The 2006 classic comic book movie 5 for Vendetta will exist remembered for 2 things. The get-go is for inspiring the online vigilante network Anonymous to use the famous Guy Fawkes mask every bit their symbol. The 2nd is for generally existence a really expert flick, albeit one with drastic differences from its source material. Adapted from the 1989 graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore, the movie was well written, masterfully directed, and featured a cast of powerhouse actors. Names attached to the production included Stephen Fry, the Wachowski siblings, and the late, great John Injure.

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Its tale of revolution in the face of a decadent fascist government was a variant from the original love letter of the alphabet to riot that Moore had penned, only was notwithstanding entertaining enough for mainstream crowds and had enough subtle nuance to impress critics. Only no film production of this scale can resist having some special secrets, hidden symbols, and bizarre on-set stories that even hard die-hard fans don't know about. While no corporeality of surprises can overshadow the picture show'south impact, it'southward ever interesting to explore how a flick is fabricated, especially 1 that left such a vast cultural impact. Although be warned, there will exist spoilers.

15 V WAS PLAYED Past FOUR Dissimilar ACTORS

Most credit Hugo Weaving for bringing the masked vigilante V to life with his magnetic voice piece of work and an only slightly exaggerated physical performance. But while Weaving ended up beingness the only vox of Five, the character itself was originally played by James Purefoy. Purefoy lasted only six weeks into shooting earlier quitting, saying that he couldn't go along to wearable the mask through the rest of shooting. Weaving was brought into the projection, only Purefoy's scenes were kept and dubbed over to relieve time and money.

Along with Weaving and Purefoy, ii stunt doubles were involved with V'due south performance. Republic of chad Stahelski played him in the Larkhill scene where the double really had to walk through existent burn down and David Leitch, a fight coordinator, played him during the Victoria Station fight, where instead of shooting in slow motion, he moved at normal speed and anybody else moved slowly to save money.

fourteen SECURITY WAS INSANELY TIGHT

Safety is a concern with almost every movie production. There are so many dangers and things that could go wrong that massive amounts of money are spent on security and harsh limitations on shooting are put in place. This was particularly true for V for Vendetta. Each and every person who worked on the moving picture, from the pb actors to the graphic artists, were subjected to rigorous background checks and all weapons, props or otherwise, were heavily regulated.

Scenes that required the crew to shoot around Parliament and Big Ben could only be shot in select, early hours and they had very limited command over traffic to prevent any inspired fans from attempting a terrorist strike on the British government. The decommissioned tanks used for the catastrophe stand up-off were inspected frequently to ensure they hadn't been weaponized or altered and were constantly guarded past armed officers.

xiii ALAN MOORE WANTED NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

Alan Moore has duel reputations as 1 of the about brilliant comic book writers of the modern era and as a crazy guy who looks like a nineteenth century fur trapper. Prior to Vendetta, Moore had experienced his piece of work being made into films with his comics From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen being adapted previously to disastrous results. Moore was so against the idea of Vendetta being turned into a film that he surrendered his check and creator credits to artist David Lloyd.

After the film's release, Moore gave scathing interviews where he lambasted what managing director James McTeigue had washed to his cosmos. His main criticism was how the film had been, for lack of a better discussion, "Americanized". Moore's original critique of contemporary British politics had been converted into a subtly anti-Bush propaganda piece and he was having none of it.

12 THE ORIGINAL GUY FAWKES WASN'T A MASTERMIND, Only A LACKEY

The film, comic volume, and those who utilize the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol for anarchy all portray the 16th century English soldier as a patron for rebellion, transparency, and equality. Just that's far from the truth. In reality, Guy Fawkes was an English Cosmic during the reign of the radically Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. With Catholicism banned in England, Fawkes traveled to Espana where he fought with them confronting the Protestant Dutch during the Fourscore Years War.

Information technology was merely after returning to England that he joined the underground Catholic coalition which would eventually undertake the infamous Gunpowder Plot. But Fawkes wasn't the mastermind behind the programme, in fact information technology had already been designed long before he was added to the grouping. His sole role was to guard the gunpowder underneath Parliament until it was time to strike, and he couldn't fifty-fifty do that right.

eleven NATALIE PORTMAN STUDIED EXTENSIVELY FOR HER Role

Natalie Portman is one of the most professional actresses working in the manufacture today, and she's got the awards to prove it. She'south likewise a Harvard grad and therefore no stranger to intensive studying. In that sense, her performance in V For Vendetta must accept felt like going back to schoolhouse. Determined to give the about in-depth performance possible, Portman read multiple biographies of Guy Fawkes and his conspirators, studied the nascence and growth of various fascist and extremist movements, and researched several real-life agitator uprisings.

