Not an alternative plot treatment, but a sequel to the 2005 movie. Not necessarily because I would hope for replication of its quality, but because I would gladly take a vow of silence just to find out what happens next. There’s a lot more to it than this, but essentially Evey, played by Natalie Portman, helps the mysterious V, played by Hugo Weaving to overthrow a tyrannical government set in dystopian Britain by blowing up parliament and representing the idea that ideas are greater than any one individual.
The sequel starts immediately, the flames subside and the dust settles after the explosive destruction of the British parliament. The citizens who gathered to protest and witness it look at each other and one old typically British man says “what now then.”
We cut back in time to a Kalahari endurance hunter crouched in the shade of a tree on the savannah. He is lean like he is made of wires and has a weather worn face, his eyes are bright and alert. His eyes are fixed on a Kudu grazing in the distance and he stands up and begins to run slowly, steadily towards it. The Kudu bolts, but the hunter continues to run.
We cut back to Britain, the plucky old Brit is now gutted and splayed out like a field prepped deer on the hood of a warlord’s car patrolling the streets of a seemingly abandoned London. He leads a band of cannibal raiders and drinks the blood of his victims from their own skulls in the ruins of the old parliament. They go out on another patrol and corner a scholar of classical antiquity who has eked out a life in the wreckage of London. It looks as if he is going to be killed and eaten until a squad of soldiers in highly advanced equipment rappel down from a ship, kill all the cannibals and save the scholar. “We are from the future. And we’re here to protect it.” They say to him. “I am from the past. And I’m here to protect it.” He replies. The scholar is taken to the mothership and he learns that it is an anthropological expedition to learn about the later dark age he lived through after the destruction of government, but later also learns that he and his expertise and experience are going to be used as a weapon in a future political campaign with the ultimate goal of technologically replacing the natural world that is indifferent to our hopes and dreams with an artificial world that is so responsive to our wishes as to be tantamount to an extension of the self. Finding this out and knowing that the self, the individual, can’t exist or grow without an objective reality to push against, whether it be nature, society, or god himself, the scholar quotes the lays of ancient rome “Then out spoke brave horatius…” quietly to himself and destroys himself and the mothership.
We cut back to the endurance hunter, now near the end of the long chase, sweating, exhausted, but still he is running. The Kudu, not far ahead, is running in weak bursts, and eventually collapses and has a seizure from overheating. The hunter approaches slowly, breathing hard, and cuts its throat without a word. He looks up from the Kudu’s carcass and surveys the futuristic city skyline he can see in the distance, revealing that this is a flash forward, not a flashback, and he has elected this life.
It represents that even a good and desired outcome comes with blood, and that maybe high civilization with its opulent comfort, and the never ending revolutions with their inhuman cruelty, itself is a mistake. That our skills and physiology peaked at the level of individuality/society of hunting and gathering, but also maybe that what we have, what we are is enough, and we might make it if we persist with civilization, even when our goal seems to be out of our sight.
Matthew Cameron 
Not an alternative plot treatment, but a sequel to the 2005 movie. Not necessarily because I would hope for replication of its quality, but because I would gladly take a vow of silence just to find out what happens next. There’s a lot more to it than this, but essentially Evey, played by Natalie Portman, helps the mysterious V, played by Hugo Weaving to overthrow a tyrannical government set in dystopian Britain by blowing up parliament and representing the idea that ideas are greater than any one individual.
The sequel starts immediately, the flames subside and the dust settles after the explosive destruction of the British parliament. The citizens who gathered to protest and witness it look at each other and one old typically British man says “what now then.”
We cut back in time to a Kalahari endurance hunter crouched in the shade of a tree on the savannah. He is lean like he is made of wires and has a weather worn face, his eyes are bright and alert. His eyes are fixed on a Kudu grazing in the distance and he stands up and begins to run slowly, steadily towards it. The Kudu bolts, but the hunter continues to run.
We cut back to Britain, the plucky old Brit is now gutted and splayed out like a field prepped deer on the hood of a warlord’s car patrolling the streets of a seemingly abandoned London. He leads a band of cannibal raiders and drinks the blood of his victims from their own skulls in the ruins of the old parliament. They go out on another patrol and corner a scholar of classical antiquity who has eked out a life in the wreckage of London. It looks as if he is going to be killed and eaten until a squad of soldiers in highly advanced equipment rappel down from a ship, kill all the cannibals and save the scholar. “We are from the future. And we’re here to protect it.” They say to him. “I am from the past. And I’m here to protect it.” He replies. The scholar is taken to the mothership and he learns that it is an anthropological expedition to learn about the later dark age he lived through after the destruction of government, but later also learns that he and his expertise and experience are going to be used as a weapon in a future political campaign with the ultimate goal of technologically replacing the natural world that is indifferent to our hopes and dreams with an artificial world that is so responsive to our wishes as to be tantamount to an extension of the self. Finding this out and knowing that the self, the individual, can’t exist or grow without an objective reality to push against, whether it be nature, society, or god himself, the scholar quotes the lays of ancient rome “Then out spoke brave horatius…” quietly to himself and destroys himself and the mothership.
We cut back to the endurance hunter, now near the end of the long chase, sweating, exhausted, but still he is running. The Kudu, not far ahead, is running in weak bursts, and eventually collapses and has a seizure from overheating. The hunter approaches slowly, breathing hard, and cuts its throat without a word. He looks up from the Kudu’s carcass and surveys the futuristic city skyline he can see in the distance, revealing that this is a flash forward, not a flashback, and he has elected this life.
It represents that even a good and desired outcome comes with blood, and that maybe high civilization with its opulent comfort, and the never ending revolutions with their inhuman cruelty, itself is a mistake. That our skills and physiology peaked at the level of individuality/society of hunting and gathering, but also maybe that what we have, what we are is enough, and we might make it if we persist with civilization, even when our goal seems to be out of our sight.
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