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V For Vendetta
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 V For Vendetta Production NotesTagline: Remember, remember the 5th of November.
Remember, remember
The Fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a young working-class woman named Evey who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man known only as “V.”
Profoundly complex, V is at once literary, flamboyant, tender and intellectual, a man dedicated to freeing his fellow citizens from those who have terrorized them into compliance. He is also bitter, revenge-seeking, lonely and violent, driven by a personal vendetta.
In his quest to free the people of England from the corruption and cruelty that have poisoned their government, V condemns the tyrannical nature of their appointed leaders and invites his fellow citizens to join him in the shadows of Parliament on November the 5th – Guy Fawkes Day.
On that day in 1605, Guy Fawkes was discovered in a tunnel beneath Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder. He and his co-conspirators had engineered the treasonous “Gunpowder Plot” in response to the tyranny of their government under James I. Fawkes and his fellow saboteurs were hanged, drawn and quartered, and their plan to take down their government never came to pass.
In the spirit of that rebellion, in remembrance of that day, V vows to carry out the plot that Fawkes was executed for attempting on November 5th in 1605: he will blow up Parliament. As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious past, she also discovers the truth about herself – and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to ignite a revolution, bringing freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.
About the Story
Director James McTeigue describes V for Vendetta as a political thriller first and foremost with a very dark and multifaceted character at its center. “On one hand, V is altruistic, believing he can bring about great social change, but on the other hand he has a murderous vendetta towards anyone who’s done him wrong.”
While preparing for V for Vendetta, McTeigue was influenced by a host of films, principal among them 1965’s The Battle of Algiers, a highly realistic account of the Algerian revolution against the French, fought from 1954 to 1962. Like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or Lindsay Anderson’s If...., V For Vendetta cautions against the dangers of corruption, control, manipulation and repression, while exploring the perils of extremism – whether it be a government abusing its power or an individual taking the law into his own hands.
“V For Vendetta is a multi-layered film,” says producer Joel Silver, whose long and impressive film career includes the groundbreaking Matrix trilogy and seminal action films such as the Lethal Weapon series, Die Hard and Predator. “It can be enjoyed as a dynamic action picture, or audiences can go deeper into the complex issues and ideas it explores, about the individual’s responsibility for the power they entrust to their government, and what means are necessary or acceptable to bringing an end to tyranny. It raises a lot of fascinating questions, but doesn’t provide any easy answers.”
The film is based on the graphic novel of the same name – V for Vendetta first appeared in Warrior, an independent monthly comic magazine published in 1981, quickly capturing a cult following. Co-created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, it ran in 26 issues before the magazine folded, leaving fans hanging mid-plot. After a five-year hiatus, Moore and Lloyd completed V for Vendetta in 1989 under the DC banner when it was released in its entirety as a graphic novel.
V For Vendetta is set slightly in the future, where modern day London is still very recognizable. Creators Moore and Lloyd were influenced by the times in which they lived. “Our attitude towards Margaret Thatcher’s ultra-conservative government was one of the driving forces behind the fascist British police state we created in Vendetta,” Lloyd explains. “The destruction of this system was V’s primary reason for existence.”
Thematically, Moore and Lloyd’s series explores many political and ethical notions of continuing relevance in today’s world. “The principal message of the original is that every individual has the right to be an individual, and the right – and duty – to resist being forced into conformism,” comments Lloyd. “V resists by directly attacking government installations and murdering the regime’s supporters. So it’s not just a story about a battle against an evil tyranny, but a story about terrorism and whether terrorism can ever be justified – and that’s something we have to try to understand if we’re ever to solve the problem of it in the real world.
Acclaimed writer / directors Andy and Larry Wachowski, the inspired minds behind the revolutionary Matrix trilogy, were fans of Moore and Lloyd’s original work, and first wrote a screen adaptation of the graphic novel in the mid-1990s, before embarking on the Herculean task of filming the Matrix trilogy. During post-production on the second and third installments of The Matrix, the Wachowskis revisited the Vendetta script and brought it to the attention of their first assistant director, James McTeigue, with whom they had worked on all three Matrix films.
McTeigue had been directing commercials at the time and was looking to transition to feature films. “We were in post-production on Revolutions when Andy and Larry first gave me a copy of V for Vendetta,” remembers McTeigue. Intrigued and excited about the themes of the graphic novel, he shared the Wachowskis’ view of its relevance in the current political landscape. “We felt the novel was very prescient to how the political climate is at the moment. It really showed what can happen when society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice of the people. I don’t think it’s such a big leap to say that things like that can happen when leaders stop listening to the people.”
At the time, the Wachowskis had just reached the end of a 10-year odyssey with the Matrix films and were not prepared to immediately jump back into directing. As McTeigue explains, “Ten years is a long time to spend on anything, and making films takes a lot out of you. I think Andy and Larry wanted the film to be made now, but wanted to take a back seat for awhile.”
So the Wachowskis and producer Joel Silver offered their longtime colleague the opportunity to direct V For Vendetta, surrounded by many of the Wachowskis’ other key collaborators, such as producer Grant Hill, production designer Owen Paterson, visual effects supervisor Dan Glass and stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski, with the brothers collaborating as producers and writers.
In returning to the script, the Wachowskis went back to their original draft and set about making revisions. As McTeigue recalls, “Their original version was a really good adaptation, but it was almost a blow-for-blow retelling of the graphic novel. We thought it would be good to move the story forward in time, setting the flashback portion in the 1990s and projecting the present-day timeline into the future around 2020.”
Other key revisions included streamlining Moore and Lloyd’s storyline, altering Evey’s background and making her older than in the original material. “The graphic novel is quite sprawling and has a lot of characters,” McTeigue points out. “Some of those characters had to be amalgamated or taken out, but all the while we made sure we were adhering to the themes and integrity of the graphic novel.”
The adaptation process was made easier by the cinematic way in which Lloyd and Moore constructed the original novel, with traditional ‘thought balloons’ replaced with captions, and rectangular panels substituted for splashy layouts. Lloyd feels the Wachowski screenplay adaptation was a good representation of the original. “I never had a purist concept of Vendetta as just a comic,” he remembers. “It always felt like an idea that could be transposed to other forms of media. In any of my work, the only expectation and desire is that the spirit and key elements are retained and the same essential message is captured.”
The filmmakers were adamant that V’s enduring mystery remain intact, and in reverence to Moore and Lloyd’s novel and richly drawn character, in the film V’s horribly burned and disfigured face remains hidden behind a mask that carries the visage of Guy Fawkes, another legendary saboteur who came to a violent end over four hundred years ago…
On November 5th, 1605, Fawkes was captured beneath the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder hidden beneath pieces of iron and firewood. While tortured, Fawkes revealed an audacious conspiracy to blow up the English Parliament and King James I on a day when the King was due to open the parliamentary session.
Fawkes was one of 13 disaffected Catholics who hoped to end James’ persecution of English Catholics. The intent was to create chaos and disorder in the country from which, it was hoped, a new monarch and political regime sympathetic to the Catholic cause would emerge. A veteran soldier, Fawkes was highly proficient with gunpowder and so became an integral part of the group’s scheme.
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Natalie Portman as Evey and Hugo Weaving as V in V For Vendetta.
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