Talk:V for Vendetta (film)/Workspace

The story is set in the near future, where Britain is ruled by a totalitarian regime called Norsefire. It follows the tale of Evey Hammond, a young woman who is rescued from state police by a masked vigilante known as "V". Upon rescuing her, V shows her his spectacular destruction of the Old Bailey. The regime explains the incident to the public as a planned demolition. But this is proven to be a lie, when V takes over the government news station the next day. He broadcasts a message telling all of Britain the truth and to rise up with him against their oppressors one year from now on November 5, where V will destroy Parliament. Evey, who coincidentally works at the station, ends up helping V escape and the two head to V's lair. She is told that she must stay in hiding with him for her safety. But upon learning that V is killing government officials, she escapes to the home of one of her superiors. Unfortunately, the state police raid the home shortly after and Evey must escape again. This time Evey is caught, tortured for days and eventually threatened with execution unless she tells them about the whereabouts of V. An exhausted Evey says she would rather die, and surprisingly, is then released. Evey finds that she has been in V's lair all along, and that the event was staged by V in order to make her feel what he himself has gone through, and to truly believe the need to oppose the oppressors. Evey hates V for it, but eventually understands and is transformed mentally from the experience. She leaves V, promising to return before his attack.

Meanwhile, Inspector Finch, through his investigation of V, eventually learns how the regime came to power and about the origins of V. Years ago, an outbreak of a disease occurred killing over 100,000 people in England. Miraculously, a group of ultra-conservatives (Norsefire) devised a cure and were heralded as the nation's saviours. This group was elected into office with a landslide, and quickly turned it into the totalitarian state it is today. However, the disease itself was actually created by the group, as part of a ploy to gain power. The disease was engineered through experimentation on "social deviants", and political dissidents at Larkhill prison. V was one of prisoners and, instead of dying, gained heightened mental and physical abilities from the treatments. V eventually escapes, destroys the prison, and vows to have his revenge upon the regime for the crimes they've committed.

As November 5 nears, V's various schemes cause chaos in Britain, as the population grows more and more subversive to government authority. On the eve of November 5, V is visited again by Evey, whom he shows a subway train he has filled with explosives in order to destroy Parliament through an abandoned tunnel. He defers the final act to destroy Parliament, however, to Evey due to his belief that the ultimate decision should not come from him. He then leaves to meet Creedy, who as part of an earlier agreement, has agreed to bring V the Chancellor in exchange for V's surrender. Creedy kills the Chancellor in front of V, but unfortunately for Creedy, V does not surrender and instead kills Creedy and his men. V is mortally wounded in the process, and returns to Evey who thanks her, dies, and then is put on the subway car with the explosives in a Viking-esque funeral. Evey is about to release the train, when she is found by Inspector Finch. But due to learning what he has about the regime, Finch allows Evey to proceed. During this time, almost every citizen in London has marched to Parliament to watch the event, all wearing Guy Fawkes masks delivered citywide by V himself. (The military was originally ordered to stop them, but hastily stood down). Soon, Parliament is destroyed in a dazzling spectacle set to the 1812 Overture. On a nearby rooftop Evey and Finch watch the scene together and hope for a better tomorrow.

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The story opens with the recounting of Guy Fawkes and his attempt to destroy the British Parliament, which was prevented by his arrest on 5 November 1605. The narrative moves to present day (November 4, the year isn't specified, but is probably around 2019) where government spokesman Lewis Prothero gives a speech showing England to be ruled by a religiously fascist regime.

Evey Hammond, a young woman who breaks curfew, is caught on the street by members of the secret police, known as "fingermen." They are about to rape Evey when a man dressed in black, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and armed with a set of daggers, intervenes by either incapacitating or killing the fingermen. The man introduces himself to Evey as V and takes her to a London rooftop to show her an event. As the clock strikes midnight at the start of the fifth of November, Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" begins playing through the city's PA system and the citizens of London go outside, astounded, to listen to the symphony. In the symphony's climax, the Old Bailey is blown up in a spectacular display of fireworks.

The Norsefire regime, the totalitarian regime of Britain headed by High Chancellor Adam Sutler, explains the destruction of The Old Bailey as a voluntary act of emergency demolition on the part of the government. The police are also dispatched to find Evey, who was identified based on closed-circuit television images showing her in the company of V.

Later on during the day (November 5th), V takes control of the state controlled British Television Network (BTN) by threatening to bomb it. V plays a recorded message in which he declares that he was responsible for the destruction of the Old Bailey, and urges the populace to take a look at their government and rise up with him a year from today, on 5 November 2020, when he will destroy the Parliament building. Coincidentally, Evey works at the BTN. The police under Chief Inspector Eric Finch arrive at the BTN originally with the intent of arresting Evey, but ends up dealing with V instead. V is soon stopped by Lt. Dominic at gunpoint, but Evey maces the officer. Evey is rendered unconscious by the detective, who is himself subdued by V. V takes the unconscious Evey with him.

Evey awakens in V's underground lair, the "Shadow Gallery", which is richly stocked with literature and works of art that he has "reclaimed" from the censors. He explains to her that she will need to remain with him for the next year, because even the limited information she has about him could conceivably allow the police to locate his den.

