I came upon a weird obsession that I just had to share. I love the movie 'V for Vendetta', which came out in 2005, and thought it appropriate to watch for July 4th this year. I remembered seeing a post from someone sharing info from Roger Ebert's website and review about the movie being set in 2020, but a google search will tell you 1998. I then saw several dystopian movie timelines showing what year many of them take place, and saw that someone had the movie set in 2038. There's another movie review that claims it's in 2032. No one explains how they came to these conclusions.
I was so confused and didn't know why there were these various years thrown out there. Who is right? I needed to find out and I'm going to share my discoveries, evidence and conclusion of what year I believe the movie actually takes place.
The movie is based on a graphic novel where it is based in the 90s, which s perhaps the reason google comes up with 1998 with a post from someone on IMDb.
The movie is most definitely NOT set in the 90s. In these screen shots from the script clearly show that Evey (Natalie Portman) was born in 2005. Her parents were black bagged in 2015 when she was 10 years old. Plus they state at the beginning that Guy Fawkes was in 1605 and state "400 years later" several times in the movie, which also places the film, at minimum in 2005.
I was shared the script for the movie and I saw about 200 lines down that Prothero (Roger Allam) says "it's 6am...2019". Evey also said that she was born in 1997. I realized though that the scene and the entire script was completely different than the movie. It was a 1st draft script. So, I couldn't count that.
I found a 2nd draft script and it was very similar to the movie. I went with that and double checked some things. Now, I'm not saying things don't get mixed up here, but we will have a better sense of year by the end of this blog.
When Finch (Stephen Rea) is researching Prothero's background in the film, we see and hear that things were missing between 2014-2016, all it says it "Larkhill" Larkhill is where V (Hugo Weaving) became V and he burned it to the ground.
Here it gets confusing.
Later, when Evey is imprisoned by V she finds the letter from Valerie. In Valerie's letter she mentions meeting her love in 2015 and gets roses, and states that she had roses for 3 years until they were bagged and taken away, That puts Valerie in prison in 2018, so Evey could only be reading it after that year.
The confusing question now is, if V was in the room next to Valerie, them wouldn't the missing years from Prothero's background be more like 2018-2020? I mean, how can they be neighbors and burn the place in 2016 when Valerie isn't there until 2018? Because of this, we're going to have a 2-3 year range of possibilities.
At the end of the film as V is dying in Evey's arms, V says he's been pursuing this night for 20 years.
Therefore, the movie must take place 20 years after the burning of Larkhill. If we go off Prothero's missing records, then I'd say the movie takes place in 2036 because 2016+20. But if we want to go off Valerie's story, then perhaps the film is more like 2039 because if she gets taken in 2018, let's assume she was there for a little less than a year, bringing it to 2019, then + 20 years. The film takes place over the span of 1 year.
My conclusion is that the film takes place between 2035-2036 or 2038-2039 (give or take a year or two), which would make the person who placed it at 2038 is reasonably correct. I know many won't care much about this, but it bothered me and needed it to be figured out.
My main goals at the beginning was to 1) prove it's not based in the 90s like the google search says, and 2) see if it was actually 2020 because it'd make it that more interesting right now. Even though there are some conflicts in the timeline/plot, I still love the Wachowskis and the way they present their stories and the stories themselves.
Remember, remember, keep watching movies!
