Script To Screen: “V For Vendetta”

Here is The Speech from the 2005 movie V For Vendetta, screenplay by the Wachowskis.

Setup: A shadowy freedom fighter known only as “V” uses terrorist tactics to fight against his totalitarian society. Upon rescuing a girl from the secret police, he also finds his best chance at having an ally.

Here is the scripted version of the scene:

Here is the scene from the movie:

Many differences from script to screen with the dialogue substantially changed. Also, numerous shots of various audience members tracking their reaction to the speech. The movie is much sharper and more focused.

The speech is strangely prescient of our own times…

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story weekly series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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