Hollywood sucks, long live The Passion of The Christ by Mel Gibson. He exposed the leftist hierarchy of this godless town.

This isn't subtle stuff.

You can say that again.

IAMC: How about, "Hollywood sucks, long live Team America, World Police". That is the last movie I have watched and, save for Princess Bride" will likely be the last I ever watch. A bunch of narcissictic, America hating morons, imo.

At first I was excited by the revolutionary & overtly political message of V, but after thinking and talking about it with friends it really started to annoy me.

As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, V is very 1984. And that's too simple a message for our troubling and complicated times. V presents an absolutely evil government (headed by one particularly evil person). Once this person/government is overthrown, everything is sunshine and roses.

How easy. How fantastic. How utterly simplistic and false.

The left too often falls into the trap of placing all blame on the US, and Bush - evil personnified. If only we could get rid of him/them, all would be well, we say. It makes for a convenient scapegoat, doesn't it?

But look around. Society is complicit in so most of the injustice and exploitation (of people and the ecosphere) that occurs. Fear isn't the only reason people don't speak out. It isn't even the main reason. It's complacency, it's comfort, it's our love of profligate consumption. In my mind, Huxley's Brave New World has much more to teach us today than the facile narrative presented in V.

Keep fighting regressive and oppressive governments and their policies. But take some responsibility. The problem is with us, not them. V too easily absolves us of responsibility. We shouldn't let it, or Hollywood, or ourselves off the hook so easily.

Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Oh yeah, freemadc, you hit the nail right on the head. V is far too symplistic in identifying the source of evil.

I'm still waiting for Hollywood to find out where evil resides. I'm not holding my breath. Here's a clue: It ain't the White House.

I've seen the enemy and they is us.

I don't think it was that simplistic at all. While the government was clearly portrayed as the major source of evil, the people were complicit in its rule by virtue of their own complacency. They watched the propaganda, they said "Bollocks", they went back to whatever they were doing before.

The solution to that government wasn't simply to blow up a building, it was to unite the people in an idea, and to rouse them from their own apathy. Yes, it took a terrorist to do that, but the people themselves still had to be out on the streets for him to win.

I liked the movie and everything but it was about as "revolutionary" as all the East European revolutions in the 1990s. Remember, according to very stade liberal political theory democracies get "revolutions" every 4 or 5 years. And the government in V was so obviously the sort of comic book fascism which democracy is against. So I saw the film as rather supporting rather than criticizing most of the systems we now live in.

I recently saw "V for Vendetta". It was a good movie, but was it revolutionary? I don't think so. It does raise questions about politics and the world we live in, but it is still tailored to a popular audience so at times it's a little simplistic.

Lastly, to oilbertan...

Yes, Hollywood does suck. But I should tell you that the South Park boys movie "Team America" was not just critical of Michael Moore, the Hollywood left and Kim Jeong-il.
It was also very critical of American foreign policy and the shoot first and ask questions later philosophy.
The South Park boys make fun of left, right, the middle, and all points in between!
Maybe you should wait before you appropriate it for your right-wing cause!

Kevan Hudson
Suncheon, South Korea

Hollywood movie moguls are some of the lowest forms of life there is.
They put down America because that's the easiest market to suck dollars from, and they make millions of dollars living in the American dream.
We see a distorted view of America, and many believe it to be true.
It isn't true. If it was, these moguls would be working in another market.

Saw it a couple of weeks ago and it was probably one of the worst pieces i have ever sat through.
When i found out it was from a comic and aimed at the gen x or the unknown generations,i understood why it was so bad.
What a vacuous piece of tripe.

the only revolution i could think of during the film was the one in my tummy when i was thinking about all the godamn money i wasted.

Most revolutions have been transmitted to the masses in songs, jokes and rumors. Movies and comics seem perfectly appropriate vehicles for delivering simple messages to peoples consious and subconsious awarenesses.

I object to peefers assertion, misquoting Pogo above;

It just isn't true. There are real enemies, but really quite few of them. Compared to the great majority of people who just go about living their lives the only way they can.

The solution to that government wasn't simply to blow up a building, it was to unite the people in an idea, and to rouse them from their own apathy. Yes, it took a terrorist to do that, but the people themselves still had to be out on the streets for him to win.

ditto.

It was a good movie, not great. I like how it steps on the nerves of the ideologues here especially... seems it offends the lefties and the righties...

Perfect.

