Why V From V For Vendetta Sounds So Familiar

In a film in which the main character is masked, there's an added element of mystery. Eliminating the ability to put a human face to a character's actions and voice is an incredibly powerful storytelling tool, and requires imagination on the part of the audience. Who is beneath the disguise? What do they look like? These questions hold especially true for a movie like 2005's V for Vendetta, in which the allure of the protagonist is tied to his ambiguous nature.

The film largely centers around Evey (Natalie Portman), a young girl living in the neo-fascist, totalitarian United Kingdom. She first encounters the secretive V during a confrontation with a group of London's secret police. The two stick together, and for the movie's 132-minute running time, the anarchist vigilante never once reveals his face to her. Naturally, as he continues to appear on the screen, curiosity grows as to who is under the Guy Fawkes mask. V's voice was familiar to many, prompting fans to wonder who was responsible for bringing Alan Moore's creation to life on the big screen.

The character of V had a bit of a rough go in his translation to the big screen. Originally, James Purefoy took on the role but never finished his run, departing from the project after six weeks of filming. Cinema icon Hugo Weaving was brought in as his replacement both physically and verbally, finishing Purefoy's remaining scenes and re-dubbing the lines that had been completed before the switch. As a result, Weaving received the credit as the character, with Purefoy getting no recognition in the end.

The Wachowskis made a great choice in bringing Weaving in to play V. By then, he'd more than proven himself as a capable and flexible hand in front of the camera. He could be heroic as Lord Elrond in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series, but his real strength lies in his villainous chops, as his other team up with the Wachowskis — the Matrix trilogy — proved without a doubt. He further solidified himself as a top Hollywood antagonist as Red Skull in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger (but not in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War), and as Megatron in Michael Bay's Transformers films. His work as V, both in terms of his physicality and his voice, helped bring the mysterious anti-authoritarian to compelling life in what shaped up to be one of the better adaptations of Alan Moore's work ever made.