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V for Vendetta · This Film is Lit

• 0:00
  Speaker A: I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish except one. An inch. It's small and it's fragile, and it's the only thing in the world that's worth having. We must never lose it or sell it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I don't know who you are. Whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you. I will never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. And that one day people have roses again. It's V for Vendetta and this film is lit hello and welcome back to this Film is Lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's a full episode. We do not have a Guess who this week because it's a graphic novel and I mean, I guess I could just show you pictures, but it doesn't really have kind of the same audio appeal for our listeners, so I'm not going to do that. But we do have every other one of our segments, so we're going to get right into it with. Let me sum up. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. If you have not read or watched V for Vendetta, here is a brief summary of the film, specifically sourced from Wikipedia.
• 1:29
  Speaker B: In the near future, Britain is ruled by the Norse Fire Political Party, a fascist and totalitarian regime led by High Chancellor Adam Sutler, which controls the populace through propaganda and imprisons or executes those deemed undesirable, including immigrants, homosexuals and people of alternative religions. Evie Hammond is the daughter of parents who became activists after her brother perished in the St. Mary's School terrorist attack 14 years earlier. They were detained and later died in prison when she was 12 years old. One evening, a Guy Fawkes masked vigilante, V, rescues her from assault by the secret police known as the Fingermen and brings her to witness his destruction of the Old Bailey via bombs. The following morning on the 5th of November, V hijacks the state run television network to address the nation, claiming credit for the attack and encouraging the populace to resist Norsefire by joining him outside the Houses of Parliament on Guy Fawkes Night. In one year's time, Evie is knocked unconscious while aiding V's escape and he takes her with him to avoid her arrest and likely execution. V kills Norsefire propagandist Louis Prothero, Dr. Delia Surridge, and with Evie's Assistance. Anthony Lilliman, the Bishop of London, pedophile and corrupt priest from Larkhill, whom V gets to by using Evie. Evie flees after betraying V, hoping to be forgiven by Norsefire. Assigned to capture V, Chief Inspector Eric Finch uses Surridge's journal and information from former covert operative William Rookwood. Actually V in disguise, discovering that two decades earlier Surridge led biological weapon research and human experimentation at the Larkhild detention facility on behalf of NorseFire, creating the St. Mary's virus. Although dozens of political prisoners died during experimentation, an amnesiac and cell 5 developed mutated immunities and disfigurements as well as physical enhancements and eventually destroyed Larkhill. During his escape, Peter Creedy, head of the secret police faked a terrorist attack by releasing the virus at targets including St. Mary's and used the resulting public fear to embed Norsefire in power. Simultaneously, the company manufacturing the cure enriched party members such as Prothero and Lilliman. Evie takes shelter with her former boss, talk show host Gordon Dietrich, who shows her his collection of illegal materials such as subversive paintings, an antique Quran and homoerotic photographs. Emboldened by Evie and V, he satirizes Sutler on his show, leading to his and Evie's arrest and his eventual execution. Evie takes solace in a note hidden in her cell written by Valerie Page, a woman imprisoned in the cell next to Vee's, detailing her hopes despite her impending death. Tortured and facing her own execution, Evie refuses to submit to her captors and is released, finding herself in V's lair. Vee had intercepted Evie before Creedy's men and subjected her to false imprisonment and gaslighting so she could learn to live without fear. Although initially angry at V, Evey realizes that he had been avenging Valerie and the other Larkhill victims and promises to return to see him before the 5th of November. To kill the otherwise unreachable high chancellor. V convinces Creedy to betray Sutler and replace him in exchange for V's surrender. As 5 November approaches, V has hundreds of thousands of Guy Fawkes masks distributed across the nation, leading to a rise in masked, anonymous chaos and eventually riots. After the secret police kill a young masked girl, V shares a dance with Evie before leading her to the shuttered London Underground he restored over the previous decade. Not intending to survive the night, V bequeaths the decision to start the explosive filled train to Evie. Although she pleads that he abandon his crusade and leave with her, he refuses. Creedy meets Vee and executes Sutler before demanding V unmask. Despite being shot and heavily injured, V kills Creedy and his men, stating that the idea he represents is more important than his identity. V returns to Evie, dying in her arms after admitting he loves her. And Finch finds her placing Vee's body aboard the train, but allows her to start it after she affirms that the people need hope. With Sutler and Creedy dead, the military forces in London stand down as countless citizens dressed as V descend on Parliament and witness its destruction. Finch asks for V's true identity, to which Evie replies, he was all of us.
• 6:31
  Speaker A: All right, that is a summary of the film. As I said, we do not have a guess who this week, but we do have a lot of questions in case we didn't mention it or I didn't mention it at the top, but we said it in the prequel. This is a Switch episode. I read this one. Katie did not. So she will be asking the questions this week. So let's get into them in. Was that in the book? Gaston?
• 6:54
  Speaker B: May I have my book, please?
• 6:55
  Speaker A: How can you read this? There's no pictures.
• 6:58
  Speaker B: Well, some people use their imagination. So this movie starts out well. It starts out with kind of like some background information on Guy Fawkes, but then.
• 7:08
  Speaker A: Which is not in the book.
• 7:09
  Speaker B: The story proper starts out with Evie getting ready and we get what's his name Doing the talk show segment.
• 7:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, Prothero is the news. Yeah, basically.
• 7:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, the news. Basically, the propaganda. And so we find out a little bit of background information about this world and I want to know if the kind of setup for that is the same. They talk about, like, war and plague that basically wiped out America and Britain is now run by like, crazy, crazy conservative fascists and doesn't want to help them.
• 7:47
  Speaker A: So kind of, in fact, more so in the book. In the novel, there was a nuclear war and the rest of the world, as far as they know, is essentially gone. In terms of, like, organized governments, at least there may be people around, but like Britain, as far as they know, I think. Well, as far as is mentioned, they say, like, the. America's basically gone. I think they say that, like, most of Africa is gone. I can't remember if they mentioned any specific, like, other governments existing. I'm sure some do somewhere, but for whatever reason, and I can't remember why I think it is mentioned in the book. England ended up being mostly untouched by the nuclear war, but most of the rest of the world's superpowers are gone and it's just them. And so that leaves the world in the book a bit more dystopian, post apocalyptic than it kind of appears in the film. Obviously, it is kind of mid apocalypse in the film. And the vibe I got in the book is that it's a little more like post apocalypse the world of. So the movie's version, I think, is kind of compelling because it feels a bit more familiar than what we get in the book. It's a bit more kind of like, again, the apocalypse is in progress in the book as opposed to like, or in the film as opposed to like, done, and we're in the, like, post apocalyptic rebuild section. It's a subtle difference. We'll touch on this a bit more later when we discuss my feelings on one of the big changes about, like, kind of the. The world. And one of the core themes of the book versus the movie. But generally speaking, it's very similar. There is no real other governments that are doing anything. And the result of it is that England is like an isolationist nation now. And it's, like, kind of completely on its own, essentially.
• 9:31
  Speaker B: So, like I said, Evie's getting ready for something, and then she ends up going out. She leaves her apartment right as we're hearing, like, a curfew being announced. So she's out, and she bumps into these guys who end up being the secret police, the Fingermen, which I'll explain later. And they basically start to assault her. And then in comes V of our caped crusader. Caped crusader? Is any of that from the book?
• 10:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. So the book opens up pretty much exactly the same. The movie nails this down to both Evie and V getting ready. Like, we cut back and forth between V suiting up and Evie, like, getting dressed and putting on makeup, kind of paralleling the costumes that they're both putting on. There's one main difference is that in the movie, Evie, we find out later, is going to meet Gordon for, like, a date. Basically, yeah. In the book, she is going out to try to pick up a john for the first time because she has no money, she's trying to prostitute, and she clumsily propositions one of the people. That ends up being a copy. And then from there, it basically plays out the same, where they're like, we're gonna do whatever we want kind of thing, and basically implying they're gonna rape and kill her. Another little detail. She's stated to be 16 in the book when the book starts. The book takes place over the course of, like, two years. I can't remember exactly. A little bit longer than the movie does. They aged her up for obvious reasons, I think, in the film. But, yeah, basically the same. I think this is slightly better in the book scene only because it helps set up the world a little bit, in my opinion, which is noticeably different than the film in ways that I prefer and I will talk about later. But it is very similar in general. One specific moment from this opening fight scene that I really prefer that it's in the book and doesn't make it into the movie is that at one point, when he drops off the roof and starts attacking, fighting all these cops in the alleyway, one of the cops grabs his arm and pulls it, and it's a fake hand, and it pulls off.
• 11:40
  Speaker B: What?
• 11:40
  Speaker A: And the guy's like, what? And he's just standing there holding it. And then V starts going around and killing everybody else. And then after he kills everybody else, the hand the guy's holding, like, explodes and vaporizes the cop. And it's like a trick hand that is also a bomb, which I thought was very cool and funny, and I'm surprised they didn't do that in the movie. Maybe they thought it was too cheesy. I don't know. But I thought it was cool.
• 12:03
  Speaker B: After the Fingermen are dispatched, V introduces himself to Evie and monologues in almost entirely V words. Is that from the book?
• 12:16
  Speaker A: No. So I went back and checked this, because I actually thought it was. I realized that I thought it was. He does not introduce himself. When she asks, like, who he is, that's his introduction. He does not introduce himself with an incredibly long string of alliterations. But I will say that it does kind of fit, at least relatively, in with his generally kind of verbose and overly eloquent style of speaking from the book. He speaks a lot in, like, quoting from Shakespeare. And he speaks in riddles a lot and doesn't really. He does occasionally speak very plainly and straightforwardly, but a lot of the times when he talks, it is this ridiculously verbose, almost poetic style of speaking, theatrical style of speaking. So I thought that fit in his character, even though it doesn't really come from the book. Like, the alliteration part specifically doesn't come from the book.
• 13:09
  Speaker B: So then he takes Evie up to witness him blowing up the statue. The Jeffrey.
• 13:17
  Speaker A: She actually asked this before. After he gives that whole long introduction. When he finishes, she says this line.
• 13:25
  Speaker B: Okay, so he gives this whole long introduction. And then Evie says, are you, like, a crazy person?
