That concern couldn’t have been more off-base, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. I know that as an unabashed Moore devotee, I’m supposed to dismiss the film, and its script by the Wachowskis, as a toothless dilution of the anarchistic themes of the original. But the years have been kinder to the movie than the comic, to the point where the adaptation is shockingly more poignant, relevant, ominous, prophetic, and indeed instructive than its inspiration. And I say that as someone who still holds the comic in the highest regard.

My ambivalence comes mostly from the fact that when V for Vendetta was released, it seemed a little cartoonish, over-the-top, and heavy-handed in its allegory. Fast-forward to 2020—roughly the year in which the film is set—and it almost feels as if it didn’t go far enough in envisioning the dystopian near-future. It’s as if it’s plotted a course for itself that’s exactly the opposite of Marx’s observation about the repetition of historical entities: What first appeared as farce now reads like tragedy. I’ve always liked the film but I’ve never quite taken it as seriously as I now think it deserves to be taken. 

I could pick nits about the unnecessary changes the Wachowskis made in adapting the book to film, but one thing that can’t be denied is that McTeigue absolutely made the right call when he chose to embrace the cinematic form in his adaptation. Just as the comic was built on a foundation of classic literature and illustration, then pushed toward the cinematic, McTeigue builds his film on a foundation of classic cinema, then pushes it toward the comics.

It isn’t just the reliance on classic Hollywood clips and stylistic references to earlier films that firmly root this adaptation in the cinematic tradition, though. McTeigue also made the brilliant choice of casting John Hurt—whom audiences associated with his turn as Winston Smith in Michael Radford’s adaptation of 1984—as the Big Brother-like autocrat in this imagined future. This not only highlights the differences between the dystopian futures forecast by Orwell and Moore, but also serves as a subtle but effective warning about the oppressed becoming the oppressors.

Overall, V for Vendetta is an aesthetically dark film, which doesn’t leave much room for a high dynamic range grading that pushes contrasts to the extreme. But Kaleidescape’s 4K/HDR download does add a lot of richness and detail to the shadows and allows the occasional specular highlight more room to breathe without blowing out. As such, this ends up being one of the rare remasters where the increased resolution is just as impactful as the enhanced dynamic range.

Details and textures look simply spectacular in this new transfer, and although it’s unlikely V for Vendetta will make any videophile’s Top 10 list for best HDR releases of the year, cinephiles will go nuts over just how much more filmic this presentation is. The differences are subtle, but they add up to a much more faithful representation of the camera negative, from which this new transfer was sourced. This may not be the title you pull out to push your projector to its limits, but it’s the most faithful home video transfer I could imagine for V for Vendetta.

The new Dolby TrueHD Atmos remix is definitely demo-worthy. V for Vendetta has always suffered somewhat in the intelligibility department by virtue of the fact that its main protagonist wears a rigid and resonant Guy Fawkes mask over the remains of his face, and anything less than flawless fidelity makes some of his vocalizations less than distinct.

V’s alliterative and magniloquent lines have never been delivered as clearly as they are in this remix, and the film’s soundtrack—which runs the gamut from Tchaikovsky to Stan Getz & João Gilberto—has never sounded this powerful and beautifully resolved. The overhead speakers are a bit overused at times, but that probably means that most people will find the height effects perfectly appropriate. At any rate, given the choice between a slightly distracting at times Atmos mix and the muddled fidelity of the old, compressed 5.1 track, I’ll take the former any day.

I do wish the Kaleidescape download included the new bonus features added to the UHD Blu-ray release. All we get are carry-overs from the original DVD release. But no matter. V for Vendetta stands on its own, without the need for supplementation.

At least, I think it does. Watching the film now, though, I can’t help but think that audiences still haven’t completely gotten it. Yes, its iconography has been appropriated by hacker groups and the hashtag resistance. But its moral—that if you have principles and the courage of your convictions, you can win the support of the people—still struggles to break through the noise. If we don’t learn that lesson, our future will be even darker than the one portrayed herein.