COMIC CHARACTER:
V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and
illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom
imagined from the 1980s about the 1990s. A mysterious anarchist named "V" works
to destroy the totalitarian government, profoundly affecting the people he encounters.
The series is set in a near-future Britain after a limited nuclear war,
which has left much of the world destroyed. In this future, an extreme
fascist party called Norsefire has arisen and is now the ruling power.
"V", an anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, begins an
elaborate, violent, and theatrical campaign to bring down the government.
THE MOVIE:
A film adaptation was released on 17 March 2006, directed by James McTeigue
(first assistant director on The Matrix films) from a screenplay by the Wachowski
brothers. Natalie Portman stars as Evey Hammond and Hugo Weaving as V together
with Stephen Rea, John Hurt, and Stephen Fry. John Hurt, who played the renamed
High Chancellor Adam Sutler in the film V for Vendetta, also played Winston Smith
in the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell's novel, Nineteen-Eighty Four.
Originally slated for a 5 November 2005 release, to coincide with Guy Fawkes
Night and the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, it was postponed until
March, possibly due to the 7 July 2005 London bombings, although producers denied this was the reason