• 13:31
  Speaker A: Yes. That line is not in the book. And I think it's a great line that is a moment I had as better in the movie, particularly paired with V's response, which is she says, are you like, a crazy person? And his response is, I'm very sure they will say so. Which I thought was great. It kind of gets to the core of the idea. Just one of the things the book and the movie are both exploring is the thing we talked about and I think in the last episode, about how, you know, some people are seen as terrorists versus freedom fighters versus, oh, he was a crazy person. Like, he knows that what he's doing and the result of his actions, he will be seen as a crazy person by a lot of people. And so, yeah, I like that line. And again, especially in response to his big, ridiculous intro, because it is so over the top. And it actually does kind of. There's a scene that doesn't make it into the book or into the film. At the end when Evie is talking to him, when he shows her the train before he goes for the big final thing, he's speaking in riddles the whole time. And Evie is, like, just screaming at him like, please, just talk like a normal person. I guess it's not really same, but it doesn't remind me of that of, like. It's like a meta awareness of the fact that, like, he sounds insane.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:49
  Speaker A: And that, like, us as listeners of viewers, readers or whatever are like, this man seems weird. And it's kind of. I liked it that it kind of acknowledges that.
• 15:01
  Speaker B: Okay, so fast forward. I have another question about the statue that he blows up later. But my next question in this section has to do with the next day. So Evie goes to work. She works at the news station. And we're kind of like going around the station, being introduced to it, and we overhear somebody say, our job is to report the news, not fabricate it. That's the government's job. Is that from the book?
• 15:33
  Speaker A: That line is not in the book. At least not that I could find. But it's. It's very much in line with the kind of stuff they talk about in the book when we see the mouth, which is what the propaganda arm is called. And I'll get to that later. But the. Yeah, it is very much in line with the fact that the people who are working for the propaganda arm know that they're making propaganda and they talk about it. I thought it was maybe a little too on the nose for some of the writing and the book. I will say the book fluctuates back and forth between being very kind of prosaic and I don't say hard to grasp because it's not really hard to grasp, but, like, it bounces back and forth between making its point very sort of subtly and in a very nuanced show, don't tell kind of way. Even when it is telling, it's not doing it super, like, beating you over the head with it. But then other times in the book, it does just have moments where V kind of just explicitly says the point of what we're talking about. So it's not, like, completely out of line with the book. But again, it's not in the book, but it fits good enough. I didn't have an issue with it. I guess I'll say I don't think it's better in the book or the movie, but it's not wildly out of place.
• 16:46
  Speaker B: So we're at the news station and then V also shows up there. He kind of hijacks the newscast and addresses the nation. And he's talking about how the country fell to this fascistic political party. And he says, if you're looking for the guilty, you only need look into a mirror. Is that from the book?
• 17:15
  Speaker A: I could not find that exact line. I went back and went through the whole thing again. I don't have a digital copy. I just. So I scrubbed through as much. It's definitely not in at least that I could see the scene where he does the TV broadcast. But it is absolutely in line with his message to the people of England during that broadcast. In his opinion, they are the ones who let fascism rise. I actually think this kind of runs a bit contrary to the tweaks the film makes to the overall story. Not so much so that it doesn't work, but the book is very, very clear that everyone is complicit in the fascism that has arisen. And we'll talk more about this later. It's one of the biggest changes, in my opinion, to the film, and maybe one of my biggest critiques, but we'll get more to that later. But no, that line, again, not in the book, but it's very much in line with he. He basically, essentially says the exact same thing, just not in the exact same words.
• 18:09
  Speaker B: So then after he does his broadcast, the police come in and there's, like, fog everywhere. And we come to find out that he has put his mask onto everyone at the news station to create confusion as he's escaping. Is that from the book?
• 18:30
  Speaker A: So this is inspired by a scene in the book when he does break into the news station. He does escape by putting a mask and his costume on another person, but it's only one person. The movie making this change doesn't really affect it to me one way or the other in terms of being better. It leads to a pretty memorable scene in the film where they're all, like, coming out of the smoky studio, like, in the masks and stuff. It makes for, like, kind of a cool visual. I don't think the book scene needs it because they walk in and we just see one of them and he gets, like, shot and killed immediately. And we don't know as a reader necessarily if that was actually him or not. I assumed it wasn't when I was reading, but because we're only like three quarters of the way through the book. But you don't know for sure because Alan. It's Alan Watt. Like, it's not out of the question that he could kill off V in that moment, but it. So it's very similar. Again, V does disguise another person as himself. He just doesn't do a bunch of them. The main issue, I guess I have in the movie is that how. Where did all those costumes and masks come from? Because he doesn't seem to be carrying them.
• 19:33
  Speaker B: When he comes, we see the masks come in.
• 19:35
  Speaker A: Oh, does he?
• 19:35
  Speaker B: When Evie is pushing around, like, they get a delivery of boxes and she pushes them into the car enough. I miss them or something. So we know where the masks came from, at least.
• 19:47
  Speaker A: Well, that's fair. That's fair. I didn't think the movie. And it wasn't really a big issue, even if the movie didn't explain, like, who cares? But I was just. But if the movie explains it, kudos. Fair enough. Again, either way, I think it's fine. The movie scene's memorable. The book scene works fine as is. Don't really care which one is, you know. But yeah, it's inspired by a scene from the book.
• 20:05
  Speaker B: So speaking of Evie, she actually helps V escape from the news station and she ends up getting knocked out. And then he takes her with him and she wakes up in his underground hideout where she finds that he has a stockpile of books and art and all of this stuff that has been outlawed by the fascists, by the Ministry of Objectionable Materials, which is just about the most British thing you could have possibly called that.
• 20:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 20:42
  Speaker B: Is that from the book?
• 20:44
  Speaker A: Yes, pretty much. So the movie pretty much nails the Shadow Gallery, which is. I think they say it in the movie at some point, but that is the name of his hideout, of his lair is the Shadow Gallery. I think it's pretty Spot on. It could be a bit more shadowy. Cause, like, in the book, it all kind of falls into darkness in a way that it doesn't in the film because it's just like a stone, like, room. But I mean, it's. It's like fairly similar. There's like art and books in a jukebox and it's. It's. It's similar. Ish. Like, it's. You know, it's close enough. I would say they nailed it. And he does have, like a bunch of art and books and all kinds of stuff that have been outlawed or. And, you know, gotten rid of.
• 21:25
  Speaker B: I don't even remember what the context of him saying this line was. Now it's. He's talking. But, you know, I had to ask about this line because this is the line that everybody knows from this movie.
• 21:37
  Speaker A: Oh, you think?
• 21:39
  Speaker B: I mean, it was the one line that I knew from this movie.
• 21:42
  Speaker A: Definitely up there among the top. There's a lot of memorable lines in this movie. To be fair, it's a very quotable movie. But this is definitely. It's definitely up there.
• 21:49
  Speaker B: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
• 21:54
  Speaker A: So this is fascinating. I went through the book. I couldn't find it. Everything I searched on the Internet kept insisting that it was in not just the movie, but the graphic novel. I could not. I looked everywhere. I could not find it. I was doing Google image searches of, like, the panels and like, that quote, V for Vendetta graphic novel panel, like, trying to find, like, the actual. Couldn't find anything. The AI was insisting that, no, it's in the graphic novel. It comes from the graphic novel. Like the stupid AI response Google gives you. Yeah, but I think that's legit. Think that might just be a thing that it's wrong, like, is just wrong about if it's not. If somebody else knows. I. Again, I didn't go page by page through the entire thing, but I went through all the places where I thought it could potentially feasibly be, and I couldn't find it. And I couldn't find anything confirming it on the Internet that it comes from the book. So I think it might be a movie edition that has kind of seeped into, like, the Google searches just telling you it's in the book, even though it's not. It's definitely not from the scene where he broadcasts his message to the people, which obviously, I don't know why I thought that might be from there, because it doesn't match up with this. Because I was like, well, maybe that's from the scene where he's talking through the broadcast or something like that. Maybe it's there. It's definitely not in there in the book, because I looked at that. And also in the book, he does that whole. The broadcast in the style of an employee performance review, which is actually fun. When he's addressing the people, he's basically talking as if he's their boss doing, like, their employee review. And they're, like, doing a bad job because they've let fascism take over, essentially. I went back reread it. It's not from that scene. I couldn't find it anywhere else. So I don't think it's in the book. But if somebody else has read this more. I've read this one time, so it's possible I just missed it, but I didn't remember it from the book, so I don't think it is.
• 23:51
  Speaker B: Right. So. So Evie's staying in V's lair, and they. They're kind of like becoming friends, getting to know each other. At one point, he's watching a movie and invites her to come watch it with him. And he says it's his favorite movie. It's the Count of Monte Cristo. It's the Count of Monte Cristo, which is a touch on the nose.
• 24:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's not in the book. Again, from my memory, at least. Them watching it, I definitely don't remember. There may be, like, a poster for it at some point in a panel. Because he has a lot of, like, movie posters and stuff, like, on the walls that you see kind of in the background of some of the panels. I don't notice. I don't remember it from the book. He does love music and movies and all that kind of stuff. He's a very cultured. Like, he loves all of this art that he has saved and stolen and that sort of thing. Or. Well, he explicitly says he didn't steal it, but because it was. Whatever the line he says in the movie, like, it's not stolen because they didn't. It's not theirs to begin with or something like that. But I do not remember the Count of Monte Cristo being mentioned. And I agree, it is a little. A little on the.
• 24:57
  Speaker B: A wee bit. So moving forward. V Murders Prothero. And they cover it up because they don't want people to know that he was murdered. And they. They announce on the news that it was like a. He died peacefully or something like that. Yeah. And Evie immediately knows that that's a lie because she Knows the news reporter and she knows that her tell is that she blinks a lot when she's lying on air. Is that from the book?
• 25:25
  Speaker A: I don't remember this from the film or the book. I don't remember this scene. I must have been writing a note or something. I don't think it's from the book specifically. Cause Evie does not work for the news station in the book. Or at least it's not. If she does, we never see her there. I can't remember what she says she did at the very beginning before she goes out to try being a prostitute. But she does not work for the news. So, no, I would say that it's not from the book, if I had to guess.
• 25:54
  Speaker B: Okay, so then the next person on V's hit list is the Bishop, whose name I don't remember.
• 26:05
  Speaker A: Lilliman.
• 26:06
  Speaker B: Lilliman, yeah. And he is also a pedophile. And they. They get to him by having Evie pose as a teenager child there for.
• 26:24
  Speaker A: For him to, like, from a service where he purchases.
• 26:27
  Speaker B: Where he purchases women or not women.
• 26:29
  Speaker A: Children.
• 26:30
  Speaker B: Children. So 1. Is that from the book? But then also in that scene in the movie, Evie attempts to betray V and, like, confesses that he's on his way to kill the Bishop, but the Bishop doesn't believe her. Is that from the book also?
