F for Freedom

Comic book movies are always a toss-up. You can never be sure what you're going to get. It could be a wonderful story, well written and acted with good special effects (see Spiderman 2.)

Then again, it could be a horrible schlockfest full of terrible cliches, garish costuming and low-budget special effects (see The Fantastic Four -no, no, not that one with Jessica Alba. The one from 1993. It was so bad that Marvel and the production company fought to make sure it was never released - but some copies leaked out, as putrefying ooze is wont to do!)

These days we've entered a kind of weird comic/movie nirvana where Marvel can seem to do no wrong and D.C. (the comic book company home of Batman and Superman) is on the right track. Spiderman is running on all cylinders. The X-Men franchise is worthy of a character called Juggernaught. Batman has indeed begun, and this summer Jor-El's baby boy will escape a doomed Krypton and once again crash into a Kansas farm field.

With all that money flying around in Hollywood, it's bound to inspire some projects getting the green light that otherwise might never have been put to celluloid (or DVD...or whatever it is you record stuff on when you shoot digitally.)

Enter "V for Vendetta."

Yes, for the uninitiated, V is actually a comic book adaptation. The story was originally produced as an installment (like a cliffhanger) strip in a comic anthology called "Warrior." Later, in about 1989 it came out all collected together in a graphic novel. I saw the film. It was enjoyable and while I don't necessarily agree with all of V's politics (the film indicates religion and moral codes as problematic in an open society), it was a good story.

The problem here is that it isn't the story that creator Alan Moore wrote. The film is produced by The Wachowski Brothers (those super-creative guys who brought you The Matrix) and even stars Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) as V.

V is a self-styled vigilante that is fighting against a fascist state in a not-too-distant future version of Britain. He wears that weird mask because it's a Guy Fawkes mask - one of the most original anarchist terrorists ever who tried to blow up the houses of Parliament in the 1600s with about a hundred barrels of black powder.

The government runs the media. The movie makes sure to point out that the USA is broken apart by civil war as a result of many things, including the Iraq war spiraling out of control into WW III. Eventually, V reaches the people and they overthrow the government. He is painted as a hero. But in Moore's version, V isn't a hero. He isn't a villain. He's a guy who disagrees with the government and blows up buildings to get his message across.

Is he a terrorist? Is he a freedom fighter? Moore wants to let the readers judge for themselves, and most importantly, think for themselves.

Hollywood, it seems, painted V as a freedom fighter championing the right to choose. The right to live one's own life (whether they disagree with the government by being a homosexual or not - as several disturbing scenes portray.) In the comic, V was a total anarchist - and he wanted the U.K. to be as well. In the film he only supports a more liberal form of government.

Ironically, by advocating a moral code where you do what's right by you, V is inviting anarchy - either on the page or the screen. Moore chose to write it one way, the Wachowskis chose to film it another way. Because here in the good old US of A, everybody already has freedom of speech.

And that's some good news.

(Scott Baughman writes feature and enterprise stories for The Gaffney Ledger. You can contact him via e-mail at: scottb@gaffneyledger.com)