erm, V For Vendetta

Thank you, Syra! So excellent. I once posted a quite similar criticism of the 1st Matrix movie, here on this forum, back when it was on Greenspun.

It's too bad.

Oh, btw, I didn't think that the robot who got abducted and got plugged in in MATRICULATED got exactly brainwashed - I mean, it was given to see how the other half is - introduced to the "faculties" of sympathy and of identification and maybe say the heterodynamics of trust and interdependence - but clearly the experiment didn't result in any compromise of the subject's own free will, in the end, as we saw, since the very instance of its own demonstrated hesitation of what it ought to do in that last situation is the moment it took to cost them the game. But it wasn't a "robot" anymore. (I know I'm just trying to clarify the point, I'm not attempting to correct anyone here, it's only a semantics blip.)

But I haven't even see V FOR VENDETTA yet. I actually can't wait, I'm looking forward to it. If it really does only do the "Won't Get Fooled Again" tapdance and do it without the punchline ("Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss"), though, I'll be unpleasantly disappointed, I am sure, the way that I was by the 1st ("I know Kung Fu!") Matrix. Look, I know I have never made a movie. I know, too, that when people read this forum they may happen to be the very people that I might be talking about. Not only that but there's other people who are prepared to say it (case in point) who also have the proper sense to keep their screennames totally different than their own. But WTS.

Yeah, I'd agree that what the robot in Matriculated underwent was more than brainwashing (perhaps "deprogramming"?).

Matrix 1 did a good job but it shouldn't have depicted people dying outside the Matrix. IMHO, the Matrix is a perfect representation of the Samsaric cycle... liberation from it should be liberation from birth and death, not a Terminator-manque war against the machines.

MATRIX (1) was a spectacular movie about humanity under a siege of spectacle - trapped inside a simulation of the lives they were not even permitted to be afraid to live. Not all that different or better- or worse-off for all of their contraptions' revenges than are those who would love a movie imitation of the life of, say, a particular kid from Columbine High School or even of some hippie contemporary (pet goat) of the president's, here because the fkn movie gives them unqualified credit for Thinking Different or for thinking outside the very box the moviegoer has paid admission to swallow her/him for a couple hours. If any of that makes sense, that's what I meant by comparing my thoughts about the MATRIX to your analysis of "V..." herein. (I should've given more to go on.)

I'm waiting for a more metaphysical approach. Matric and Beyond got the ball rolling. Now let's roll it down the street, or, say, kick it to the other side of the hill.

'people were meant to live once! only once! and then give way so that the new type genetic structure can live free of encrusted influence'

'meant by what or by whom? which authority? i mean what i play at. though in your case, it sounds like you're playing God, or at least presuming to speak for him. enter the door or don't, but you can't lock it for others. our doors are made of thought and the wall, Universe'

S REACHES FOR THE IED

This rather frustrated interview with Alan Moore reminds me of a similar interview I read from our own Peter Chung.

http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2006/03/a_for_alan_pt_1_the_alan_moore.html

I'll let you interpret it as you will!

I hope, as a creator myself, I never get into these unfortunate situations where I have to decide between letting people see my work and losing control over it versus staying in obscurity but owning it body and soul.

Okay. Now I went and saw the movie and I LIKE IT. I really kind of like it. I love the police chief character, the black irish bloke w/ the narrrow eyes. The kind of xharacter actor who can make you appreciate a fantaastic situation seriously.

Meh, I thought it was alright. After about an hour and a half I got really tired of their force-feeding tactics and hoped for something that I couldn't predict though. It was like watching a historical documentary with a little bit of added flair.

I posted the loose change video a little bit down. Nobody commented on it, but it ties the movie to a possible reality pretty solidly, if not too bluntly. They are not one's for subtlety I must say.

I thought their torture scene was probably the most interesting part of the movie. What's reality matter if you understand the inner workings that drives it anyway? It also reminded me a bit of the matriculated. And the idea of artists using fiction to express fact in a way that truth can't reminded me of the journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who was essentially a professional journalist who made up stories. He wrote an article on the same subject that I read years ago, and I knew it meant something important at the time, but only over the years have I come to be able to fill it out, to some extent, and make it understandable. It's still hard to accept the fact that empirical knowledge could possibly not be the ultimate answer, but an appeasing cloud to get lost in. I'm still working it out.

Anyways, enough logical breakdown. Did any else get really bored near the end of the movie? I'm talking like draw on the back of your hands bored. Damn.

And did anyone else notice that, like most Hollywood movies, it ended with fire works and a sign of hope. You know, just right before all the actual blood shed and political struggles begin. Great, you've just broken everyone’s illusion, NOW guess what it's time for. But no, they've all got costumes to hold them together. Now their free and full of love because they have an idea to power themselves into eternity.
But hey, maybe it could happen. It just seemed that for such a strong political message it was way too romanticized.

OH!!! Plus the bald chick didn’t fight anyone. Boooooooooooooooooooo!!!!
NITTY GRITTY. nitty gritty.

Why Hugo Weavning?

Evey didn't fight anyone. It was that way in the comic too. My biggest complaint was that Evey didn't become V at the end, like in the comic.

The comic is much more politically mature and responsible with its message, but I thought the movie made for a nice little fantasy.

I saw the movie tonight, and I have the most cliched of all things to state: "The book was better." The movie was good, they did more than I expected they would.

Falling in love is boring and lazy. V being scarred is boring and lazy, too. Evey not becoming V at the end is boring and lazy, it implies that the struggle is done.

I'm beginning to feel, though, that film is best used for things that can be explained in boring and lazy ways. Two hours just doesn't really have enough time to communicate interesting and thoughtful ideas.

That might just be cynicism talking, and it might be that if movies were a more subtle medium they'd have more power to communicate. By treating the viewer as so dumb and unthoughtful, though, they have to say everything out loud. That lowers the bitrate, which in the end, makes them less interesting.

I didn't know the story was based off of something. Go figure the Wachowski brothers couldn't think of a concept like this on their own.

I must admit, if she had become V in the end, that might have saved the movie for me. It would have depicted an endless cycle of human rebellion. I liked the calm confident person she become at the end of the movie, but it just didn't go anywhere. Shame.

I'll have to check out the original though. Because the movie actually had a really cool premise, just kind of a shotty execution.

The movie did a near-satisfactory job of replicating the most important parts, but I loved it for Hugo Weaving's rendition of V. I think he might have created a new classic film hero.

The comic's premise is amazing, and the execution will blow you away. Alan Moore is way too good at writing...

Is it safe to say that this was the best action movie since the matrix? Or is there one better than both?

Works that were originally intended to be read are designed by the author to play to the strengths of the written word. The successful among these are often chosen to be adapted to film. It's rare that any movie exceeds the depth of thinking present in the original author's words, but it does happen. But such a comparison is going to be inherently weighed in favor of the original work in its original medium.

What gets left out of the comparison between the relative merits of film vs. literature is any discussion of novels that are written based on films. Novelizations. I haven't bothered to read any, except the one that came out with the original Star Wars in 1977, which I read after seeing the movie. It was pretty much a scene by scene verbal description of everything on screen. The movie was a lot better.

If I remember right from reading it when I was 10 or so, that Star Wars novelization did have a couple of scenes from an earlier screenplay about Lukes childhood friend Biggs joining the rebels. So they can serve the function of expanding the back story a bit.
What I really dont understand is novelizations of films that are written based on novels. like "the novel of Francis Ford Coppolas film of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula". Theres one of V For Vendetta, I think there was of From Hell as well. I loved Bladerunner as a teen which led me to the totally different experience of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which I might not have discovered if PK Dick had agreed to a novelization.