• 26:49
  Speaker A: Overall, the scene is very, very similar in a lot of ways. Almost identical down to the outfit, the costume that Evie is wearing. Except Evie does not try to betray V in the book. I thought this was a fine thing that helps move the plot along in the film because it kind of cuts some of the middle part of the first book, which is the first act, essentially in the book. She doesn't try to do that. V shows up, kills him, they go away. They leave eventually later. So what happens in the movie is that happens and then when V shows up, she runs away and disappears. And then she goes and runs to Gordon's and that she stays with Gordon in the book, she stays with him because she doesn't try to do that. And then when they get back after he killed her, they get back to the Shadow Gallery. Some time passes. I don't remember exactly what all happens, but have a conversation where she's trying to figure out who V is. And she asks him. Well, she asks, hey, why haven't you tried? I've been here for a long time. Why hasn't anything romantic arisen between us? Or why haven't you not tried to come onto me or anything? And she's like, maybe you're gay. Or maybe she says, are you my dad? Basically, because she knows her dad got taken to a camp when she was 12, assumed dead, but she doesn't know for sure. And she kind of has this weird, like, sneaking suspicion that maybe V is actually her dad. And so she asks him that. And then after he asks, she asks him that. He's like. He blindfolds her and he leads her somewhere. He's like, I have a surprise for you. And he takes her out into the middle of the street and he just leaves her there. He says, I'm not your father. And then he just leaves her there. And it's very upsetting to her. So the whole thing with that is he does that in the book in order. Because her attachment to her desire for one for why aren't you coming on to me? But then also her desire for a father figure still to him kind of proves that she's still not ready for the next stage of this.
• 28:54
  Speaker B: Of being the revolution.
• 28:56
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And that she still has these kind of more earthly. I don't know, earthly attachments is the right phrase, but these kind of more. These other motivations that aren't as important as what he views. And so he thinks she's not ready. So he leaves her out to kind of, like, go off on her own for a while longer. And then that's how she ends up with Gordon, which we'll get to Gordon more later in just a second. But in the movie, they just have her run away. And that kind of truncates all of that. I think it's fine. I think it. That I like the scene where he leaves her. I think it's important, kind of in its own way. I think what the movie does works perfectly well. I also think it works with her character of not really being sure if she's all in. It kind of still does the same thing of her, like, not really being ready for this. It just does it in a slightly different way that I think. I think works fine and also saves some time. So not in the book, though. I do have a better in the book note about this scene, which is incredible because a lot of the scene is very much, very, very, very similar. Better in the book moment, though, is that when V kills the priest in the movie, he just. I think he stabs him or something. Like, we don't even see it.
• 30:00
  Speaker B: But I don't think we do.
• 30:01
  Speaker A: We don't in the film. Either we get it retold or in the book, we get it retold to Us through Finch. Finch is, like, investigating, and he, likes, kind of tells us what happened. And the book does the same thing. But V kills the priest in the book by forcing him to take a poisoned communion wafer. But before he does that, he, like, asks the priest and makes him explain the process of transubstantiation. And he's like, so how does. What is transubstantiation? He's like. And the priest is just, like, freaking out and just telling him whatever he wants to hear. And he's like, so that means that whatever the wafer is now, it will become the body of Christ when you consume it, right? And he goes, yeah, it'll transform, whatever. And then they come in and he's dead, laying on the ground. And they explain that it was a poison communion wafer. And as Finch is talking us through what happens, he goes, and you know what? When it reached his abdomen, it was still cyanide, which I thought was great.
• 30:55
  Speaker B: That's pretty good.
• 30:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, I understand. I think they took that out just not to offend a bunch of Catholics. I think is why that does not make it into the film.
• 31:03
  Speaker B: Should have left it in.
• 31:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 31:06
  Speaker B: So you mentioned Gordon, and that is. Well, in the movie, it's Evie. Yeah.
• 31:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 31:13
  Speaker B: Evie's.
• 31:14
  Speaker A: He's the talk show host.
• 31:15
  Speaker B: The talk show host? Yeah. So like, a boss.
• 31:19
  Speaker A: A boss. Coworker kind of deal. Yeah.
• 31:22
  Speaker B: I don't know if he's supposed to be, like, directly her boss in the movie. I guess it doesn't really matter, but. So when she runs away from V and the bishop, she goes to Gordon's house to hide out there, and he, like, takes her in right away and ends up showing her that he also has a stockpile of outlawed stuff and tells her that he is actually secretly gay.
• 31:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 31:50
  Speaker B: Is any of that from the book?
• 31:52
  Speaker A: So Gordon is significantly expanded upon in the film, and I actually liked all of this quite a bit. In the book, he's literally just a guy that finds Evie on the street after V abandons her and that she then stays with. They do not know each other before that, and ultimately she ends up. They end up in a relationship in the book, like, he's not gay. He's just a guy. She stays with him for, like, several months, and they kind of slowly start a relationship. He does ultimately die, but we'll get to that here in a little bit. He is killed, but not remotely. In the same way. He doesn't have a secret stockpile of, you know, illegal stuff or anything. He just. He gets killed because of, like, some gangsters that he owed money to or something. Basically, I think it's actually a character that's not in the movie, but somebody related to Creedy. Creedy works with some gangsters on the side and one of those gangsters Gordon owes money to or something and they show up and they kill him after she has been living with him and has finally kind of gotten back to a normal life. But again, more on that later. But, no, none of that comes from the book. And it's all stuff that I like. I like kind of fleshing out Gordon's character and making him not kind of a very different character than he was in the book.
• 33:04
  Speaker B: So then the last. The last person on V's hit list in this section is Dr. Suraj or Delia.
• 33:16
  Speaker A: Dr. Or something like that. Yeah.
• 33:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. Who has been working as, like, a.
• 33:22
  Speaker A: Coroner, which is the same in the book.
• 33:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. But we come to find out that she was, like, the scientist in charge of the.
• 33:31
  Speaker A: She was the Mengele of Larkhill, essentially.
• 33:35
  Speaker B: But so he goes to kill her and she's also the only one who is, like, remotely remorseful for what she's done. And so they have a conversation and she says something about, it wasn't what I hoped to do. And V says, I've not.
• 33:57
  Speaker A: Like, the result of her experiment wasn't.
• 33:59
  Speaker B: What I hope was not what I hoped to do. And he responds, I've not come for what you hoped to do. I've come for what you did. Is that from the book?
• 34:08
  Speaker A: Not in the book. But I think it's another great line that feels right in place not only in the story but in the style of a lot of the stuff in the book and kind of the just devastating lines that the book doles out, you know, one after the other. V has little care for desires or intentions. He's a man of consequences and results and kind of what you do and your actions and how the consequences they wreak or rot. Reek. That's not the right word. The consequences they have. Yeah. Again, lion's not in the book. Or at least it's not in that scene because I reread that whole scene, and it's not in that scene. I don't think it's anywhere else. But, again, totally right in line. And it's better in the movie moment for me.
• 34:51
  Speaker B: Okay. Another exchange that they have in this scene that I really liked. She says to him, is it meaningless to apologize? And he responds, never.
• 35:02
  Speaker A: Not in the book. Another line, not in the book, but is also a great Line. The spirit of this. This scene is very, very similar. And a whole lot of the scene between him and the doctor while she's laying in bed, it. Like, she is laying in bed. It plays out essentially identically. Just some of the dialogue is tweaked, some of it's identical. That line is not in the book. One of the lines that the movie nailed that I really like is that when he arrives, she wakes up and she's like, it's you, isn't it? You've come to kill me. Thank God. And that line is. She says the same thing in the book or in the film. One thing that I did like in the book that doesn't make it into the movie, that this line is kind of in place of, essentially, because I believe that's the last line they exchange with each other before she dies, is that she asked to see his face again. Like, as she's laying there, like, the last thing she says is, can I see your face? And he pulls his mask up and shows her. And I think it's the only person in the whole book that sees his face, I think, from my memory, and shows her. And she says, you're beautiful, or it's beautiful, or something like that. And I thought this contrast was like a nice sort of end point and full circle moment for a thing that actually hadn't happened in the book yet. Because we get her backstory and all the stuff in Larkhill after we see her die, which we do the same thing in the movie, because then he gets her. The Finch gets her journal and is going through it. But in the journal, in the book, when she's talking about all these people that she's doing this experiments on, she's talking about how hideous and weak and pathetic they all are and how she doesn't even really see them as human because they don't fight back. They don't. Like, they're just pathetic. And I think having it kind of come full circle where she. We get back to this point, and when she sees him again, she's like, you're beautiful. I don't know. I thought it kind of. It shows. I think it nails that of all the people on his shit list, that she's the only one that is actually remorseful. And so V gives her a peaceful and painless death, which nobody else in the book gets. And it's the same in the film. In the book is that, yeah, she's the one who you can tell is actually remorseful, actually. You know, she's not lying when she says, you know, that wasn't kind of my intentions. I was trying to help people, that sort of thing. But she did horrible shit. And again, when we have her journal, she talks about how she didn't see them as people. Like, it's. She was fully into the fascist nightmare shit, but she has pulled herself out of it. It's also an interesting note that I don't think I'll. I have a note anywhere else about that I want to mention one of the other. Only other people who work for the fascist government. So her and then Finch. Finch in the book is the only other character kind of. Those two are like, the two characters that get kind of a sympathetic view from. More like from the author. Like, as an audience, I think we're supposed to view both of them at least somewhat sympathetically or at least appreciate that they're these two characters that are not as evil and bad as the system they're a part of, basically. And there's a little detail in the book, we find out that they were actually sleeping together. Like, they were together, like, briefly. It's not really. It doesn't really matter, and it doesn't make it in the movie at all. But at some point in the book, somebody gives Finch shit about her dying or something because he liked this guy. I think it might be Creedy or somebody, because he knows they kind of, like, had a thing, and Finch, like, beats the shit out of him and gets suspended or whatever. But anyways, yeah, not in the book, but. Another great line.
• 38:39
  Speaker B: So you mentioned that we get this whole backstory after she dies, because we get it via her journals as Finch is going through them, and we find out that they were doing this, like, experimentation on these political prisoners, and that V was the result of this, like, medical experimentation. Is all of that from the book?
• 39:04
  Speaker A: Yes. That backstory is basically identical. It's told identically through the journal. We see a lot of the very same, like, panels and shots. The only thing that the movie leaves out, and I assume Just for Time, is how V broke out of prison. Cause in the movie, like, one day, there's just. It seems to have exploded, and he's, like, standing in the fire. And they never explain how that happened. This is a better in the book moment. Again, I understand why they cut it out. Just for people who haven't read the book. What actually happened there is that V is the only one who survives these experiments. Everybody else has slowly died, but he is, like, kind of gone insane and has no memory of his past life. And he talks and he's lost his mind, but he's the only one that survived. And they're like. So they keep him around and they keep, you know, studying him and stuff like that. But they end up letting him start to garden because I don't remember exactly why, but they end up letting him garden. And he ends up being, like, a really good gardener. And he's growing all this food that he's like. And I guess they let him do it because he's good at it. And then they're, like, eating it. Like the. Like, Prothero, who was the commander of the commandant or whatever, of the camp. There's, like, scenes of him, like, having these big tables full of food because V is able to grow this stuff in the garden. And as he's. While he's gardening, he's slowly. He's requesting more and more fertilizer and more and more of these certain chemicals to do certain things. And they do not realize what he's doing. And because he's crazy, he has it all spread out all over his cell in these weird patterns and piles and stuff. And they're like, whatever, you're crazy. They just think he's lost his mind. But he just made a giant fertilizer bomb kind of thing and, like, napalm and one day blows it up and blows up the prison and catches himself on fire. And that's how he gets all the burns. But he's the one who did it using, like, making, like, a fertilizer bomb, which we. Again, we see in the train at the end of the movie. He has, like, things of fertilizer and stuff. Yeah, that is. Yeah, that's how he breaks out of the prison. The movie doesn't mention it, but it's not really important. But now you know.
• 41:10
  Speaker B: So moving forward, we pop back to Evie and I have question about the stuff that happens with Gordon and my other section. But Gordon gets taken by the secret police. And as far as we are to understand, they also capture Evie and they throw her in jail. And we see them shave her head in this scene. Do they also shave her head in the book?
• 41:41
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that exact scene. She's sitting there. When they process her, they shave all the prisoners heads. We see it also with the people at Larkhill. They all get their heads shaved when they go in.
• 41:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. So then there's this big, long sequence where she's in prison and one day in her cell, in a little hole in the wall she finds this note from this woman named Valerie who was held there previously. And it, like, details Valerie's entire backstory, and we find out that she was arrested for being gay.
• 42:15
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 42:15
  Speaker B: Is all of that from the book?
• 42:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. And this is, like, completely spot on. Maybe the most nailed that is in this movie and of maybe any movie we've done. I also thought maybe the best part of the movie, I found it incredibly moving and well done. Not that a lot of the movie wasn't good, but I thought this part in particular really worked well. At least it did for me. Maybe it worked well because I knew it already, but I thought it captured the comic wonderfully, including a lot of the panels. The shots in the movie are just direct rips of the panels from the comic when we're going back through that backstory. And it also ends with exactly the same. Her last note ends with exactly the same line. The one I read at the beginning of the episode. The one about every inch of me shall perish except one. An inch. It's small, it's fragile, and it's the only thing in the world that's worth having. All that. And then the line that always gets me, which I didn't read in the beginning, is that, yeah, it's strange my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years, I had roses and apologized to nobody, which that line makes it into the movie. And I love that line. And, yeah, I just. Again, I couldn't get over how well, I thought they did. This particular moment in the film, kind.
• 43:30
  Speaker B: Of moving off from that. This whole time that Evie has been imprisoned, they've been trying to get her to give them information on V, and she won't do it. And finally they tell her that this is, like, her last chance, and if she doesn't give them the information that they want, they're going to take her behind the chemical sheds and execute her. And they give her that chance, and she says, thank you, but I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds. Is that from the book?
• 44:02
  Speaker A: Word for word.
• 44:03
  Speaker B: And then, in a moment that truly threw me for a loop watching this movie, we find out that this is.
• 44:11
  Speaker A: The only thing I remembered from the movie, by the way, was that this twist from when I saw it the first time when it came out in theaters.
• 44:17
  Speaker B: So we find out that the entire thing was fake, and she was never imprisoned by the government, but actually V faked the entire thing.
• 44:27
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 44:28
  Speaker B: Is that from the book?
• 44:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. So this all plays out exactly the same. The book actually gives us a few more panels of her exploring the different fake sets that V had created. Like there's the interrogation room. There's the hallway. There's the prison cell. There's a couple other little moments where she goes. And she goes into the interrogation room, and we see the dummy that was supposed to be the person interrogating her. And there's the lights are on. She turns the lights on, and there's a record player or, like, a tape player or whatever playing, like, the lines that he was saying and stuff like that. Yeah. But the exact same thing. All the gist of it's identical. The dummies, the guards are all like, dummies and stuff like that. And then she walks, opens a door, and it's the shadow gallery. And I'm surprised they didn't add this line. They didn't use this line in the movie. She opens the door, walks in, and V is standing there in the shallow gallery. And he just says, welcome home. And that's the final panel of that issue or whatever.
• 45:25
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep.
• 45:29
  Speaker A: So Alan Moore stuff, and it's the same way with Watchmen, is that you're not really supposed to, like, nobody's a good guy. Like, there's no good guys in any of Alan Moore's stuff. There's just people who do things for reasons like that. And, you know, some of those reasons are better and worse than others. And, you know, some of. But, like. Yeah, there's not really, like, good guys in.
• 45:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 45:51
  Speaker A: In this story.
• 45:55
  Speaker B: So a recurring thing that we see throughout the film is this little girl with glasses who we see being kind of slowly radicalized throughout the background of the story, who is then killed as she's wearing the V mask. And then we see she's killed by a secret policeman, and then we see a mob gather and kill him. Is that from the book?
• 46:20
  Speaker A: So, yes. And also. No. As soon as I saw that girl with the glasses, I knew that she was Graffiti Girl from later in the book, because they could not have cast a girl that looked more like Graffiti Girl in that. There's a girl that, at the end of the book, she sprays the V on a wall, on a brick wall that looks very similar. And she has the big round glasses, and, you know, she looks like. I don't know, she's probably, like, 10 or something. But in the book, that's the only scene she's in where she graffiti said. So the thing that. The big change that the movie does is that it makes her be the one that gets shot and killed. That sparks the uprising. In the book, it's either some random woman or some Other minor character that I can't remember, there's a woman who steals a can of beans at some point and they like execute her on the street for stealing. And when that happens, a bunch of people attack the police. And it's one of the big kind of moments that sparks one of the big uprises, like the big uprising at the end. I really like this as a movie change. I think switching it and giving her more of an actual through line and then making her a character that we know be the one who gets killed, kind of sparking that rebellion, I think works really well. And again, I think the character who gets killed in the book might be some minor character. But there's so many characters in the book that the movie ends up kind of cutting though a lot of minor characters that I truly can't remember if she is a character we know or not, which she doesn't have to be. But I think the movie's decision makes a lot of sense.
• 48:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a good decision to have that kind of through line character.
• 48:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. Also, I meant to show you this. The shot of. Never mind. I'll show it to you later. I'll show you when I get to my movie. Now I forgot. I have stuff I get to talk about later. I'm used to. Not like when we get to the. Of like once. Once. Never mind. Yeah.
• 48:24
  Speaker B: So we talked about this scene in the prequel. But we. We get the scene where V is setting up all of the dominoes. And we talked about how it took professional domino men.
• 48:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like 200 hours.
• 48:39
  Speaker B: 200 hours to set up for something like that. But I was just wondering if the dominoes themselves were something that was pulled from the book.
• 48:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, so the start of each. The compendium here. The like full. The graphic novel is composed of three books. And then within each of those books, I assume are like the weekly issues. Cause there are. They're like chapters. But I assume those were like the week by week issues as they were coming out.
• 49:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 49:07
  Speaker A: But the beginning of each book starts with a full page image of a hand setting up dominoes.
• 49:13
  Speaker B: Kind of like the clock in Watchmen.
• 49:15
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. Very similar to the clock in Watchmen. And then we do get to. In the third book, the movie actually nails. There's the scene where in the film and in the book we're bouncing right as we get to kind of the. It's like the lead up to the third act. Essentially, like all of the pieces or all the pieces are on the board and in the Both the book and the film, we're bouncing around to all of these different characters that are going to play a role in what is about to happen. And as we're bouncing around between all of them, we keep cutting back to V setting up dominoes. And these are all the. You know, showing all. All the pieces that he has set up that lead to this result. And then the end of that issue and the end of that scene in the movie is him pushing over the domino. I will say in the book, we don't actually see them all fall. We just see him push them, and then we don't need to see the rest of it. But absolutely a movie. Nailed it. Moment, in my opinion.
• 50:10
  Speaker B: So then V takes Evie to see the train underground that he has filled with explosives, and he's rigged it to go down the line and then blow up once it's under Parliament. But he leaves the decision of whether or not to actually start the train up to Evie.
• 50:33
  Speaker A: Yes, same thing in the book. Although it's not as explicit, I think. In the movie, doesn't he kind of explicitly say, like. Or maybe not. I can't remember.
• 50:42
  Speaker B: I don't remember exactly what it says anyway.
• 50:44
  Speaker A: I can't remember. But in the book, he doesn't really tell her what to do. He just says that he. When he says that he wants a Viking funeral at some point. And then she later puts together. He doesn't really explain what he means, but she later realizes that he wants her to put him on the train and then send it to blow up. And she does.
• 51:03
  Speaker B: Does Evie kiss the V for Vendetta mask?
• 51:06
  Speaker A: No. At least not. I looked back, and I couldn't find any moment where that happens. No more on that in a second.
• 51:13
  Speaker B: Okay. So then V goes to confront Creedy, who has now killed Sutler in hopes of taking over as high chancellor. And then so there's. There's a fight, and. Because he's brought, obviously, like, armed men with him. And this is before the fight, but Right. Technically, yeah. And V says. He says, what you have are bullets and the hope that when they're gone, I'm not still standing. Is that from the book?
• 51:52
  Speaker A: That line is not in the book. It's a badass line. And I will say the whole fight scene is very cool, but none of this climactic fight is from the book. And I don't really think it's necessary beyond, like, the. We're making a blockbuster movie and it needs a big fight scene at the end of it.
• 52:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 52:09
  Speaker A: Which is fair. Like, to Some extent is fair. I'm not completely opposed to it because the book definitely has tons of moments which are. Check out how badass this dude is being a badass and, like, killing people with knives and stuff. So it's not like it's out of line completely with the. You know, it's not like it's completely out of nowhere. There are plenty of moments in the book where V is, like, flipping around, stabbing people and doing cool stuff. It just doesn't happen at the end of the book. But it's also not the point of the book, and adding this to the climax felt a little cheap to me. We'll get specifically into how the ending of this plays out, because it's, like, the biggest difference in terms of, like, the plot is, like, how the Chancellor dies and who kill kills him and how V gets killed is all very, very different. But we'll get to that in, I think, in one of my segments here in a little bit. But, yeah, that line's not in the book, but it's good. It's a fun line.
