"V for Vendetta" film posters and Alan Moore's Hollywood divorce

Posters for the movie "V for Vendetta" have been released and they really stand out (and not just due to the Portman factor) from the blandness of recent posters. They are very reminiscent of early 20th century recruitment and propaganda art. Great marketing artwork all around for a movie that may be tricky to market.

The film itself is about a rebel fighting against a fascist government in an Orwellian near-future society. The government calls him a terrorist, the people view him as a rebel hero. Natalie Portman plays a woman who starts out as a citizen but becomes an ally to Vendetta as she comes around to his viewpoint. The hero/rebel is played by Hugo Weaving, who has a genre-spanning resume including of Agent Smith (Matrix), Elrond (Lord of the Rings) and Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Natalie Portman hasn't been in a role like this since The Professional, where she first garnered rave reviews. With a director who honed his skill on The Matrix series and being produced by The Wachowskis Brothers, this is sure to be a good-looking, dynamic movie. Several films are being released with themes of rebellion against totalitarian governments (Serenity, Aeon Flux) and may be a response to the current political climate. And hopefully the situation involving the source material, which I cover in the bottom half of this post, won't dissuade you from checking out this interesting film.

Trailers - V for Vendetta
Credit: Egotastic!

I know, there's supposed to be a story and plot too, and the good news the source material is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore, one of the most acclaimed comic book writers in the business. The bad news is he wants nothing to do with the buggering thing.

Alan Moore is a powerhouse writer, one of the most successful, and often controversial, creators in modern comics. The genre-breaking Watchmen redefined the super-hero book and is beyond anything that pops into your head when you think "comic book". Top Ten is a police-procedural meets superhero books that reminded me of great TV shows like Homicide: Life on The Street, with the fact that the cops possess superpowers being a sidenote really. His work allowed an acceptance of mature-themed (stories that adults would read) comics and lead the way for works like Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan.

Of course, his works tend to get butchered when adapted into movies. I beg you to read the astounding League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and just forget there ever was a movie with that name. Just like you did with Highlander 2. You could spend hours upon hours tracking the literary cross-references in this book. Wikipedia covers Alan Moore's divorce from Hollywood:

Film adaptations of Moore's work also proved controversial. With From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore was content to allow the filmmakers to do whatever they wished and removed himself from the process entirely. "As long as I could distance myself by not seeing them," he said, he could profit from the films while leaving the original comics untouched, "assured no one would confuse the two. This was probably naive on my part."

Trouble arose when producer Martin Poll and screenwriter Larry Cohen filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox, alleging that the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen plagiarized their script entitled Cast of Characters. Although the two scripts bear many similarities, most of them are elements that were added for the film and do not originate in Moore's comics. According to Moore, "they seemed to believe that the head of 20th Century Fox called me up and persuaded me to steal this screenplay, turning it into a comic book which they could then adapt back into a movie, to camouflage petty larceny." Moore testified in court hearings, a process so painful that he surmised he would have been better treated having "sodomised and murdered a busload of children after giving them heroin." Fox's settlement of the case insulted Moore, who interpreted it as an admission of guilt.

Moore has publicly asked for his name to be taken off the credits of the Constantine, V for Vendetta and (in development)Watchmen films, as he wishes to have nothing to do with any film adaptations of his work where he does not own sole copyright and cannot prevent the films' production. In each case, Moore had his option money given to the artists involved.