All to become into the mindset of a person who could be indoctrinated into a vigilante lifestyle. To cover for her American accent, Portman worked with famed Hollywood linguist Barbara Berkery. Certainly actors are known for preparing for their roles, but Portman's dedication to perfecting her operation is non unappreciated.

x IT SPARKED LEGITIMATE CONTROVERSY IN PARLIAMENT

It's not oftentimes that a blockbuster picture show can merits it caused genuine political strife by its sheer production. The film was shot in 2004 and 2005 during the menstruum when Labor political party politician Tony Blair was Prime Minister of Britain. When people became curious as to how the production was able to shoot effectually the Parliament buildings, admitting at inconvenient times, it came to light that Blair'southward son Euan worked every bit a runner for the product company.

Histrion Stephen Fry insinuated that it was this connexion that allowed for shoots in and around government buildings. Despite the studio promptly denying these allegations, Blair'south conservative opponents had a field day publicly skewering him in the press, calling the nepotistic claw-upwards unfair, hypocritical, and unpatriotic because the film'due south themes and visuals. All over a comic volume motion picture.

9 IT WAS FILLED WITH SUBTLE REFERENCES TO BRITISH Civilization

British culture is a fascinating bailiwick as information technology is more or less a combination between ancestral patriotism and an amalgam of other cultures from around the old empire. Since Five for Vendetta is so mired in its British setting, it would make sense for there to exist a few call outs to the island nation. Simply information technology's impressive merely how many cultural cameos made an appearance. The music on Deitrich's variety show is the classic "Yakety Sax" from The Benny Hill Bear witness.

The breakfast Evey is served, 'eggie in a basket,' is a British dish. The train used to blow upwards parliament is an actual Clandestine subway automobile. V'due south Shadow Gallery is filled with archetype pieces of British art and literature, including works by William Blake and John Waterhouse. At the terminate of the film, the first riots are reported in Brixton where actual agitator riots broke out in 1986.

eight HUGO WEAVING HAD TO PERFORM ALL HIS LINES TWICE

Hugo Weaving, the man backside Elrond in The Lord of the Rings series, Carmine Skull in the MCU, Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy, and Megatron in those cinematic eye-shredders called the Transformers movies, is nil if non an incredibly versatile and engaging player. When he stepped in to play V after James Purefoy stepped down, Weaving encountered the same problem his predecessor did.

Namely, the Guy Fawkes mask intrinsic to the office was bulky and difficult to speak through. A new mask was created with a built-in microphone that wove effectually the wearer'southward hairline and dropped down into the mouth, merely it apparently didn't choice up Weaving's voice properly. Once shooting was completed, Weaving had to re-record all of his lines in a sound studio, including dubbing over the scenes that had already been shot with Purefoy.

7 THE ORIGINAL SCORE PHYSICALLY SPELLED OUT 'V'Southward

Music is a vital part of flick, digenic and not-digenic. The score of a movie determines the tone, stakes, and adds emphasis to emotional moments. And sometimes, such as in the case of V for Vendetta, it can be used to hide hidden messages. The picture show itself is riddled with subtle and not-and so-subtle 'Five' symbols but it turns out the music itself, with its sharp decrescendos and crescendos, continuous falls and rises, physically spells out a series of '5's on the staff sheets.

The amazing thing isn't that the music can look like the intrinsic letter, only that information technology doesn't disrupt the score or the emotional tone of the moments when information technology's played. This ways that the letter is so innate to the story that even when information technology should disrupt proceedings, it non only doesn't ruin things but is and so subtle that it completely flies under the radar.

half-dozen THE FILM HAD BEEN PLANNED SINCE THE LATE '80S

V for Vendetta was immediately popular as a graphic novel. Later on all, the but thing comic book fans dear more than than comic books are high-art comic books that seemingly justify their enjoyment of the medium. As such, studios had been boot around the idea for a V for Vendetta picture since it first came out in 1989. The first official script for the film was written past Hilary Henkin in 1993 and was cited equally one of the best unproduced screenplays at the time.

For nearly a decade, the Henkin script was jostled effectually various product schedules, with the screenplay going through dozens of big and pocket-sized changes, Kenneth Branagh existence attached to the project at ane point, and the famous Wachowski siblings eventually forming their own script in between working on Matrix movies. Finally, it was picked upward for product in 2003 and the remainder is history.

five Almost OF THE Bandage LOVED WORKING ON IT

Picture show gossip is so prevalent in Hollywood that the industry of celebrity news is practically as old equally the artistic medium itself. And with such a stacked cast, V for Vendetta could easily have been a breeding ground for juicy, eye-catching tidbits of actor feuds and studio-driven creative differences. Fortunately, this was not the case and most of the cast and crew universally reported enjoying the production.

