Comments | stevencwatts: Movies, both somewhat good and somewhat bad

stevencwatts

Movies, both somewhat good and somewhat bad

Mar 27, 2006 00:10

So I (re)saw V for Vendetta this weekend. The good points and bad points of it were more striking this time around. Anyway, some associates of mine have been very insistant on the idea that it raises a lot of interesting questions. With that in mind, I have a few questions of my own. Cinecast brought a lot of them up in words that I couldn't quite ( Read more... )

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wattsu March 27 2006, 03:44:00 UTC

"Apparently the oppressive governments of the future keep the working man down by installing large flat-screen TVs in everyone's homes that will turn on, from time to time, with the High Chancellor spewing crap. I think I could live with that for the flat-screen."

...That's exactly the type of sentiment the movie's about.

stevencwatts March 27 2006, 16:30:34 UTC

*watches the joke fly right over Bryan's head*

Anyway, my basic point (however irreverently stated) is that the government was oppressive, but not threateningly so. Watch (or read) 1984, and then tell me V for Vendetta seems anything more than mildly inconvenient.

mildly inconvenient... wattsu March 27 2006, 19:28:38 UTC

unless you happen to be gay, a Muslim, or any kind variety of political dissident. So long as one remains with the prevailing culture, it would only be mildly inconvenient. Outside that culture is where things start to get rather ugly for a person.

Re: mildly inconvenient... stevencwatts March 27 2006, 19:51:48 UTC

Again, I'm not trying to claim the world is hunky-doory. I'm merely pointing out that there are much more threatening dystopias out there in film-land, and the seeming attempt to make it more believable by being less threatening only made it less believable for me, since the large majority of people have no reason to rise up in revolt, and V is given no proper motivation. If they had stuck with his "confused anarchist with shades of gray" persona from the comics, this may have been more relevant, but the "uberhero" role doesn't fit in a society such as the one presented there. The filmmakers were confused about how far they wanted to take it, and did a very unimpressive job.

Again, I point out: resignation. (Oooooh nooooooooooooo!)

Re: mildly inconvenient... wattsu March 28 2006, 14:19:30 UTC

"Again, I'm not trying to claim the world is hunky-doory. I'm merely pointing out that there are much more threatening dystopias out there in film-land, and the seeming attempt to make it more believable by being less threatening only made it less believable for me, since the large majority of people have no reason to rise up in revolt, and V is given no proper motivation."

Do you believe in altruism? It is possible for people to be motivated by something other than self-interest if they are made aware of the truth. I could see a society getting tired of their neighbors being oppressed, for whatever reason.

If one is looking for a simple case of self-interest, it was apparent to me that the people were simply tired of taking what the government handed them to digest. Honestly, if the most popular show on TV was a Benny Hill knockoff, and this was directly due to some kind of government intervention, I think I would rebel, too.

Re: mildly inconvenient... stevencwatts March 28 2006, 15:22:42 UTC

Those are all fair comments. Thank you, stranger, for putting more thought into the movie than its creators did.

Re: mildly inconvenient... wattsu March 28 2006, 16:38:12 UTC

I can't pretend to know how much thought the filmmakers put into it - if they thought of these things. I guess one could read interviews and so forth because it isn't apparent from the movie itself - I just know this was the way my own reasoning worked when I was watching it.

Oh, and 'twas bloop. Sorry for the lack of an announcement.

Re: mildly inconvenient... stevencwatts March 28 2006, 18:11:59 UTC

Well, clearly I'm talking about what's evident in the movie itself. I rated it a B+ based on entertainment value alone, not thoughtfulness, and my last few responses (and the last week) has been filled with a mixture of confusion and frustration over people thinking this movie was freaking deep. It wasn't. It thought it was, but it wasn't.

And for my threatening creepy semi-realistic sci-fi dystopias, I'll stick with Matrix and Blade Runner. You know, movies that really did portray some deep thoughts.

Re: mildly inconvenient... wattsu March 29 2006, 03:41:28 UTC

I don't need anything to be evident from the movie itself. If it's apparent to me, then it's been made evident to me whether the film intended that or not. What occurs to me is a part of my final experience with any film.

But, regardless, "The Matrix" was really a bit of a sloppy mish-mash of religous philosophies and may have been a bit half-assed in that regard - like it couldn't decide on Zen, Christianity, or some kind of brain-in-the-vat philosophy. Like so many movies of its kind, the primary reason to see it was the eye candy, not the gee-whiz philosophizing. "Blade Runner" really did ask some deeper questions about what it means to be human, though, and V I think may have asked a few important and timely questions on the politics of our time, but I'll agree with you that it wasn't even close to as deep as Blade Runner.

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