• 53:06
  Speaker B: Speaking of V getting killed. So after this whole fight, he's taken out all of the men, and they've been, like, shooting at him the whole time. And Creedy's like, why won't you die? And V says he asks about the mask, too. I don't remember, but V, any. Anyway, my question is about this line, which is, beneath this mask, there is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.
• 53:35
  Speaker A: So, yeah, this line is in the book. It's a bit better in the book, but it's very, very similar. In the book, after he gets shot or he gets shot at, we actually don't know in this moment if he has been shot or not. In the book, we just see a character shoot into the darkness, and we think maybe he got hit, but we can't tell. And he walks over to the guy that shot at him, which, again, we'll get to in a minute, but in the book, it's Finch. And he says to Finch there, did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. So basically the same, just a little changed.
• 54:13
  Speaker B: All right, so then he kills Creedy, and we see him take off like a piece of armor that's, like, riddled with bullet holes.
• 54:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 54:25
  Speaker B: And then he goes back to Evie.
• 54:27
  Speaker A: Not a thing in the book, by the way. He just gets shot.
• 54:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, he goes back to Evie, at which point he confesses his love to her before dying. In her arms. Is that from the book?
• 54:39
  Speaker A: So he does say I love you to her in the book, but the movie to me felt like it was making it explicitly romantic, which.
• 54:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was also the vibe I.
• 54:50
  Speaker A: Got in the book. Their relationship is not romantic at all. Again, I said earlier at one point, Evie's wondering why it's not, and she's like, maybe he's gay or maybe he's my dead father or whatever. I really did not like this moment in the movie. I think you could arguably read even that moment in the film potentially platonic, but it does not really come across that way to me, and I don't think it makes any sense.
• 55:15
  Speaker B: I think you could really squint and read it as platonic, but as especially coupled with Evie, like, kissing him earlier, it's kind of hard to not read it as romantic. Yeah, I didn't really care for that either.
• 55:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 55:31
  Speaker B: So we're hanging up to the big finish of this movie. We see Evie put V's body on the train and start the train. And while that's going on, we also see hundreds of people in thousands in the Guy Fawkes masks marching towards Parliament. Is that from the book?
• 55:58
  Speaker A: So there is an uprising at the end, but the people are not dressed in Guy Fawkes costumes. And I did not particularly like this in the film. When the uprising starts in the book, the people just look like people. They aren't wearing masks or masks or anything like that. And personally, I think that's important. Like, we see their faces, and now in the movie, they do eventually take the masks off, like, once the explosions start, I think, and reveal characters, even characters who we know are dead. So I do wonder if we're meant to believe if this is, like, actually real or not.
• 56:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 56:33
  Speaker A: But all that said, I do prefer the book's ending.
• 56:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I did have a question about that, because then at the end, we see the little girl with the glasses, and I wasn't sure if it was a different little girl with glasses or if I was being bamboozled or what was going on.
• 56:51
  Speaker A: No, it's her. Because we also see Valerie and her girlfriend are two of the other ones that take their masks off. And I get what we're doing there. What we're doing is, like, these are all of the faces of the revolution, these people who died in the cause and all that sort of stuff. And so they're all here for this moment when, you know, justice or whatever prevails. In the book, it would be anarchy prevails. But The. I still just don't love the masks and stuff. And just in general, the very, very end, I do not like it all is some things that happen in the book that I really like here is after V dies in Evie's arms, which is the same thing that happens in the movie. There's this great scene in the book where she imagines walking over and looking, pulling his mask off to see who it is. And we see it play out like four times. And each time we realize that, oh, this is like in her head, she's like imagining. And so it's like she pulls it up one time and it is her dad. She pulls it up another time and it's somebody else, I can't remember. She pulls it up another time and it's herself. I think the last time she pulls it up, it's herself. And that final time, it's her younger self from earlier in the story. And when she does that, she's like, I know who V must be. And that chapter ends with Evie going down and sitting in V's like makeup chair thing in front of the big. What is that called?
• 58:18
  Speaker B: The big Vanity.
• 58:19
  Speaker A: Vanity mirror. And it actually ends on a close up of her smiling in the mirror in a way that is very similar to the Guy Fawkes mask. And she realizes that she has to become V. Then we. We cut out to the streets and the people are on the streets, like milling around. And it's a little bit different. In the book, the leader is going to give a speech is what's going on? And they're. They're basically like, if V doesn't show up by a certain time, they've like made an announcement on the news or whatever. They're like, we think we killed V. Or the terrorist is dead and if he doesn't show up by this time, you'll know that he's dead and that his mission dies with him or, I don't know, his dream dies with him or something like that. And then right as the time, the clock hits midnight or whatever, Big Ben's bells start playing through the speakers in this square where all the people are. And everybody's like, wait a second. And we find out, like in the book, Big Ben has already been blown up. I'll talk about this later. In the book, the first thing that he does is blow up Big Ben and Parliament. And in the movie, they save that till the end. I'll get to that here in a second. But they hear Big Ben's bells playing through the thing and they're all like, wait a second. Big Ben literally doesn't exist anymore. And then V is revealed on top of this roof and he gives this speech to the revolutionaries below. It's a great speech. It's Evie in V's costume. And there's this. I don't know if this is where this line comes from, but, like, they're in the middle of the speech. Like, the end of it is, they say anarchy is dead, but reports of my death were exaggerated. And I don't know if that's where reports of my death were greatly exaggerated comes from. I actually have no idea because this book's from like 1982 or 88 or I can't remember. But anyways, then the crowd, emboldened by seeing V and this symbol of anarchy, this symbol of the revolution, the rise against fascism appearing. The crowd then storms into the crowd of cops attacking them. But the cops don't just let them. The cops just start mowing them down with machine guns, as they would. Yes. And I think the movie's ending here, and this is a big change that I really hate in the movie. Is the army just standing down in the movie I think is so stupid. And I think it's too easy, it's too happy. It's just a cheap ass ending because revolutions are violent and awful and sometimes necessary. And the movie just kind of glosses over the ugly part and is like, oh, the army's just like, nobody's responding on my walkie talkie. So I'll just let this whole crowd of people comes storming through and won't do anything. No, in the book, it's a giant, violent, bloody mess and tons of the people there to protest and to. And to overthrow the government are killed. And like, a lot of them are. And so I hated that change in the movie. I thought it was just a complete cop out of a lot of things. And we'll get more into it here in a little bit, but could not stand that change. Maybe the worst change I think that the movie makes, in my opinion. So. All right, those are all of Katie's questions for was that in the book? But she's got a few more that we're going to discuss in Lost in Adaptation. Just show me the way to get.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker B: Out of here and I'll be on my way.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker A: Was at last. Yes, yes. And I want to get unlost as soon as possible.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker B: Okay, so my first question is about right after V rescues Evie at the very beginning of the movie. He's like. He's like, oh, do you want to see something cool or whatever? He says much more eloquently than that. And he takes her up onto the roof. And then they watch as he blows up the statue of justice.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, the Bailey, which is lady justice on top of it. It's like the courthouse or something.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker B: And I was wondering if the book had any expansion on why he just decides to bring her along. Cause he doesn't know anything about her.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker A: So he does the same thing in the book. I can't really help. Apart from that. I don't even know if this line's in the book. But in the movie, when he asks her what her name, after he does his big introduction, he asks her what her name is, and she says it's Evie. And he goes, evie. And he says something along the lines of, I like God, do not play dice and don't believe in coincidence. Come with me. And like, so her name, he kind of sees it as a sign that she is Evie and he is V. And so he's like, he doesn't believe in coincidence. The fact that her name is Evie, his name is V means something. And so he brings her along. That's it.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker B: Fair enough, I guess.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker A: As I just mentioned, I'll add that in the book he's actually blowing up Parliament and Big Ben in this scene. Another kind of big change from the book. I understand why they make this change in the film, because watching Parliament blow up at the end of the film is a much bigger moment because it's a much more recognizable building to the audience. It's also ties directly with the Guy Fawkes plot, like the culmination of that. But I really like the symbolism of V blowing up Parliament at the beginning of the book because it serves no purpose anymore. There's not a democracy for which this Parliament building to even exist or need to be there. We are under a factious dictatorship. This is not a representative government with a parliament. So he blows it up because it's pointless. Something there's anyways. But yeah, he does later in the book, destroy the Old Bailey with Lady justice on top. But he does that by himself. The Evie's not there for that moment. And he gives this big speech in the book and we get a little bit of it in the movie, but he gives this big speech in the book about how he loved Lady Justice. He's like talking to the statue about how he loved her and that she abandoned him and basically left him for the fat. Like, she's like a harlot and a cheater and she left him for the fascists and that sort of thing. It doesn't read. I'm making it sound more weird and misogynist. It does not read that way. It reads very kind of shakes experience, like, scorned lover kind of thing in a way that I thought worked really well. But.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker B: So my other big question is about Gordon, so you probably can't help me here.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker A: Maybe.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker B: So he's a talk show host in the movie, and while Evie is staying with him, he, like, seemingly randomly decides to do this, like, comedic segment where he's mocking Sutler. And it just seems like a really dumb thing to randomly try. And I was wondering if the book had any insight on why he would decide to do that.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker A: So none of this is in the book, kind of. As I alluded to earlier, I assume the idea is just that he's always had this bit of a defiant side, as we see by his collecting the. All the illegal stuff and all that sort of thing. And I think it's also there as kind of a cue to the audience, in my opinion, that the people in this world don't really realize what kind of society they live in. Like, he thinks it's all. It'll be fine. He's like, they'll find I'll do some charity thing and they'll get over it. I think part of it is that the people in this universe don't realize, in the film's universe, do not realize the extent of the fascist dictatorship that they are living under. Which, again, is, to me, feels like a very big change from the book and is something I will talk about more very shortly. So I have one note that I wanted to add here and I want to talk about, because I don't know how I feel about this. I don't know where I would put it. There's this whole subplot in the book about fate. There is a computer called Fate that the Leader, which in the book, the Chancellor, they call him Leader. He's not called Chancellor in the book. The Leader is, like, in love with this computer. There's, like, this subplot. I truly not sure how I felt about it because I don't really know if I understood, like, what it was supposed to mean or what it was supposed to do or, like, what the purpose of it was. It just was one of the few parts of the books that I felt like I couldn't really wrap my brain around. But the Leader is, like, always consulting this supercomputer that they built after the. After the fascist government kind of Took over. They built this supercomputer that, like, does everything and is, like, the thing that, like, kind of governs them in some capacity. And literally, like the Prothero at the beginning in the book, he's not just like a news announcer. They literally call him the voice of fate. And he, like, speaks for this supercomputer and everybody trusts him. And because he's speaking for this thing that they all trust is choosing correctly for. I don't know, I was a little lost. I think maybe it's maybe supposed to be a stand in for God. I'm not really sure because God also is a thing throughout this because I don't know. I really don't know what. I would be interested to read more about the fate subplot in the book and what people make of it and what it's supposed to mean. Because it gets really, really weird at the end when, like, the leader is like, has. I don't even know. It's very hard to explain, and I just didn't get it. So I wanted to mention it here because if I didn't mention it, somebody who would be like, why didn't you mention fate and that change? I just didn't know where to put it, and I didn't know what to say about it. So there's that. Tell me what you think about fate.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker B: I don't know. Prediction of AI maybe.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker A: Not really. I don't know. I don't. Maybe succeeding to, like, technology. Maybe it's like a technological one. I don't know. It's very strange. I'm not really sure what I. Maybe so. Anyways. All right, those are all of Katie's questions. It's time now to find out what I thought was better in the book. You like to read?