John Hurt compared working on the film to his positive experiences working on 1984 and Aliens. Natalie Portman was very public virtually how she felt she was able to actually sink her teeth into her role and had been looking forwards to her head shaving scene for some time. Stephen Fry in particular seemed enamored with the product, gushing unironically in an interview about how he e'er wanted to be in an action film and go beaten upwardly onscreen.

4 THE WACHOWSKIS HAD LESS TO Practise WITH THE MOVIE THAN YOU THINK

Ane of the major draws of Five for Vendetta was that it was written by the famed Wachowskis who were nevertheless riding the massive success of The Matrix even later its lackluster sequels. The ii were apparently fans of the original comic and had written their own version of the script in the mid-'90s. Though it was drastically dissimilar from the Hilary Henkin script that had been hopping around Hollywood circles for years, it was selected for the motion picture nonetheless.

However, once it formally left the Wachowskis' easily, information technology was almost immediately re-edited by James McTeigue and the studio, cutting scenes, switching some around, and in some cases redesigning the plot entirely. This is nil new in Hollywood, studio interference is practically 50% of the pic, but information technology does hateful that the Wachowskis had virtually nada input into the motion-picture show for the vast bulk of it's production.

3 THE DOMINO SCENE WAS THE HARDEST ONE TO SHOOT

V for Vendetta is filled with busy, difficult to shoot scenes. The fast paced and action-packed center of the film meant thousands of cuts, fades, and transitions had to exist edited together, some all at the aforementioned fourth dimension. And so you might retrieve that the about difficult scene to shoot was a fight scene or an explosion or a i-shot take. Just nope, according to the coiffure the hardest scene to shoot was the domino scene, where shots of 5'due south plans coming together are pieced over the visual of him setting up hundreds of colored dominos to fall in the germination of his symbol.

The scene used 22,000 dominoes and professional domino assemblers (a real matter patently) were hired to set up it upwards. Information technology took them over 200 hours to set the scene, which had to be shot several times to get different angles of the dominos falling.

ii FILLED WITH HOMAGES TO ANARCHIC AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY

Despite the pic distinctly moving away from the graphic novel's themes of chaos in favor of a more than freedom-oriented credo, the Five for Vendetta movie still shows respect for its rebellious source fabric with dozens of subtle references to bodily anarchy and existential philosophers and icons. For starters, the score samples tracks from British anarchy ring the Sex Pistols, including their anthem "Anarchy in the United kingdom."

V paraphrases a quote from American feminist-anarchist Emma Goldman when he dances with Evey. His library in the Shadow Gallery includes visible entries by famed existentialists Friedrich Nietzsche and Sir George Frazer. Even the line he quotes from The Count of Monte Cristo is a veiled reference to nihilism. The motto on V's mirror, which he claims is from Faust, is actually a proverb from occultist Aleister Crowley explaining the core concept of absurdism.

one SO. MANY. '5'Southward.

Part of the fun of any movie is the niggling subconscious winks and symbols that the filmmakers exit audiences. And for V for Vendetta, the unabridged point of the moving picture seems to have been to see how many 'V'south the director could besprinkle into every single scene. Apart from the titular character, 'Five'south announced on the scar on Evey'due south forehead, in the bloodstain V leaves on the wall of the train station, in the fireworks from the devastation of government buildings, in different flower arrangements.

V is also the roman numeral for five so the number makes frequent appearances also, such as on all of 5'south records in his jukebox and when he hums Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Notably, every single analog clock in the picture is set to xi:05, regardless of the time, to form a V with a hour and minute hand.

Which of these facts blew your heed the most? Allow us know in the comments!

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About The Author

Mason Segall (75 Manufactures Published)

Introduced to and influenced by comics from a young historic period, Mason Segall has long-since reveled in the narrative, commercial, and creative potential of the graphic medium. He started with superhero comics, simply quickly discovered Neil Gaiman's Sandman series which lead him to research contained and art house comic titles. To this solar day, his favorite comic lines are Saga (yes, he is hype for its return), X-Men (Gold and Blue, Red looks promising as well), and, of course, Sandman. Granted, these favorites have a trend to change month to month, just hey, that'due south the managing multiple serialized narratives for yous. Later on graduating from Bard College with a degree in written arts, he began his journey as a professional writer by joining the CBR squad as a list writer, where he specializes in observations most meta-narrative, adaptations, and obscure comics.

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