Perhaps this movie wasn't exactly accurate in it's portrayal of the modern day government, but it was a valiant attempt. Consider the fact that a great deal of the movies of today attempt to skip this subject, to be subtle and shy away from anything that could be seen as an out and out show of pointing fingers.

The fingers are pointing at the wrong place, sure. But if they had gone into detail and had a government full of complexity, of good people who were being controlled, they would have been coming far too painfully close to the truth. It's dangerous to be truthful, even more so if you try to be so subtly. By being such a blatantly black and white movie disguised as one in shades of grey, it provoked a good deal of thought without seeming to understand or perceive enough to cause the government any great show of alarm.

"i like how it steps on the nerves of the ideologues here,both left and righties"

Geez sherlock...ya think ,some people have good taste and cannot be sold a piece of shite.

Thank you IAMC for clarifying where to get your intellectual stimulation from.

Mel Gibson?

Wow!

You must have quite the collection of super hero comic books in your library as well.

Well, we have your pedestrian point of view and then we have Roger Ebert's who gave it 3/4 stars and:

roger ebert ? you mean that humungous walking container of popcorn.

yeah,there is a real film afficianado,if he says it's good,the great unwashed ,must listen. WOW!

Peefer said: "I'm still waiting for Hollywood to find out where evil resides. I'm not holding my breath. Here's a clue: It ain't the White House.

I've seen the enemy and they is us."

V's address to the nation says exactly this - not blaming the Chancellor as much as those good people who stood by and did nothing in return for the illusion of "security."

Not as good as "Brazil," but pretty good.

I made a point of reading the original graphic novel before seeing the movie. (Spoilers ahead)

"V for Vendetta" is an indictment of fascism, with the premise that it is a toxic environment for everyone, turning people into either victims or victimizers. Women, for instance, are forced to be either wives or whores, and there is no functional difference between police and street gangs.

The society of the movie, at least superficially, looks comfortable, and a major plotline is showing the genocide and deceit it was built on. As an artistic decision, I can support this, because authoritarian government today is more about "bread and circuses" than "a boot crushing a human face forever".

However, the graphic novel is also about the hero myth: a powerful individual who will do something to end this hideous evil. But V in the original is far more morally ambiguous, more a supernatural being of righteous vengeance than a conventional hero.

The graphic novel ends with V having completely "smashed the state" and reduced society to bands of people huddling around fires, hoarding food and guns. His hope is that benevolent anarchism will spontaneously evolve from this, but he considers it worthwhile to break humanity out of a totalitarian society. This is the same theme Moore explored in his later "Watchmen": the person we place above humanity to save us might make decisions we don't like.

All of this was just barely touched on in the Wachowski's script. When V arranges a mass rally against the military at the end of the movie, which could easily have ended in a bloodbath, I thought of Neo and Trinity slaughtering the guards who had no idea of the conflict they were in.

To be sure, "V for Vendetta" is an anarchist film, but it doesn't seriously discuss the cost in blood of revolution.

!!!!

Hilarious. Did you come up with that?

Fight Club?

Ultimate Fighting Championship?

Umm....V for Vendetta was coceived by Alan Moore, not the brothers Wachowski.

Not meant as an indictment of the movie, rather an indictment of the journalism.

Just saw V. I might nitpick some with its underlying "ideas" presumptions, but basically thought it was GREAAAT!

What you see is the society of the now to "not distant" future, post the collapse of The Empire, post Iraq, having evolved out of the IMAC neocon/fascist mindset.

Being one of those who think the V view of the world is more or less an accurate "fictional" depiction of what is evolving out there within current global capitalism, I think it also speaks to many of the issues that are going to have to be addressed by "the left", if you will, including the "propaganda media", "FEAR" and "daily grind" numbed disengagement of "the working class masses". They don't really think "the system" can be successfully challenged. Which is part of the responsibility of radicals. To demonstrate that it can be successfully stood up to-, where there is a "WILL" to do so.

A more accurately analytical or "cerebral" product might well be possible, but for the combination of cerebral and emotional appeal and impact, at a rather "artsy" level, it works. It has great eye and brain appeal, I thought. Two thumbs up for V.

Or to echo jesterjogger, VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV!

Besides, it will piss the religious and Neoconazi zealots off no end, which is a desirable pursuit in and of itself.

Bring on the revolution, says I. :-)

Which is the other thing this movie helps to make clear: It is the Neoconazi agenda itself, currently underway everywhere within capitalism, that lays down the preconditions for The Revolution. We radicals don't really do it. They do.

up the Rev. coyote...up the Rev.

on V....he sure blowed it up reeeeal good huh?