• 1:08:47
  Speaker B: Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 1:08:53
  Speaker B: Everything.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker A: I really like in the book that they explain a little bit. At least you kind of figure out. I don't say they explain. They don't really. But as you go throughout the book, you get a better feel for how this government is organized. And in the book, the government has essentially five, I think five. One, two, three, four, six branches. Yeah, six branches. The head, the eye, the ear, the nose, the finger, and the mouth. We hear a little bit of that in the movie, but not really that much. The head is leadership. That is what the leader is like. Under the eye is video surveillance. The ear is audio surveillance. The nose is like investigation. Like the detectives. That's what Finch works for. The finger is like the SS it's the secret police. And then it's what? That's why they're called Fingermen. And then the mouth is the propaganda part. So it's just a little bit of world building that the movie doesn't really go into that I liked in the book. On page two of this book, the fascist government radio urges everyone listening to, quote, help make Britain great again. So there you go. It's kind of absurd how on the nose our world is, but which, again, that phrase does not originate in this book, but it's just like. Okay. Yep. All right, great. When Evie first arrives at the Shadow Gallery, he's playing music on the jukebox. And in the movie, it's the same song. I can't remember what it is. It's like some. It's not Fly Me to the Moon. It's something like that, though, in the movie that he keeps on.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker B: I don't remember now.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker A: Anyways, when she gets to the Shadow Gallery, in the book, he's playing Motown music, and she's talking about how she's never heard Motown music because some cultures were eradicated more than others. So, like, she knows of some other music, but, like, Motown in particular, she's never heard of because some cultures were snuffed out more than other cultures. Another scene that is, I think, much better in the book is the kidnapping of Prothero. In the movie, he just shows up at his apartment and kills him in the shower or whatever. Or, like, as he's getting out of the shower. In the book, he kidnaps Prothero from a train. And it's a very cool and gorgeously drawn scene in the book of him. Like, this is really cool, super dynamic panels of him jumping onto the train. And then he cuts the power to the train, and he gets into the train car with Prothero and these other guards, and there's this great moment where, like, somebody, like, lights a match and he's, like, right there. It's very, very cool. And I was surprised that they did. I guess probably a budget thing. It's just maybe was they had. They wanted to put the budget to other. Yeah. And they just wanted to put the money other places potentially. But I was disappointed that the train kidnapping didn't make it in. When he gets Evie back to the Shadow Gallery, one of the lines he has, he says to her, that doesn't make it into the movie is, they made you into a victim, Evie. They made you into a statistic, but that's not who you are inside. Again, I don't Think that made it into the movie. But I really like that line from the book when he does, again, I said he kidnaps Prothero, which is different than the movie where he just kills him there. He takes Prothero back to the Shadow Gallery in the book and he has set up a fake concentration camp, like a fake Lark Hill. And this is all like a ruse because Prothero keeps saying, I don't know what you're talking about. You keep calling me commander. I'm not. I'm a broadcaster or whatever. And he's like, no, no, no, I know who you are. And so he, like. He's, like, kind of, like, leading him through this, like, fake concentration camp he makes. We also find out that Prothero collects dolls. He collects these weird little, like, dolls. Just a thing he does. I also think it's insinuated early in the book that Prothero and a few of the other members of this fascist government are gay, but, like, are pretending not to be. And anyway, it doesn't really matter. But he has all these dolls and he has them in, like, concentration camp uniforms and he has them all lined up and he has, like, Prothero, like, standing in front of them as, like, prisoners in Prothero's like, no, not my dolls. And he, like, throws all the dolls into an incinerator and, like, burns them all. And then Prothero, like, loses his mind. He, like, goes crazy. It's a crazy, interesting scene. And none of that makes it into the film. V actually has an alternative costume in the MO that I really wish would have made it into the film. He dresses like a little vaudevillian fancy man and he has a different mask that's like a more vaudevillian style mask. It's very fun and I would have loved to see it. I'm surprised they didn't do it. He's got the striped pants and the little wicker hat, and it's great. There's a thing where we hear Beethoven's fifth play in the movie a couple times or at least once. But they point out in the book that the main motif of Beethoven's Fifth dun, dun, dun, dun, is actually Morse code for the letter V, which is funny because it's short, short, short, long, interesting. And I looked at that is correct. Which I just thought it was kind of funny. Book two in the graphic novel starts horizontally format. I say starts. The first issue of Book two is horizontally formatted and is actually music. And it is V playing piano and resetting the stage. It's called the Vicious Cabaret. And he plays this song and sings it and kind of, like, recaps where we are and where our characters are. And it's like a completely. Again, it's all, like, horizontal, and the actual music is on the page. So it's like. It's like the music staff. And then it's like we're kind of jumping around to all of our different characters. And it has actually the lyrics and all the notes and everything. So you could play this. I'm sure somebody has somewhere, but. But that was kind of cool. I think they. I mean, obviously they couldn't do that explicitly, but they could have had him play it. I don't know. Maybe they did in a deleted scene during the TV station break in, when he's, like, fighting all the guards in the book that we get this great montage of him, like, fighting through the hallways, killing all these guards. And as it's happening, we're getting little snippets of all the TV shows that are being broadcast. But the, like, little snippets as we jump between different TV shows kind of apply to, like, what we're seeing in a way that's really interesting. The Gordon in the book takes Evie to a fascist cabaret show, which I thought was interesting. Like, they have this place where they go to that is. It's literally a cabaret, but they're like. They're doing, like, a cabaret number that is, like, fascist. I don't even know how else to describe it.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker B: So cabaret.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker A: Well, right. But it's. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I just thought it was very funny. But, like, it's a woman, like, singing in, like, you know, stockings and, like, little outfit. And her line, her, like, the song she's singing is. But it rallies in the night with all the torches burning bright I feel a stirring in me I cannot neglect and I'll grab with mad abandon Any lad with an. With an armband on and whose cute salute Is manly and erect I like the boots Da da da da da I like the attitude I like the point at which the legal Meets the lewd I like the thrill of the triumphant will I like the marching and the music and the mood so it's. Yeah, it's crazy. I mentioned earlier that Gordon in the book is also killed, but he's killed by, like, some random gangsters. In the book, Evie goes to get revenge. She goes to kill the guys. She buys a gun, and she goes to kill the guys that killed Gordon because she, like, was falling in love with Gordon. And she, like, you know, she kind of snaps and is gonna kill these guys. And I understand why they cut that, but I really liked it in the book. And that's actually the moment when she gets grabbed is in the book. She goes after Gordon, gets killed. She goes to kill the guys that killed Gordon. And as she's, like, pointing the gun at them to shoot them from across the street, she gets grabbed by, we think the police or whatever. Yeah. And it's V. Great line that I don't think makes it into the movie, which is crazy to me. And I believe this is V saying this. He says, our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations, Evie. And it is much, much louder than they care to remember. This is like, as things are starting to pop off at the end. Finch. Finch does go to Larkhill in the movie to kind of look around. But in the book, he takes LSD before he goes there to kind of get. Literally, to get into the head of V. He takes lsd and he's tripping, walking through Larkhill, and he kind of is reimagining all the undesirables they killed. And he realizes that he misses them and that the world was better and fuller with them in it. And this is his moment where he kind of breaks free from the system and he kind of has his own rebirth fueled by L. Which I think is the point. I think Moore's a big, psychedelic guy, so it doesn't surprise me. The train at the end with the bombs on it, when he shows it to Evie in the book, not only is it. It's full of bombs, but it's also full of flowers. Like, it's completely stuffed full of flowers. Now, when she puts him in the movie, she puts some flowers around him. But the train in the book before that already is full of flowers. But it's also painted with these really cool designs all over the whole thing. I assume the reason the movie doesn't do that is that they were using an actual subway car in an actual sub, like, subway in London. And they couldn't paint it would be my guess. But I thought it was really cool. And I wish. I think it would have been a very striking moment. At the end, the leader is going to go give a big speech. They think they're. This is before. Anyway, some stuff has happened, but the leader is going to go, like, try to calm everything down by going in, like, showing up in person and giving, like, a public speech. And there's a little detail that I thought was really funny. Is that as he's going to. He's being driven to the place where he's gonna give the speech. We see, like, a little vignette of the fact that the secret police or whatever are taking a crowd of the same people and moving them along the path and forcing them to cheer for him. Like, as. Like, they're like, all right, go to the next. And then they take him to the next spot. And they're like, cheer louder this time and stuff like that. And the leader just has no idea. All right. And this is a big change. We got to talk about Rosemary. Rosemary is a character who is not in the movie at all. Rosemary is initially the wife of Derek Almond, who is one of the Fingermen, who also does not appear in the movie. Derek is killed by V kind of early in the story. It's actually the scene where V kills the doctor. Derek Almond shows up and confronts him after he kills the doctor, and V kills him because Derek Almond tries to shoot V and his gun has no bullets in it, and he can't shoot him, and V kills him. The reason his gun didn't have any bullets in it is that in the scene before that, Derek Almond was at home abusing his wife and threatening to kill her and talking about how much he hates her and Rosemary specifically, that's who his wife was. And he does this insane moment where, like, she goes