Friday, July 22, 2005

v for vendetta

The trailer for 'V for Vendetta' is up at the film's site... I am dreading this film for a number of reasons.

First, this is a story that should have been left alone, and especially by the Wachowski's. Turning comics into movies is a big fad right now, but 'V' is generally considered to be one of Alan Moore's best works, and Alan Moore is generally considered to be one of the best comic writers ever. I wouldn't want to try to put them in any sort of order, but Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Mike Carey are wizards. The Wachowski brothers, who managed to completely fuck up the last two films of the Matrix series despite the enormous potential the first film afforded them, are trolls.

Second, conservatives everywhere are going to have a fucking field day with this film. The tagline for the film is 'People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people', something quite the opposite of current political trends. There is a very strong terrorism theme in the storyline... it's terrorism in the same sense that the Boston Tea Party and the US War of Independence were terrorism, but with today's myopic viewpoint regarding 'safety' I expect to hear a lot of noise about this issue.

Finally, some of the events in the film won't need to be abstractly compared to current events... (mild spoiler, highlight to read if you already know the story) how are they going to handle the tube bombings, including the 'Viking funeral', in the light of recent events in London? I fear they'll fuck it up in the same way they wimped out on so many films after the US was attacked.

I suspect I'll have to see the film... I just hope that doing so is not like slowing down to look at a car wreck.