V begins killing people, starting with Lewis Prothero, the Norsefire talking head. Finch tries to deduce V's identity based on his victim selection. Finch begins to suspect a cover-up, as the victims all appear to be tied to a former detention facility, whose records are conspicuously absent from the government archives. Evey spends an indeterminate amount of time with V, learning, among other things, that he has been heavily scarred in a fire. She eventually volunteers to assist V in one of his missions, apparently in order to escape. She dresses as a young girl to gain access to a bishop with a fetish for young girls. This makes V's assault possible, but when V attacks the bishop, Evey flees. She hides with Gordon Dietrich, one of her former superiors at BTN, whom Evey had planned to meet before she was attacked at the beginning of the film. He shows her his collection of contraband and reveals that he is a closeted homosexual who has been forced underground by the Norsefire regime; he tells her that if his house is ever searched, the charge of harboring a fugitive will be the least of his problems, and invites her to stay.

Finch's investigation proceeds, albeit slowly. Speaking with the coroner about one of V's victims, he mentions that V has been leaving a rose with each victim. Recalling that the coroner had once been a botanist, he shows her one of the flowers. She appears rattled, but passes it off by saying that she had thought that breed of rose extinct. At night she is awakened by the appearance of V in her bedroom; she knows V's identity and apologizes to him before V kills her. Finch, having just discovered that the last surviving senior officer from the detention facility is actually the coroner, hurries to her home, but arrives too late to save her. Finch finds and reads her diary, and brings it to the Norsefire council, where Sutler commands him to destroy it and forget its contents. The diary tells the story of the detention camp's medical experiments, which were focused on germ warfare. Almost all of the prisoners died from the experiments. But one, housed in cell 5 (marked with a Roman numeral "V"), not only survived the experiments but appeared to gain unusual strength and agility. He apparently destroys the camp through some type of explosion and escapes.

Gordon produces an episode of his show that mocks both the V plot and the Chancellor, reasoning that his popularity will protect him from any truly dreadful consequences. When the police raid his house anyway and attack Gordon, Evey escapes, but is captured by a man in a police commando's uniform. She is held prisoner, shaved, tortured, and interrogated for information concerning V but refuses to divulge anything. She derives strength from a letter she finds hidden in the cell wall. It is the autobiography of Valerie, a former prisoner incarcerated and presumably executed for being a lesbian. When given one last chance to inform on V to escape her execution, Evey says she'd prefer to die. The policeman, who has been hidden in the shadows throughout her interrogations, tells her that her lack of fear makes her free and leaves, leaving the door open. She emerges from the jail cell to find that she has been in V's lair all this time. V has manufactured the entire experience except for the letter from Valerie, which he found in much the same way she did. He wanted Evey to understand his motivations, and to come to grips with her own fear. Evey is very angry at V, but her anger dies down and she recovers and is transformed mentally from the experience. She leaves, promising to see him again before his final attack.

Finch formulates a theory that the diseases researched at the detention centre became the biological weapons used in the terror attacks that propelled Norsefire into power, and that the attacks themselves were staged by Norsefire party members. He is contacted by a man claiming to be the last surviving fingerman involved in the plot. At the man's suggestion, Finch puts Creedy under heavy surveillance. Later, V breaks into Creedy's house and convinces him that Sutler is planning his assassination, based on the surveillance. Creedy agrees to help V take out Sutler when the time comes as relations between Sutler and Creedy worsen considerably. Shortly thereafter Finch discovers that the purported agent has been dead for roughly 20 years, and that V had conned him into investigating Creedy; it is not clear whether the conspiracy theory was true nonetheless or if Finch was merely duped by V. V soon sends "hundreds of thousands" of Guy Fawkes masks to Londoners through the mail. The resulting explosion of "V" sightings puts the nation on edge. Sutler orders a propaganda initiative to remind the population why they need the state and to subdue it through fear again. However, (probably as V planned) out of desperation the state-run propaganda starts spewing out so many alarmist reports, so fast that the populace begins to realize they are being lied to. Finch predicts that under this climate, someone will eventually do "something stupid," bringing chaos, but admits that he doesn't know how to stop V's plan. His predictions prove correct when a fingerman shoots a child wearing a Fawkes mask, setting off a riot.

Evey reappears as promised on the evening of November 4th. After a short dance between the two, V shows her the explosive-laden Tube train he plans to detonate under the Parliament Building, explaining that he has repaired and cleared the unused track in the past ten years for this purpose. He defers the decision whether to destroy the building to her. V feels that he is part of the old world, which along with Sutler's regime is about to be swept away, and Evey is part of the new world that is to come: the people of this new world should have the freedom to decide their own fate, not him. He then leaves to meet Creedy, who (as promised) has abducted Sutler. Creedy shoots Sutler in front of V even as Sutler's prerecorded speech is being broadcast to thousands of empty homes. V then kills Creedy and his men, suffering mortal injuries in the process. V manages to return to Evey, where he dies in her arms after professing his love for her. Evey places V's body on the train, covering it ceremonially with his trademark roses, for a Viking funeral. Finch eventually locates Evey and the train, but allows Evey to send the train on its way. Above ground, hordes of Londoners dressed as Guy Fawkes advance on Westminster. The armed forces, which had been deployed to stop V's anticipated attack, receive no orders from the Chancellery and, at the last moment, stand down rather than open fire on the civilians. Evey takes Finch up on a roof to watch the explosions as V's train detonates, destroying the Houses of Parliament amid the resounding notes of the 1812 Overture as it again plays over the public address system, signaling the eternal legacy of V.