to bed and he comes in with his gun and, like, holds it up to her and, like, pulls the trigger and there's no bullets in it. And he goes, there's no bullets this time or something like that. He's just like this fucked up evil guy who's just abusing his wife. He then immediately gets the call to go stop V. And so he forgets to load his gun because that was just what was happening. So then that's how V is able to kill him. Then after Derek Almond dies, Rosemary falls. Falls in with Roger Ashcombe, who's the head of the mouth. We actually see him in the movie quite a few times. He's the guy who's the head of the propaganda department, like, at the TV station. She falls in with Roger Ashcombe until he gets killed by the cops. And he's the guy in the book that V dresses up as guy as himself when he escapes. And in the book, they just shoot that guy full of holes and kill him. And he falls out of window. And then it's revealed that it was Roger Ashcombe again. This happens much later in the book than it does in the movie. In the movie that seems like in the first 30 minutes in the book, it's like in the second half. So now she has had two men killed. The two men that she's been with killed. She then has to essentially become a stripper and I think starts working basically at that fascist cabaret place or whatever. And her life is just like a nightmare. And ultimately she snaps and she goes and she takes Derek's gun. And when the leader is going to make a speech at the end, she walks up to the car, to the leader's car as he's about to get out to give a speech. And she's allowed past security because one of the guards recognizes her as somebody who used to affiliate with one of the leader's top men because she was married to Almond, who was higher up within the government and that sort of thing. So they let her through. And she walks through and walks up to the car as the leader's getting out and just shoots him in the face and kills him. And I love this. I think it's a much, much better in the book moment. So in the movie, he's killed by Creedy, who like double crosses him or whatever, which Creedy does kind of double cross. But it very differently in the book.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker B: I mean, that's its own kind of commentary.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's fine. It's fine, too. It's not like it's horrible. But I think this is incredible because I think it really showcases the way that this world affects even the supposedly privileged. Rosemary is part of the upper crust. She is, you know, part of the kind of fascist leadership, or she's married to part of this, like, fascist leadership. And she goes from one member to another. But these men, because they are tied up in this fascist fucking nightmare state, keep getting killed. And she keeps ending up in worse and worse situations to the point where her life just ends up terrible and she just snaps because of it. And I think the tragedy, her. Rosemary's tragedy is arguably one of the most important elements of the book. The leader isn't killed by some hero or even in the movie, killed by some, you know, like, other big, like, bad guy.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker A: He's killed by an abused wife who, nevertheless, the fact that her life with Derek Almond was terrible. He was an abusive asshole who she hated. She still provided her comfort and support and like, you know, or comfort and, you know, a relatively, like, normal lifestyle and that sort of thing. And had her life completely torn apart by this fucked up system. And it's all kind of just completely luck that she ends up both in that situation, like, where she has these men that she keeps ending up with getting killed, and it's complete luck that she is able to get to and kill the Leader. And I think it's just like. It's this weird, beautiful tragedy that feels completely random and almost kind of arbitrary. And as you're watching her story throughout the book, you wonder why you're watching this, really. But then it becomes so important at the end. And I think it's. Again, I could see reading this and going, that's really not that important of a plotline. We can just get rid of Rosemary makes more sense. Let's have the Leader killed by one of the bigger characters. But I completely disagree and think that Rosemary killing the Leader is a hugely important part of, thematically, of what the book is trying to say. And so I hate that they changed it.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that sounds poetic.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker A: It is. It really. Yeah, it really is. I was blown away when that happened. Cause I wasn't expecting that. Like, I didn't know what I was expecting. But as soon as you see her, like, get the gun and leave, I was like, oh, this is what's gonna happen. And then she just walks and it's just. She just walks up and shoots him in the face and kills them. And that's. That. That's how the Leader dies. It's crazy, but great. Finch, in his LSD addled state, stumbles across Victoria Station in the book and real Victoria subway station and realizes that it's probably related to V's, like, plot. And then V ends up finding him there. And Finch is the one that shoots V, not really out of, like, malice, but just out of, like, self defense. Because V, like, kind of comes at him in the dark and he just, like, fires into the darkness and that's what ends up killing him. So he's the one who actually mortally wounds V. The Hell and Higher plotline is another thing that doesn't make it into the movie. Helen Heyer is kind of the inverse Rosemary. She's attempting to climb in the fascist ranks through her husband Conrad, who is one of the. The other higher ups. Whereas Rosemary is kind of just like is wants to live a standard normal life and is, like, keeps getting these men taken away or keeps getting her life upended by the system. Rosemary is trying to climb in the ranks and is using her husband. Or, sorry. Helen is trying to climb in the ranks and increase her. She's trying to become a very influential member through her husband. She constantly belittles Conrad. She's cheating on him with one of the gangster characters that we meet throughout the story. Ultimately, Conrad finds out about the affair and he beats the gangster to death while their sex tape. While the sex tape that the gangster and Helen recorded together plays on a TV in their living room. But during that fight, the gangster manages to slice him with a knife. And then Helen shows up and finds Conrad bleeding to death, and then just turns the camera around on him and makes him watch himself bleed to death in their living room. His. He was the head of video surveillance or whatever. It's all fucked up and dark and super interesting. And then when Finch at the end of the story. So Finch kind of in the movie, it just kind of ends. But Finch in the book, he just, like, leaves. He just, like, walks out of the city and is like, I'm. Fuck this. I'm out. And after all this goes down, he just, like, leaves, and he's, like, walking out of the city. And he finds Helen, like, with some random guys on the side of the road that she's like, oh, I had to stay with them for protection, but I'm going to stay with you now. And he's like, you. And he just throws her. And she, like. They grab her and run off. And then the literally last panel of the book is Finch just walking down a deserted highway into the night, into nowhere, smoking a pipe, which I thought was fun. And then there's another thing that's really cool, that's not in the. Or interesting, that's not in the movie, is that Evie actually starts the cycle again when the whole big uprising happens at the end. One of the police who was tasked with, like, putting down the uprising gets injured. Evie grabs him, pulls him back to the shadow lair. And he wakes up and she's wearing the outfit. And she starts the whole thing over again. Like, she is now V. And this guy is going to become the next. Her new protege or whatever, which I thought was kind of cool. And then finally, the big, big, big, big, big change that I can't believe I'm just now getting. I thought I just ready to be done talking. But this is really important. A big difference that is better in the book is the government Larkhill and the St. Mary's tragedy. It's kind of a combination of things. So after the nuclear war, England descended into martial law and chaos and shit went crazy bad because the world was ending. And then a bunch of fascist groups banded together, teamed up with the corporations that were left, of course, obviously, and took over and installed their government. They rounded up all the People of color, all the gay people, all the political dissidents, they put them into camps and they killed them. Evie's dad was a socialist. And that's specifically why she says in the movie that they're saying it's related to her brother dies in the St. Mary's attack.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker B: And that, like, radicalizes.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker A: That radicalizes them in the movie. He's just a socialist. Because, like, I don't even know if she has a brother. I can't remember. She probably does, but. But I think she does have a brother that dies, but it's not really related to her parents radicalization. She just. Her. Her dad has just always been a socialist. So they round him up, kill him. So that. That is like, not. And that's not a secret. That is. Everybody knows that all happened in the book. Another thing in the book, the government officials just do the Nazi salute. All of the people we see are literally just do the Nazi salute all the time when they go to church. Like, there's a scene in church in this, and it's. The church. I think it's. Lilliman is giving, like, a homily and we see a little bit of this in the movie but it's just like a straight up fascist church service. Like, he's just saying the most, like, just Nazi shit. Like this. The most Nazi shit you've ever heard. And as I said earlier, I don't hate Gordon satirizing the leader in that scene. I think it works okay and it's kind of interesting. But again, I. What. What it all kind of. All of this ties into is that in the movie, the people seem. The people living in this world seem to be kind of. Of unaware that they live in a fascist dictatorship.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker A: At least to some extent.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker B: To some extent.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker A: Not like, completely unaware, but, like, a lot of the stuff going on, the people don't seem to know how bad their government truly is. That is not the case in the book. Another thing is that because the movie's world is a bit less overtly fascistic they decide to make Larkhill, like, a secret. And, like. So, like, Finch and the other guy. I can't remember who that is. The. The guy from Sherlock. I think they're, like, investigating Larkhill and what went on there. And it's a secret. And the government's like. And Creedy and other people are like, stop looking into that or whatever. That's never really a thing in the book because they just know it's not a secret. They did this and they're not covering it. Up or ashamed of it or want it to be a secret. They did these experiments. They killed all these people. They don't care. That's like what they did and the people are aware of it. Also, the movie then adds this wrinkle of like, oh, and then the St. Mary's attack and the Three Waters attack or whatever. This viral. Like there was a viral. Like, what is the word where people do like an attack with.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker B: Oh, what is that word?
