Failed to stay true to the Graphic Novel

Rating: 1/10 (25 March 2006)

I am sure there will be a ton of people who will disagree with me on this, but I don't care I would still like to express my opinion. Well, here goes:
1) Dark City was fantastic and that made me think this director could pull it off since he was the assistant director on that film.
2) I enjoyed watching the first Matrix film. It was refreshing, I liked the action, and even though they bit off a lot of comics and the Dark City movie, it was an all around good effort.
3) Graphic Novels do not translate well onto film (sin city and 300 looks like the best efforts so far)
4) I read V for Vendetta numerous times and long before the film came out. A lot of people dismiss graphic novels for being childish and nerdy books that only teenagers read. This is a common misconception. Graphic Novels, especially Alan Moore's work, are very intelligent works of art.
5) Before I saw this movie I knew it was going to be ruined. Why? Because it's impossible to fit so many subplots in a movie. This isn't the part thats wrong, but it seemed like they made this movie because of whats going on in the world right now (Terrorism and War).
*Possible Spoilers*
6) The characters still seemed shallow compared to the characters in the Graphic Novel. I know its impossible to put all the subplots in this movie, but they cut out the most important ones. The whole train scene was cut out, the part where Finch goes to Larkhill and drops acid was cut out, and there was no such part when V met with Finch and Dascombe to tell them what the government was doing. They made one of the most beautiful scenes a wretched "controversial" part. When V comes to the doctor's house and when he tells her he "killed" her 5 minutes before while she was sleeping, she asks to see his face one more time before she dies and he does and she says, "Beautiful" right before she passes.
7) I'm not just nit-picking every little thing, I am a film major at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan (not intended to sound snobby), so film, or Cinematography in this case, is my passion so I studied the elements of cinema and I consider myself very knowledgeable in this medium. I was still able to look at this film as a whole (not just story wise but entertainment wise also) and I still didn't think it was a very good film. V's lines seemed to fly past and not stick with me and even the most memorable lines didn't give me goosebumps like in the Graphic Novel.
8) It's just tough to transform graphic novels into good films, even the works of Alan Moore. Filmmakers things that just because its so great means it will be great on film. Time and Space are so much different in graphic novels than they are in films. You take your time with graphic novels and in this film everything is sort of just thrown at you.
9) There is very little action in the graphic novel. If you read it again very carefully you will notice that there aren't many fighting scenes etc. Which makes me think that they were thinking about how they can make more money in ticket sales while writing the script rather than writing a more heart-felt story.
10) Natalie Portman is a great actress, but her beauty got in the way of her character. Someone less stunning, in my opinion should have played this role. The whole time I was staring at Natalie, but not really paying attention to what she was saying...I mean shes F*****g, man.
Anyway, that's all I have to say. Whoever read this whole thing, Thanks for being patient, I hope some of you will agree with what I had to say. Take care.