR kept taking his name in vain.

the prison scene

Killed me. The back story of the "girl in the next cell" made me cry and cry.

That was one of the most powerful scenes in all of my comics experience.

GC, did you see that I figured out that whole scene was based on a real event during WWII that happened in the Nazi occupied Channel Islands?

Yep. There was a woman named Claude Cahun who was involved with the Surrealists in Paris. And her story is basically the story of Valerie though hers is actually more interesting.

But like Moore's character she was a lesbian who lived with her lover, and was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned and threatened with death many times over and then released suddenly without much reason.

But cooler still is that she and her lover carried out a propaganda war against the Nazis during their occupation (which is why she was arrested). They'd slip their notes into the pockets of German soldiers telling them to reject Fascism and reclaim their humanity.

I'm certain Moore used her as the basis for that story. She wrote her entire story down on a piece of toilet paper when she felt she was going to be executed - exactly as in the comic.

1940-1944 - Invasion of Jersey by the Germans (1 July 1940). From the arrival of the occupation, they opt for a "resistance active". For four years she conducted, without cease, with the complicity of Suzanne, activities of counter-propaganda and of demoralisation towards the occupying troops. Production of tracts, subversion of pro-Nazi magazines, photomontages. In March 1943 she underwent her first interrogation. On 25 July 1944 Claude and Suzanne are arrested by the Gestapo and put in military prison. Attempt at suicide. "La Rocquaise" is largely requisitionned, ransacked (furniture removed, libraries dispersed, archives - notably photographic - partly destroyed). On 16 November 1944 they are condemned to death by the German court martial.

1945 - They benefit, in February 1945, from a stay of execution of the sentence. A transfer to Germany is envisaged... But they must wait for surrender, 8 May 1945, to be freed from the St Helier prison... In July, Claude re-establishes contact with André Breton, who is still in New York. She takes to renewing her friends "d'avant-gueree" [pre-war]. She writes long letters, which are variations on her experience during these four years, to Jean Legrand, André Breton, Gaston Ferdière, Jacques B. Brunius, Henri Michaux... But, very much tried by her imprisonment, her health is profoundly altered.

Wow. How horribly sad. And people wonder why I was paranoid about registering as domestic partners. They can round you up!