RoR: Forum

There are a couple threads on this movie already. It definitely appeals to your inner anarchist. Favorite line: "I've not come because of what you hoped to do, but for what you did."

Post 1

Thursday, September 7, 2006 - 9:43pm

I scanned the whole movie area. I didn't find it, but I am not that good at finding things.

Post 2

Sunday, September 10, 2006 - 1:08am

~ It's a 'no-miss' movie, for those who haven't seen it yet.

~ The original writer (Allen Moore, doing a 'graphic novel' ['adult-comics' to non-aficianados]) is an anarchist-wannabe, and, his original story was ostensibly oriented down the lines of 'better anarchy than THIS!'. Interpretive-problem is: he presented a dictatorial-dystopia which supposedly (as he saw things, then) represented Reagan-Thatcher times...or where they seemed, to him, to be leading. Think of the world reduced to chaos ("How?" you may ask; aye, there's part of the story...relating to his [conspiracy?] perspective!), but, a 'civilized' Law-and-Order center exists in England. To be sure, run by a Machiavellian dictator with his 'cabinet' minions who are mostly (though not all) as Machiavellian as he.

~ Enter V.

~ The letter stands, plotwise, for way, way, more than the whole title suggests (indeed, V introduces himself with a near-lecture containing a plethora of words starting with 'v'!); ntl, the suggestion is definitely apropos. Vendetta (revenge) IS his main game, but, he makes it part-and-parcel of opening the eyes of ALL others who've accepted the dictatorial regime to why THEY all should as well have a 'vendetta' against those who are making the 'Law-and-Order' over them...the way it is.

~ V is not a Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin. He cared not (and, clearly had no reason for doing so) what happened 'after' the dystopia ever ended. He was merely after ending it's continuers...whom he had personal concerns about. (A slight 'spoiler' here: he regarded them as causing the whole world prob which allowed them their geopolitical power level).

~ He's an anarchic vigilante, akin to Rand's blackmailer-of-blackmailers. Like Zorro, he was not out to 'improve' the community situation, but to merely eliminate the forces keeping the community from improving.

~ (If you think about it, Zorro was an 'anarchist'.) What 'dystopia' needs not an 'anarchist'?

~ Then, there's his 'tough-love' relationship with Evey. That's the whole other 1/2 of the whole story...plus...her (and the whole community's) change to....? --- Need I add, V is also a very, very, tragic love story? I'm still not sure whose situation was worse: his or hers.

~ V's (and the writer's, who disavowed association to the movie, interestingly) purpose, beyond revenge/vendetta, was not to 'improve' anything; it was merely to end what was (as in Hitler's Germany) existing. --- 'Anarchic'? Maybe. So?

~ It's a 'no-miss' movie, for those who haven't seen it yet.

LLAP
J:D

(Edited by John Dailey on 9/10, 1:11am)

(Edited by John Dailey on 9/10, 1:20am)

(Edited by John Dailey on 9/10, 1:23am)

Post 3

Monday, September 11, 2006 - 8:12am

There are some earlier posts on the movie in the quotes-section, in the thread

People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Quotes/0935_1.shtml#23

Post 4

Monday, September 11, 2006 - 8:26am

I saw V as an obvious copy of Zorro. Zorro always makes a Z, while V just makes another letter. Both men are also masked.

But I get the impression that V wears his mask because of some type of damage to his face.

Post 5

Monday, September 11, 2006 - 10:59am

Zorro's identity is known to the reader or spectator. V stays unknown during the whole plot.

Remarkable scene btw at the end where everybody wear a V mask.

Post 6

Monday, September 11, 2006 - 12:21pm

I wonder if it will be popular at Halloween this year.

Post 7

Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - 7:23pm

Chris:

     I think you missed some very non-superficial points or three (or ten) re this story; the graphic novel was a bit deeper, and the pb-based-on-the-sp was good on it's own...without seeing the mask or cape.

     'Sides: there obviously (for those who actually saw/read the story) cannot be any sequel (unlike 'Zorro's neverending crusade), since V's personal 'mission' ended. A 'new' story, conceivably, could be made (though the original writer is not interested), but, if done, it'd be about like a new story-'sequel'of earth picking up after the end of Deep Impact: technically, it'd be a 'sequel', but story-wise, it'd actually be a radically new story on-it's-own, with it's past 'back-story' almost irrelevent to what's to come...as such has to be when talking about 'starting over.'

     V's story was geared to there being no sequel for this caped-assassin/vigilante (not to be confused with 'crusader'/'protector'...not by a long shot.) But, then, if it's just his outfit you're judging by, what can I say other than...yeah, guess you see one clown, ya seen 'em all.

LLAP
J:D

Post 8

Friday, September 15, 2006 - 8:30am

Doesn't it seem like every time a film adaptation comes out that someone says that "the book was better than the movie"? Thank you for your comments, John.

Post 9

Friday, September 15, 2006 - 3:27pm

"The Big Country" - the movie was much better than the book.

Post 10

Friday, September 15, 2006 - 8:01pm

"A Man for All Seasons": the 1967 film is magnificent, even better than Robert Bolt's wonderful play, from which he drew its screenplay.

