I saw V for Vendetta on Saturday. If you are terribly attached to the comic, and feel like any departure will cause you pain, you should probably skip it. The other side of that is, if you thought it was going to be something like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, it's not. Spoilers will, of course, follow.

We'll go over some of the changes first. When I heard they were doing this way back when, I figured it'd be set in the U.S. and V. would wear a Tom Paine mask (not that anyone would recognize him, either, but you know what I mean), so I've gotta give them credit for being as faithful as they were. The plots for the tertiary characters (the wives, for example) are completely gone, which doesn't surprise me. Evey is more active, which is completely reasonable and probably necessary. It is not as totally anarchistic as the book, but... the people I saw it with hadn't read the comic, and they seemed to get the idea loud and clear. So I think it's one of those things where, if it was as strident as the book, people would be whining that we got it the first five times. The climax is fairly different and less complicated. It also includes a lovely sequence where Stephen Rea lays out the chain of events, past and future, and honestly when I see it again it'll largely be to see those five or so minutes again. Oh, and to stay through the credits. Yes, it is a tad more uplifting and optimistic at the end, but the movie overall is wandering through such disturbing territory that I'm still kind of agog at it. V himself is less completely insane, which is a bit of a bummer but again, understandable since in a movie we're essentially trapped with the guy for two hours. It is a shame that his conversation with Justice is omitted, since I'm partial to that bit and it's not like the movie doesn't have plenty of speechifying. Ah well.

The fact that most of the reviews are polarized is interesting to me. The comments on fansites are also interesting, and similarly split. Although, as usual, some are veering toward nitpickery and missing the point. There seems to be a lot of irritation at the fact that in one scene, V is wearing a flowery apron while cooking. Here's my take on that: it was really fucking funny. The end.

Oh yes, and the "eggy in a basket" thing is peculiar, but here's the thing: they wanted Gordon and V and Evey's mom to have all made the same breakfast for her. And for her to notice that similarity. Maybe there's something that would have been more British while still being distinctive enough to create that link, or maybe that link wasn't important enough to bother about; those are reasonable objections. But it seems a little odd for Moore himself, among others, to complain that it's not a typical English breakfast when that was kind of the point.

Shallow comments: It's a very talky (preachy, if you like) movie, despite what the ads would have you believe. There are only a couple of action scenes, and one is a bit Matrix-y for no good reason. And of course, some explosions. I'd swear that there's a very pretty stuff-blowing-up-real-good shot that's in the ads but not the movie, but it's possible that I blinked and missed it. At the show I was at, there was a dad with two kids in the row behind us, and I had to wonder what they were expecting. But I'm pretty sure it's not what they got. If you want a big action-extravaganza movie to watch while you munch popcorn, this isn't it.

If you're uneasy about a movie where the protagonist enthuses about blowing up buildings as a symbolic act, I can understand that. One of the people I saw it with said that she enjoyed the movie, but it felt like having someone pick at a scab. I suppose the movie might be trying to cover too much in too little time, but it's such a pleasant experience to come out of the theater thinking about something. I think it's probably easy to misread -- it looks like some people are taking it as "Hey, look, fascism is bad!" And so if you read it that way, you're going to be understandably annoyed and feel like you're being talked down to. But I don't think that's the message at all. I think that's assumed. I think the question is a much dicier one: what do you do when presented with fascism? You could, after all, set the story in Baghdad, or Kabul. If that changes your feelings about what V does, it's worth figuring out why.

Oh, one thing which is either getting missed, or else I'm misunderstanding it -- there's a bit where a disguised V gives Finch some information about his government's past misdeeds. Finch eventually finds out who gave him this information, and is furious about being tricked. But the key to that sequence for me is that it is a trick. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe what V was describing was the simple truth. I think it's much more interesting if it isn't, and that Finch is so angry because he believed it. He believed that the people he worked with could have done what V outlined. Because that's the heart of it, for me -- he believed that the government he worked for could have slaughtered thousands of people for political mileage. His faith was tested, and failed the test. Finch lost his ideals to parallel Evey finding hers. I don't know if that was intentional or my own projection; it's something I'll have to reconsider when I see it again. If it's all in my head I'm okay with that, but I find that idea much more interesting.

So. I enjoyed it and experienced a disturbing feeling for the Wachowski brothers that I shall have to term "respect." Which is unsettling. I'm rereading the comic now, before seeing the movie again -- I deliberately didn't reread it before the first viewing since I didn't want to spend my time going, "Oh, that's wrong."

In jarringly unrelated news, I've been horribly obsessed with Avernum 4. I've been comparing it to a D&D game, which it kind of is, but actually it's more like Zelda. Sort of. The graphics aren't great, which they're up-front about, but that's very low on my priority list. It's Zelda-like in that there is a story. As you run around killing monsters and gaining abilities, you're also learning about a conspiracy, and taking part in lots of little side-adventures with recurring characters, in addition to furthering the main plot. If what you see in the link looks at all appealing, I recommend it -- it's shareware and so you can play the first, I dunno, fifth of the game (which is several hours worth) before deciding if you want to pay for the full game. If you like it but aren't sure it's worth the cash: it really is massive. I played through the free part, ordered it a month ago (and started over with new charcters) and I think I'm about two-thirds of the way through now. So I think at $25, it's going to wind up being quite cheap at a per-hour-of-play rate. If you like that kind of thing.

Soemething I meant to mention from the Sunday paper a while ago:

This is just appalling. And, like many appalling things, complicated. Several American Indian tribes filed a class-action lawsuit against the Department of the Interior for mismanaging trust funds. These trust funds were created in the 1880s, for hundreds of thousands of individual tribe members who were supposed to be given shares of the money earned from natural resources on what had been tribal land. So we're talking billions of dollars. The numbers are in dispute, because the funds were such a mess that nobody can tell how much money was lost. It's been estimated that just figuring out what happened would cost $13 billion. The Indians are now considering settling the case for $27 billion, on the grounds that reconstructing the records is probably hopeless and a waste of money. All of this, while horrifying, is just the background. Because as part of all this, there was a court order requiring the Department of the Interior to pay $7 million to the Indians' lawyers and accountants as part of the court costs. The DOI found the money to do that by cutting other programs which benefit Indians. For real. $3 million came out of the BIA's budget.