V for Vendetta Movie - First Impression

We just got back from watching the V for Vendetta movie. Before I make any comments, let me just remind everyone that I'm an oldschool fan of the graphic novel, and that I've been pretty psyched about the movie for some time. Take that for what it's worth since I'm definitely the sort of person who consistently falls into the "The book was so much better than the movie" camp.

So my initial thoughts after having just seen the movie can be summed up as: "Meh." The movie retained about 80% of the events from the graphic novel, without retaining the chronology or the basic story arc. As a result, the government comes across as a rather weak example of a corrupt, totalitarian regime. I didn't really get a strong sense of the pervasive Orwellian oppression of the people either. And frankly, I walked away without a good understanding of the motivations of V, himself.

I didn't hate it, and I didn't love it. I had the same final feelings that I did when I saw the movie interpretation of "Fear and Loathing." The movie managed to faithfully convey a bunch of the events of the story without retaining the key parts of the story that made it powerful, or even allowed the story to make sense.

On a scale from Sucked to Rocked, I'm going to have to give it a 3.5.