Post 11

Friday, September 15, 2006 - 8:58pm

Thomas More, Fact & Fiction

While Bob is right, that "A Man for All Seasons" is a wonderful movie, the true history is not quite so inspiring. Thomas More (the real historical person) was executed as a threat to Henry VIII when he refused to publicly support Henry's usurpation of the Catholic Church. More is the virtuous hero of the movie, and given the evidence put forth within the movie, his fictional character is unimpeachable. But in reality, More's death was yet another case of chickens coming home to roost. More had presided over the executions of heretics earlier in his career. His Utopia was an early communist manifesto proposing a theocratic totalitarian welfare state. don't mistake the nature of the real man. Yet the movie is quite excellent.

Ted Keer, Sep 15, 2006, Manhattan

Post 12

Monday, December 11, 2006 - 7:48pm

Payback for Braveheart?

I recently saw Vendetta and had very mixed feelings.

Hugo Weaving is a dreadful ham, so I am quite glad that, unlike as Elrond or as in Priscilla of the Desert (both of which parts are played in drag) in this movie he was mercifully disfigured and wearing only a mask and a cape and seemingly Wesley Snipes style body-armor. His baton twirling was as wonderful as ever.

The story itself, as a cautionary tale about dictatorship and as a romance telling of the beginning of a revolution was quite good, but was marred by some gratuitous leftist nonsense. Big business, namely a pharmaceutical company, is the force which sets up a dictatorship. The war on terror, referred to obliquely as "America's War" is attacked as a foolish endeavor which destroys America yet which leaves the rest of the world outside Britain in some unknown state. Three of the heavies are a research scientist who is at least shown to be guilty of her crimes of denial, a (presumably) Anglican bishop who is a pervert into pubescent girls for the apparent reason that that's just what Bishops do, and finally a bombastic talking head who seems to intentionally have been chosen for his uncanny resemblance to that bete noire of the British Left, the apostate ex-socialist neo-Hawk Christopher Hitchens who is resented by all who see that when it came to choosing between party and principle, he stuck with principle.

Furthermore, two groups besides foreigners in general have been rounded up and executed, homosexuals and m*slims. This blatant attempt at moral equivalency or tolerance or whatever the creators would have called it themselves disgusted me to the core. How typical of the left to see themselves and their own would-be murderers as victims on an equal footing.

The movie is very well done, and does have its good points, such as the heroine's eventual realization that fear is only your enemy so far as you let others use it to control you. But even her education is contrived. At one point she discovers what is apparently the last written testament of a dead woman. Yet we discover the circumstance under which this discovery is made are a pretense. How the document, which is supposedly real, yet also apparently planted, actually comes to her is not made clear. The heroine also must suffer the inevitable loss in the end, because, well that's just how altruists become heroes.

Likewise, unless we are to assume that the religious faction which is in line with the dictatorship is Catholic, which makes little sense, the use of the Guy Fawkes persona adopted by "V" is unexplained, and to me, incomprehensible. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic enemy of the Established Church who attempted to blow up Parliament and who is to this day mocked by Protestants. Are we to identify with this rebel because he is Catholic? This Catholic because he is a rebel? And in a movie that mocks religion while portraying cutthroats and homosexuals as equally victimizable pity objects? Or are we to forget reality and just accept the matrix as presented?

I did watch the movie through several times, and as a bisexual American ex-Catholic I found it both poignant and highly insulting. The film gets rave reviews in spite of these apparently gratuitous flaws. Perhaps it was payback for Braveheart? The movie is worth seeing if one has the time, but I myself would not spend good money on it.

Ted Keer, 11 December, 2006, NYC

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 12/11, 9:35pm)

Post 13

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 8:39am

I haven't seen Hugo Weaving in other films, so I can't judge his acting ability. The character V really doesn't showcase the ability anyway.

I don't think all big business is beyond reproach. Many pharmaceutical companies are corporate-welfare statists. It's no shock that big business would be behind a dictatorship. I'm afraid that in the US today there are probably more Orren Boyles than Henry Reardens.

Post 14

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 4:21pm

It is the fact that in today's Britain of socialized medicine that a pharmaceutical company is chosen out of all possible vehicles to be the medium through which to portray a dictatorship arising that is reprehensible. Nothing in a work of art is ever a coincidence, a point "V" himself states as true of reality itself, in the movie.

Are you saying that you haven't seen either the Matrix movies or the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Weaving was hilarious as the bad guy in the former and pathetic as Elrond in the latter.

Post 15

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 5:06pm

I have seen two of the Lord of the Rings movies. I thought Matrix was just plain boring.

Post 16

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 7:22pm

Post 17

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 3:09am

I thoroughly enjoyed V, as i believe most objectivists did. Could it be that the involvement of the pharmaceutical industry was simply the best way to explain V's acquisition of superhuman strength and quickness? Ted, have you given any thought to how you would have scripted it?

Post 18

Thursday, December 14, 2006 - 1:33pm

Chris:

     You considered The Matrix boring? I gather you didn't see the rest of the trilogy, then. I thought the whole story to be the most thought-provoking (on several issues and levels) love-story I'd ever run across, book-wise or cinema. That the whole thing WAS, basically, a very unique love story was missed by all reviewers I'd read.

     I knew a few who didn't care for Star Wars when it came out, but met only 1 who considered it 'boring.'

     To each their own, obviously.

LLAP
J:D

Post 19

Friday, December 15, 2006 - 12:49pm