If you’ve seen the movie and want to write a 1000 word review for the Prometheus, let’s talk. I think it will be a while before I make it to the movies to see this one, unless I catch a midnight showing some Friday or Saturday a few weeks after the buzz has died down and the place isn’t too packed. In the meantime, I’ve caught a couple of 1/2 hour TV shows about the movie, and looks like Alan Moore is correct about it no longer being his story.
Can’t say he’s the only writer abused by Hollywood this way. A recent essay by Christopher Buckley in Time magazine’s latest edition underscores the hassles of making movies, especially for writers whose works are adapted, or even just optioned. After you’ve read this, check out www.repairmanjack.com for F. Paul Wilson’s ongoing sagas about getting a Repairman Jack movie made, and The Touch as a TV show. Not very encouraging.
It is Alan Moore’s story. Yes, there have been changes — most film adaptations from books, even graphic novels, require changes for…well…cinematic reasons. But Moore’s story is absolutely intact, the film spot-on. Not since last spring’s Sin City movie have I seen as faithful a translation from comic to movie.
I can understand changes for cinematic reasons. However, the alliterative introduction? The multitudes of V’s walking toward the camera?
Sin City was faithful down to tone and color, and even the co-director. It’s a unique movie/comic symbiosis in this regard.
Whether one agrees that the movie version of V for Vendetta is Alan Moore’s story depends upon what one thinks that story is. I liked the hardcore anti-state message, but cutting the foundation from it — omitting the anarchist ideas — made it much less effective than it could have been. I think Moore views that element as an integral part of the story, which is why he’s not associated with the movie.
Scott Bieser has an interesting take on the movie too.