March 17, 2006: “V for Vendetta” Debuts In Film

March 17, 2006: V for Vendetta premieres, one of several movies featuring Hugo Weaving with his face obscured. It was supposed to be released on November 5, 2005, the 400th Anniversary of the failed Gunpowder Plot that the film's plot cites, but the London bombings the previous July 7 made the producers decide it was too soon.

It is rather different from the Alan Moore graphic novel which inspired it -- enough that Moore, as he usually does, disavowed the film version of his work, so that only one "co-writer" was listed in the credits. For one thing, the Chancellor, the deeply religious but weak Adam Susan, was one of the less important villains in the novel. In the film, he becomes the truly ruthless demagogue Adam Sutler, the name a portmanteau of "Susan" and "Hitler." It was weird to see John Hurt go from playing Winston Smith in the best-known film version of George Orwell’s 1984 to playing, essentially, Big Brother.

Another difference is that Evey Hammond started the graphic novel as 16 years old, desperate but still relatively innocent. When the film starts, she's 25, has a job, and lives decently (though oppressed) on her own, and already pretty jaded. As Evey, Natalie Portman was not ripped for her fake British accent as much as Anne Hathaway was for hers in One Day.

We never see V's face, even though he takes his mask off once, and we never learn his true identity. Given the time-frame -- the St. Mary's virus occurs in 2018, 13 years in the future when it was filmed -- I thought, perhaps, "V" meant that King William V had been deposed, imprisoned, and experimented upon. (Prince William was 23 and Duke of Cambridge during filming, and would have been 56 at the time of the film's November 5, 2038 climax.) 

There's a lot of things in this film which make no sense – mainly that a totalitarian government capable of subduing a nation of 65 million people (Britain) probably wouldn’t have become so incompetent in just 20 years.

Then again, the same thing happened in Star Wars, which, like V for Vendetta, remains one of my top 5 favorite films of all time. Like Star Wars, V for Vendetta is a film for anyone who has ever wanted to see a bully get what's coming to him -- whether an individual (Grand Moff Tarkin, Chancellor Sutler, Lewis Prothero as played by Roger Allam, Peter Creedy as played by Tim Pigott-Smith) or an entire government (the Galactic Empire, Sutler's Norsefire).

What's more, we now know that 100,000 people dying from a virus in 2018 wouldn’t scare America – because over 10 times that many died from one in 2020-21, and instead of scaring Americans into rejecting an incumbent government, the incumbent government lied and called it a hoax, and millions were stupid enough to believe that, and voted to re-elect that government – which was already Fascist. Fortunately, enough people voted against that government for other reasons. Unfortunately, four years later, enough people stayed home to allow that government back in.

By the way, the movie isn't really about V, or even Evey. It's about Inspector Eric Finch (Stephen Rea): The good guy who realizes he's been fighting for the bad guys, and, Spoiler Alert, in the end does the right thing. Which is nothing.

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March 17, 2006 was a Friday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 11 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Detroit Pistons, 105-103 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 92-89 at the Continental Airlines Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Washington Wizards, 104-94 at the MCI Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington.

* The Utah Jazz beat the Atlanta Hawks, 111-101 at the Philips Arena (now the State Farm Arena) in Atlanta.

* The Orlando Magic beat the Boston Celtics, 84-77 at the TD Waterhouse Center (formerly the Orlando Arena).

* The Memphis Grizzlies beat the Denver Nuggets, 116-102 at the FedEx Forum in Memphis. Mike Miller didn't start for the Grizzlies, but scored 41 points off the bench. Carmelo Anthony scored 33 in defeat for the Nuggets.

* The Toronto Raptors beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 97-96 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 99-84 at the Gund Arena (now the Rocket Arena) in Cleveland.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Sacramento Kings, 98-93 at the Conseco Fieldhouse (now the Gainbridge Fieldhouse) in Indianapolis.

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Phoenix Suns, 108-102 at the SBC Center (now the Frost Bank Center) in San Antonio Center.

* And the Los Angeles Clippers beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 99-89 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles.

And there were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders lost to the Florida Panthers, 4-2 at the BankAtlantic Center (now the Amerant Bank Arena) in the Miami suburb of Sunrise, Florida.

* The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-3 at the St. Pete Times Forum (now the Benchmark International Arena) in Tampa.

* The Vancouver Canucks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, 3-2 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus.

* And the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 2-1 at the United Center in Chicago.