When people ask me what my top 10 favorite films of all time are, I generally ignore the question because it only gives people a chance to try and come across as pretentious. Oh, they’ll say the usual, “The Godfather,” “Citizen Cane,” “Psycho,” “Gone With the Wind,” etc. Personally, I despise “Citizen Cane,” and think “The Godfather” is good, but overrated, “Wind” bores me to tears. My top 10 always changes but my favorite film has never changed – my answer has always been “V – The Original Mini-series.” Writer/Director Kenneth Johnson crafted a masterpiece with this movie. If it aired today, it probably wouldn’t have had the same impact on me as it did when I was a kid. I’m more jaded and the Internet would have ruined all of the surprises the movie had.
It was a perfect blend of marketing with an amazing story. The marketing was brilliant, for 60 days prior to its television debut, all they showed were these blood red “V” signs. The Television ads gave nothing away – no plot descriptions, no clips, just a blood red “V” dripping against a black screen with a countdown clock “30 days they’ll arrive.” Studios could never run a campaign like that today. Everyone in my school was like, "what is this, what does it mean?" It was true viral marketing at it’s finest.
When camera man Michael Donovan gets his first shot of the Mothership coming over the mountain, it took my breath away. It’s one of those indelible childhood moments I still remember to this very day and when we first see the Alien eyes, it gave me nightmares for years. But what makes “V” stand the test of time is all of the issues and subtext that Kenny throws into the film, issues that resonate today as much as it did back then. A classic line “You didn’t think it could happen here, but it did. One day we woke up in a fascist society. You are just as free as the leash they have you on.”
V was never about Lizards in space, it was about something deeper and more meaningful. It’s about taking our environment for granted, it’s about the struggle between social classes and what it would take to force people to work together, it’s about a fascist take over of the world, it’s about how one man’s “resistance” is another’s “terrorist.” It was about how tough it is to do the right thing. It’s about sacrificing yourself for the greater good.
Even after watching the movie and reading the book well over 40 times, I always find something new. What’s brilliant about the series is he forces you to think about the situation everyone finds themselves in and he makes you ask yourself “Would I be a collaborator or a member of the resistance?” The answer isn’t always an easy one. I’d like to think I would be a resistance leader like Juliet Parish, but the idea of taking the easy way out like Eleanor….
The series brings a cast of “thousands” together and it’s amazing how multi-cultural this movie is/was considering it was made in the early 80s. It continues to stand the test of time. All the weapons used on both sides – the advanced lasers (who Kenny J. says cost $1,000 a shot, so they limited their use). Yes, Independence Day and even The X-Files movie had brilliant CGI spaceships, but I loved the low-key element of the matte paintings. I hope they never remake this, while the CGI updates would be brilliant, they would completely water down all the elements that make “V” a true classic. Today’s Hollywood would certainly get rid of all the political, social and environmental subtext.
I know most people didn’t like the follow-up “V – The Final Battle,” but I always thought it was good and worthy of the "V" brand. It didn’t live up to the tone and brilliance of the original series. But as part of the V Universe I think it fits really well. Yeah, the Star Child stuff and the Preacher were incredibly stupid, but Michael Iron-side made a nice addition to the series. We’ll pretend the TV Series never happened.
While I may like “V – The Final Battle,” Kenny Johnson doesn’t. Something happened between he and NBC and he had little involvement with it, beyond writing the initial script that was radically changed. So now that he has a chance to end his baby the way he originally wanted, he ignores everything that happens in “The Final Battle,” and picks up his new novel “V The Second Generation,” 20 years after the end of the Original Series. We all remember young Juliet Parish telling Elias that it may take 20 years for someone to answer their distress signal.
Its 20 years later, Earth is firmly under the control of the Visitors and the Resistance is still fighting but barely holding on after one of their own betrayed them and there was a great purge. Juliet Parish is leading a small resistance group in the San Francisco area. But we don’t really meet up with Juliet again until later the book. This story is all about the new generation of resistance fighters, specifically a Visitor Youth leader named Nathan. Who becomes disillusioned with the Visitors when he finds out his mentor is a member of the fifth column and he is forced to re-evaluate everything he believes. This is Kenny at his best forcing you to place yourself in his characters shoes. Does he turn her in, or try and help her escape. Meanwhile several strangers appear on the scene and for some mysterious reason take an interest in Nathan. Who are these strangers? That would be telling.
We finally meet the other Alien race that the Visitors were so afraid of. These people don’t try to hide their alien-ness from the humans. Society under Visitor rule is broken up into a caste system where Collaborators and Youth Members are at the top of the food chain and at the bottom is a whole new race of alien/human hybrids. We meet several of them including Ruby a little girl that Juliet adopted; Willie and Harmony’s teenage son who desperately wants to be accepted by the Visitors and a teenage genius who is a Janitor aboard the Mothership. Through these three characters Johnson paints a grim portrait of people who are stuck between two worlds and accepted by neither.
Maybe it’s because I had high expectations for it and am so used to the original characters that this was a difficult novel to read. Johnson made the decision to completely ignore everything in Final Battle, so it took getting used to his retconing everything back to The Original. It starts off painfully slow and Johnson takes his time introducing all the new characters. At times it feels like he’s meandering and holding back on delivering the action. It takes a good ½ of the book before it starts to gel and take off.
There are some interesting twists and turns in the middle but what’s lacking are the original characters that we know and love. He doesn’t really explain what happened to them other than there was a Purge. And I hate to say it, but some of his descriptions are painful, like an old man (not that you’re old Kenny!) trying desperately to be hip. For instance he has a character named “Street – C,” who I suppose is this generation’s Elias. He describes him as, I kid you not, a “funky fresh kid with his hat turned backwards and a toothpick in his mouth.” I read that line 5 times and just shook my head. A couple of the characters didn’t get the comeuppance that I would have liked, nothing like the classic moment in Final Battle when Daniel finally gets what’s coming to him. There’s a similar character in the book that I desperately wanted to see get it and was disappointed when it didn’t happen.
Once I got used to the new characters and Juliet Parish finally makes her appearance the pace picks up and we have a strong, rousing close. It feels like it ends too quickly. I would have liked another 100 pages with the old and new resistance working together. “V – The Second Generation”, isn’t quite the book that I was hoping for, but the last half was a satisfying conclusion.
Final Grade B-
EM Book Review
by Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 6.07.08