• 1:30:32
  Speaker A: A bio.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker B: A bio weapon.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker A: Yes. A bioweapon attack or whatever where a bunch of people got infected with some horrible disease and like 100,000 people died. And then we realize over the course of the movie that this was an inside job. That it was the government that did this and blamed it on a terrorist organization in order to consolidate power.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker A: And that sort. And enrich themselves, essentially. I do not like this change. It's way too inside job for me. And 911 truth three to me, which with when this movie was made, I think is what we're doing. I think that is literally what we're doing, which the US government guilty of. And a lot of bad things they did not do. 9 11, I'm sorry, that is just not the case. And so I don't really like tweaking that to make. Oh, it's like this weird inside job and this is all secret and the people don't know that their government is as fascist as it is. To me, what it boils down to is that in the book, everybody knows they live in a fascist dictatorship, a fascist state. They know all the horrible things their government has done and all the people that have been killed. None of this is a secret. None of this is like some surprise to any of these people. They don't think like, oh, I can make fun of the leader and it'll be fine. They all know they're living under a fascist dictatorship. And the movie goes, ah, no, it. I think in an attempt to make it more like, more applicable to turn of the millennium, like it's the year 2005 in America. Like, look at the bad things. Maybe our government has done that kind of thing in an attempt to do that. I think it kind of weakens the message, which is ultimately when we get to the end is, hey, fascism rises because you all fucking let it happen and watched it happen and didn't care that it happened because you weren't the people being hurt.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker A: And I think that's a really important part of the message and the movie. It's not that the movie doesn't say that again. I don't want to overly criticize the movie because I think that is still there in the movie. It's just not as. It's not as explicit. And like, the movie kind of does this thing of like, well, the people don't really realize how bad their government is. And then like, they have to V and these other people have to reveal to them and like make them realize that they're living in a fascist government. In the book, it's not V motivating them or making them realize or revealing to them that they live in this awful fascist leader government that they should overthrow. It's him making them take responsibility for it.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker A: And to me, that is a more timeless. I don't know if it's a more timeless message, but I found it a more compelling message than what the movie did. And I will fully admit that part of the reason the movie that soured on me a little bit is the very obvious, like 911 truther shit. And I just don't cop the bullshit conspiracies. Like it just drives that shit drives me crazy. So I didn't really like that. And I don't know. Point being, that's a big difference is kind of how all this world is set up and how much people know about the government. And I much prefer the way the book handles it to the movie. I'm done talking. All right, let's go ahead and talk about the things I thought were better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies. Little better in the movie moment right at the beginning when he's blowing up the Bailey in the beginning of the film, he says, what day is it, Evie? And she goes, November 4th. And he goes, not anymore. And then it explodes. And it's November 5th. Now, because this is a moment in the beginning of the movie or the beginning of the book that like really confused me and I thought was really weirdly handled is because I went back and double checked this because it confused me so much. In the book, at the beginning of the chapter, we get a newscast when they're getting ready to go out for the night that says it's 9:30 on November 5th. It's November 5th, 9:30pm the events of the night happen. Evie goes, he gets he, blah, blah, blah. And then he takes her up to the roof. They watch the Bay or Parliament explode in the book. And then at the end of the chapter it says it's 12:07am when the fireworks go off, that would make it.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker B: November 6th, you would think. Yeah, when he blew up Parliament.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker A: And so the movie makes a very subtle change here by just moving it back a day so that when midnight hits and the bombs go off, it's actually the 5th of November instead of the 6th of November. Anyways. And I like that line, so that's good. And I talked about. This is a very short list here. But I talked about a lot of the stuff I liked better in the movie. In your questions, it wasn't only these three things, but another line that's not in the book that I really like. When he kills the bishop, the bishop pleads to him, please have mercy. And he says, oh, not tonight, Bishop. Not tonight. Great line. Not in the book. The last thing I had here is I actually kind of liked Finch confronting Evie at the train when she's going to start it. He doesn't ever see her in the book. At the end again, he just, like, walks and leaves and walks out of the city. I liked him confronting her and her explaining and him just, like, letting it happen. It kind of cements the fact that he has also gone through this kind of character arc. And so I liked that moment between the two of them. So that was everything I had for better in the movie. Let's get to a few things that the movie nailed. As I expected, Practically perfect in every way. The strength through purity. Purity through faith. On all the posters, that is the same poster that is everywhere in the book that they have on the movie, all over the place. V recites Shakespeare as he kills the cops in that first opening fight scene, as he's murdering them all. I think it's Macbeth that he's quoting. The shot of V emerging from the flames at Larkhill is, like, literally identical to the shot, the panel in the book of him emerging from the flames in Lark Hill. The only thing in the movie I don't love is the scream. He does this, like. Yeah, it just felt a little goofy. Whereas in the. There's nothing alluded to that in the book. He just stands there silhouetted in the flames, which I think is badass. Enough already. You don't need to scream.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker B: And way scarier.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. But the visual element looks great. There's a little snippet of a propaganda that, like, we see in the movie, it's not identical. So in the book, there's this mention of a TV show called Storm Saxon that is about this guy named Storm Saxon. Could not be a more Nazi name. I don't Think.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker B: Very subtle.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. Who goes around. He's like a hero who goes around killing, like black cannibals to defend the white women, essentially. We don't see this exact thing, but there is a moment in the TV station where we see a tv. I think it gets destroyed by V or something where, like, there's like this cartoonish Muslim looking guy.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker A: Like. And there's like a woman tied to a thing behind him. And he's like. Like he's gonna, like, kill her or something. Very similar, type of like this super over the top racist propaganda that they put out. Evie has a rat friend in her prison cell. That rat makes an appearance. That the hole he comes out of is where the notes get passed through. The panic attack Evie has after she realizes that V was the one that kidnapped her. I thought Natalie Portman crushed it, that scene. And she freaks out in a very similar way in the book. Also, right after that, the scene on the roof, he takes her up to the roof and it's pouring down rain. And she stands there in the rain. And this is kind of her rebirth moment where she is reborn as this new person free of her fear, free of her, you know, these other things in the book. She's naked. I think it's better in the book purely from, like, a symbolic perspective. She didn't need to be in the movie, but, like, purely from a symbolic perspective of this being like a rebirth, I think her being naked works better, but it's fine. Whatever. I just wanted to mention that because I do think it makes more sense symbolically, but whatever. And then finally, the movie does nail that V has a shrine to Valerie. He shows her that, this little shrine he has built. The same thing in the book. He takes her after he gets her out and explains that Valerie was a real person and that she was in the cell next to him. He shows her this kind of shrine he has of all her movie posters and stuff, so. All right, we're gonna get to a few odds and ends before the final verdict.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker B: I think one of the reviews that you read in the prequel mentioned Natalie Portman's British accent, which was admittedly not incredible. Yeah, like, it wasn't the worst.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker A: It's not awful.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker B: I've heard worse break British accents, but it was, like, not incredible.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker B: I also. I really thought at the beginning of this movie that the entire thing was going to take place over 24 hours on November 5th.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker B: The movie, the movie led me astray. It's fair in that I have a lot of thoughts about the passage of time in this film, though. I also wanted to bring up a line that I believe Evie says. I don't remember when she says it in the movie, but she says, like, every time I've seen this world change, it's always been for the worse.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. I think, actually that might be Valerie that says that. I can't remember.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker B: It's one of the two.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker B: A mood.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker B: I also. I mentioned it a second ago, but I did not really care for the way that the movie communicated the passage of time. I thought it was clunky.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's not great. The book does a better job. Well, the book literally just puts date. Like, time date stamps at the beginning of chapters and stuff of when things.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker B: Take place, which is fine in a book. But I felt like the movie handled it by occasionally having a character state how long it had been.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker B: But it never felt like that much time had passed. So I kind of took umbrage with that.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker A: Specifically, I noted that when we see Larkhill in one of the flashback scenes, they very, very clearly made it look like a reference to Abu Ghraib. We see some of the people in, like, the cells in Larkhill and it's, like, the position of their bodies and, like, the things they have on their head. I don't remember if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen any, like, photos from Abu Ghraib. It was a big scandal from. Abu Ghraib was a prison colony that I think we still have that the US has in somewhere in the Caribbean. I can't remember where exactly where it's at. That is a place where we, like, hold terrorists and, turns out, torture them and shit. And there was a big scandal where a bunch of photos got leaked, like a U.S. army. I don't know what branch they were, but people who were worked, stationed at Abu Ghraib, like, torturing and, like, humiliating, like, the prisoners and stuff like that. And they're very clearly referencing that in the Larkhill stuff that we see, which I think is fair. Very fair.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. Another thing about the passage of time in this movie, I guess Evie just continues to shave her head.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's interesting. Cause not in the book. In the book, her hair grows out. Like, she slowly. It, like. And that's one of the ways you see the passage of time is it slowly gets bit longer as the book goes on. After she gets it shaved.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because it should have started to grow out again. But maybe she just can. Maybe she just.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker A: I think she Did. I think that's what's meant to be. Like, she keeps shaving it because she.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker B: Because that's who she is now.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. There was a moment. I don't remember exactly when it was, but I was like, man, you know, this movie's fine, but you know who should have adapted this? Satoshi King.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker A: And he's dead when this came out, I think, or right around this time. But a Satoshi Kon adaptation of this, I think would have been perfect. Like, I don't know if you could do a better version of this than an anime version with the kind of. With the approach that Khan, at least with what was the movie we did perfect Blue. I think the sensibilities that he has would have fit this story perfectly. But. All right, before we get to the final verdict, we want to remind you you can do us a giant favor by heading over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, threads, any of those places. Probably not Twitter for too much longer. We're getting the fuck out of there. But any of those other places interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about V for Vendetta, the film or the book. And we will talk about that on our next prequel episode. If you want to help us out, you can drop us a five star rating, write us a nice little review on Apple, podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to our show. And if you really want to support us, you can head over to patreon.com thisfil is lit. Support is there for 2, 5, or $15 a month. You get access to different things at different levels. At $2, you get early access or early, early access to what's coming up, a preview of what we're doing earlier than the general audience. At the $5 level, you get bonus content. Every month we put out a bonus episode. We did Adam's Family last month. We're doing. What are we doing this month?
• 1:44:15
  Speaker B: Heathers.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker A: Heathers. We're going to be talking about Heathers this month. So, yeah, every month you get a little bonus episode of whatever we want to talk about. And then at the $15 and up level, you get priority recommendations. So if there's a story you would really like for us to talk about, pay us 15 bucks a month, stick around for a little bit, request it, and we will add it to our list. Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker B: No sentence first, verdict after. That's stupid.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker A: V for Vendetta is actually a pretty okay adaptation. That may sound like damning by faint praise But I do actually think that the film managed to capture at least a bit of the heart of the graphic novel. The visuals, while not stunning, are serviceable. The action is enjoyable, the performances are good, and the general core of the story, rebelling against a fascist government is still mostly there. But it's clear the Wachowskis wanted to adapt the story in a way that they felt was more directly relevant to the turn of the millennium, and specifically America at the turn of the millennium. They crafted a universe that felt a bit less dystopian, a bit more familiar, and a bit less overtly fascist. I think it's a valid idea and I understand the impulse, but in doing so, I think the film sacrifices one of the most important elements of the book. The fascist government in the graphic novel is not subtle. It's not a secret. And yet the people of England allow it to exist because it's easy. They prefer overt fascist rule to the more difficult world that fighting back would create. V has criticisms of the government, but his larger point, the important point, is that the citizens allowed it to happen because they preferred an ethno state to a country full of diversity. They fully know their government rounded up gay people, rounded up people of color, rounded up socialists, and marched them off to concentration camps to be killed. And they let it happen because it was easier to let it happen than to stop it. It was a message that, for pretty obvious reasons, resonated with me quite a bit right now. As we move forward into this precarious future, I think it's something that we all need to remember. Fascism arises when we allow it to. This is not a call for all of us to take the streets right now. I promise. It's not what I'm doing, but it is a call to consider what may be necessary in the future. It is a call to form communities, to find new friends that hold your values and to support each other. Be aware of what's happening in our country as it happens, and do what you can to help the people who need it most. This was a pretty grim book that laid bare what happens when the people cede their country to fascists. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I'm optimistic that we can do better. We have to do better. I'm giving this one to the book. Katie, what's next?
• 1:47:05
  Speaker B: Up next, we're continuing with very light material.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, this one. This one's really fun, right?
• 1:47:14
  Speaker B: This one's gonna be fun.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker A: It's not about, like, abuse or, like, anything.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're gonna be talking about Gerald's Game, Stephen king novel and 2017 film adaptation.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Hey, it's a Mike Flanagan, so it'll be good at least. At least. I think it's a Mike Flanagan. I'm pretty sure.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker B: I think you're right.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, it'll at least be good. Even if it's horribly setting. Horribly setting and grim. Yeah, we'll see. All right, that's going to do it for this episode. Thank you all for joining us. Make sure you come back in one week's time. We'll be talking about what you all had to say about V for Vendetta. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome.