But... V was insane. Like, straight-up cuckoo for Cocoapuffs flirting-with-statues insane.
He'd been driven mad, and the comic doesn't apologize for the terrible things he does to Evvy in an attempt to get her to see his point of view.
V is part of the system he rages against, because the system broke him and he's defined by that breaking.
The movie doesn't get that. Its V is a quirky antihero, not a broken terrorist.
You know the end of the movie where he blows up Parliament? In the comic blowing up Parliament is the conclusion to the first night Evvy meets him, the very first chapter.
But first he confronts that statue of blind Justice, calling her a two-timing cheater for having an affair with fascism, and telling her that he's seeing another woman now--Anarchy. Then he gives her a box of chocolates, which explodes.
Like, it's funny and scary and clever all at once, and more interested in allegory than story, and the art is beautiful but intensely oppressive, and it still ends with the hope that people can be good to each other even in the worst of circumstances.
It's still needlessly sleazy and leans too much on shock value for some of its messages, and it's speaking very specifically to the mid-80s. A "faithful" modern re-telling would fail because the shocks and themes are no longer appropriate for the audience.
But of the trifecta of mid-80s grimdark graphic novels (the others are DKR and Watchmen) that heralded and ushered in the New Era of Serious Comics, V for Vendetta is hands-down my favorite--which may be damning with faint praise.
And it didn't deserve being turned into a bland, generic anti-hero film bloated with its own self-congratulatory smugness for mentioning that contemporary hot-button topics exist.
As an example: our introduction to V has him swoop down to save our protagonist from being assaulted by officials and he recites a confusing monologue.
In the film, he delivers the monologue to Evey after defeating the attackers, and it's a rapid patter of largely meaningless consonance.
In the novel, he's quoting a particularly r🐘 Shakespearean passage while fighting the attackers, disorienting them and showing how he's smart, crazy, and theatrical, and leaving Evey an equally disconcerted onlooker.
And, well. The sheet music of this song was the opening for the midway point in the story, and that recording was sold as a record:
