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V For Vendetta Trailer
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jul 22, 2005 11:30 PM
from the v-is-for-vrock dept.
from the v-is-for-vrock dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The V For Vendetta trailer has been posted on the film's official site. The film is written by Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski and stars Hugo Weaving and fan favorite Star Wars star Natalie Portman."
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Greaaaaaaaat (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, if they had just used the word prequel, my lack of interest would be complete.
Re:Greaaaaaaaat (Score:4, Informative)
Shouldn't that be Andy and Linda Wachowski?
-h-
Parent
Anyone remember Matrix II & III (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyoneelse heard the story about a woman suing the Wachowski brothers saying they ripped of her story for the first Matrix movie?
Re:Anyone remember Matrix II & III (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Anyone remember Matrix II & III (Score:5, Funny)
For that alone, my hat comes off whenever they walk by.
Sure, they also made a trilogy of kung-fu movies dressed up as sci-fi. (The first: Overrated. The second: Underrated. The third: Abysmal) Nevertheless, this minor achievement can not possibly be regarded as important or career-defining as making a movie in which Jennifer Tilly seduces Gina Gershon and which features Joey Pantliano playing a mobster. What more could anybody ask for?
Parent
Re:Anyone remember Matrix II & III (Score:5, Interesting)
She was even trying to get Warner Bros. and just about everyone in Hollywood prosecuted under RICO statures.
The woman will never get a dime, never.
Parent
In light of recent events... (Score:5, Interesting)
Synopsis: Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked vigilante known only as "V." Incomparably charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he detonates two London landmarks and takes over the government-controlled airwaves, urging his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. As Evey uncovers the truth about V's mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself - and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plot to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.
Think that they'll be adjusting any of that due to the recent bombings in London?
-JT
Re:In light of recent events... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:In light of recent events... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:In light of recent events... (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually also wondered about that.
In the graphic novel the hero, V, is a terrorist and a psycho. He blows things up, killing the guilty and the innocent. He not the leader of a popular uprising, he's a loner. The closest thing he has to an ally is Evey - a girl he keeps imprisoned and tortures until she comes around to his way of thinking. The brilliance of the graphic novel stems from the fact that the reader identifies with the main character, even though he's cruel and clearly totally out of his mind.
Then again, the Wachowskis wrote the script, so it was probably nicely sanatised to remove all the controversial content. I fully expect to find that they changed the main character to be some sort of populist freedom fighter and Evey to be his willing side-kick.
Parent
Re:In light of recent events... (Score:5, Insightful)
You would be hard pressed to find that kind of world in your personal experience. Walk out the door and you'll find the majority of people you meet are getting on with their lives just fine.
Its only the "news" and conservative talk radio where "the evil and malicious win time after time." You, my anonymous friend, have bought into the American culture of fear, hook, line and sinker.
Parent
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:5, Informative)
Have you read any Orwell? He was a libertarian Marxist who fought in the POUM in the Spanish Civil War.
Take, for instance, these excerpts from Homage to Catalonia:
- I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
- It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle . . . There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.
- Human beings were behaving as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.
And more importantly, from "Why I Write":
- The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I know it.
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
Parent
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:4, Insightful)
The road is just different. Animal farm is the perfect example for being anti stalinistic (although you might also interprete it as being a satire on revolutions and the outcomes) and 1984 is a clear book against an extreme form of fascism. But in the end, it does not matter if you have a stalinistic regime (which is the dead end for communism) or a fascistic (which is the dead end of capitalism), or some religiously imposed totalitaristic regime, you end up with pretty much the same a handful of people united under one big leader, controlling the masses by fear against some kind of non graspable enemy, and masses who follow like sheep, in poverty while the handful of people get richer and richer.
(It was the same under Stalin as it was under Hitler, even the parades and big events held by the NSDAP and the Communist party had similar faces. It was only the protagonists which were different, under Hitler it was a handful of people surrounding him and a bunch of german Industry leaders (which were able to weasel itself out after the Nuernberg trials). Under Stalin it was the bureaucrats surrounding him. The main difference was that under Stalin you had a higher chance to be killed if you were close to him, than you had under Hitler.
But back to Orwell, his books are timeless philosophical analysis of such regimes, and they fit basically into every spectrum of politics, because he described the mechanisms which work on every spectrum of politics. The supression of people always works the same.
Parent
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:4, Informative)
You know, people who lived under socialism believe it's anti-communist/socialist book. There are so many things were exact on money about socialism in the book.
I remember one of Russians in 80s said: "I understand how you can guess this and that but how he could KNOW we have a lack of razor blades???"
Parent
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with most governments, no matter how idealistic they start out, no matter the supposed idealogy, they turn in to a small group of people, like 1%, bent on acquring power and wealth at the expense of the other 99%. In China and Russia it was the upper echelon's of the Communist party. In China most of its big companies [csmonitor.com] are controlled by the upper echelon's of the Communist party. They don't care about workers at all now, if they ever did. They are exploiting Chinese workers so ruthlessly, to get rich, its the envy of the Capitalist West.
In western democracies its wealthy businessmen, executives of big companies, working hand in hand with the politicians they buy and get elected with the purchase of TV ads (just like selling soap). They maintain a facade of democracy by running candidates from two parties both of which are in their pockets, vividly exemplified by the 2004 election when a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman ran against
Parent
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:3, Insightful)
Libertarian Marxist? What is that supposed to be?
Libertarianism is a philosophy that places the rights of the individual as paramount. Marxism & Socialism are philosophies that state that the rights of the individual are subordinate to the needs of the society.
A libertarian-marxist is like a sterile-pregnant woman. Cold-heat. Honest-politicians. Microsoft-Works.
This is not a flame. I'm genuinely curious how someone can wrap one brain around two such diametrically op
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:3, Insightful)
KFG
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:3, Insightful)
KFG
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:4, Insightful)
So where does that leave the left of the rest of the world then?
It leaves them watching two ever more blandly populist parties, with an ever diminishing amount of meaningful policy, throw turds at each other in a pointless but desperate struggle for "the middle ground".
In another 50 years they'll probably have achieved they're goal of being nothing more than a well marketed image of two opposing points of view while both parties continue to expand upon their only remaining policy: Feeding at the public trough via an ever expanding Federal government. In the meantime I'm sure they'll continue to argue bitterly and promote divsion in every media form available so that no one will notice that it's mostly bluster without substance, and that enriching themselves and their contributors is about the only action they ever really take.
Which is to say, it will leave the left (and right) of the rest of the world looking on in a strange mix of amusement and fascinated horror.
Jedidiah.
Parent
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:4, Insightful)
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
That said, +5 Insightful
Parent
More measured response (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me see if I can make this clearer without resorting to name calling again.
1. Orwell was obviously an anti-communist. He was a left-wing anti-communist. The first anti-communists were on the left; the dingbat Stalinist ingelligentsia in Britain and America would have disgusted him, but so would American and British conservatism. The problem here is that you've been taught to associate liberalism, the left, communism, and socialism together as though they are all the same thing. They're not: communism is a perversion of left-liberal thinking; Marx took some sound economic ideas and ran with them right off the edge of the earth. The reality is that a healthy economy is a mixed economy (as a healthy government is a mixed government, something that the great intellectual figures who founded the US understood).
2. Orwell might have supported the war in Iraq; hell, Tony Blair is supporting it, and though he's not on the left by any meaningful measurement, he's certainly not on the right, either. Orwell was in favor of opposing facism and totalitarianism wherever it was found, and would have recognized in Saddam Hussein a potential Franco or Mussolini (Saddam lacked the national base to become a real Hitler, and was motivated by pure will to power, not by the weirder psychological perversions that motivated Hitler). However, he might not have favored the current war in Iraq given some of the context (for instance, if China were suddenly to decide it's time to occupy Taiwan, Orwell would have been screaming about our wasting time in Iraq while the real threat was building in Asia).
However, I can guarantee you that Orwell would have been disgusted by the attacks on Social Security and "trickle-down economics" (he would have had quite a bit to say about the fantasy math and sophistic language used to support both positions), and he would have been disgusted by the self-serving language tricks the past two administrations have engaged in (the whole "well, he said Joe Wilson's wife, but he didn't name her, so he didn't violate the law" routine is the only thing that approaches Clinton's "it depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is" in sophistical hypocrisy). On the other hand, I don't think he would have been surprised.
Until you have read "Down and Out in Paris and London," "The Lion and the Unicorn," and "Homage to Catalonia," don't try to talk about Orwell's politics. And don't believe ANYONE who tries to tell you that Orwell was a conservative.
Parent
Re:V for more Bush bashing (Score:3, Insightful)
You should read The Lion and the Unicorn [orwell.ru] before you make any more stupid comments about "left-wing people [who] have hijacked the book 1984." It is you on the right who have hijacked Orwell: the man was a dedicated leftist. The problem is that you are so poorly educated you can't distinguish between the Left and Communism (which is to the Left as Wahabbism is to Islam, or the KKK is to Conservatism - a badly distorted variant).
Orwell's attacks on the Communist Party were motivated by his belief that the
SPOLIER SPOILER SPOILER (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't put it past them to screw this up. From someone who doesn't bother with comic books, V for Vendetta was the shining exception for me due to the strong characters, deep ideas and frightening moral of the story.
If the film is true to the book, then you have a story in which the hero is an anarchist who terrorises the UK with a bombing campaign and is also, ultimately SPOILER!!!!! a suicide bomber. He is responsible for many deaths. The books also condemns "security" measures such as CCTV and gl
Re:SPOLIER SPOILER SPOILER (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think it counts as a suicide bombing if you're already dead.
Re:SPOLIER SPOILER SPOILER (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I wouldn't hope for much. Alan Moore (the guy who actually wrote V For Vendetta, not the Wachowski brothers) has completely distanced himself from the project. Even going so far as to pull all his future work from DC/Warner Bros. owned comic imprint Wildstorm simply for stating that he approved of the film. He demanded a retraction, when they wouldn't he took his ball and went home.
It should be noted that Alan has a long history of distancing himself from the Hollywood adaptions of his books. He even
Man .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Too late. Alan moore himself despise the film:link (Score:5, Informative)
Quote "MOORE SLAMS V FOR VENDETTA MOVIE, PULLS LoEG FROM DC COMICS
[The League]Alan Moore, co-creator of the "V For Vendetta" comic, has publicly disassociated himself from the upcoming Warner Brothers movie project based on the comic book and written and produced by the Wachowski Brothers. And as a result, he has cut his remaining ties with DC Comics, including future volumes of the "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
Moore has promised future "League" comics will be published by a US/UK collaboration between Top Shelf and Knockabout. "
Quote : "Alan On The "V For Vendetta" Movie Alan gave some details about bits of the V For Vendetta shooting script he'd seen. "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed." "
Apparently the horse is already out of the barn...
Parent
It Would Explain A Lot... (Score:3, Funny)
5.1 AAC (Score:4, Interesting)
Matrix (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Matrix (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the Matrix was dreadful (soundtrack was good though) and I didn't even rent II and III. The thought of these people getting their hands of V is not pleasant. The trailer actually looks good, but I'm still wary. I believe they've cut out the drugs episode (major event in the book), and re-written the ending just for a start.
It's not a case of them not living up
The comic is excellent (Score:5, Informative)
Those of you who have read V, probably know that when it hits the mainstream, people will draw parallels to the real world (USA and GB) today. It's as topical as ever.
V for Vendetta only costs $13.59 at Amazon [amazon.com] - buy it. It's an intelligent comic and uses the medium to send an important message.
Re:The comic is excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
If you said Saddam Hussein's Iraq, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, etc... as real examples in the world today, you would be far closer to the truth.
Re:The comic is excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia all have serious problems (and Iraq too, of course), but V for Vendetta was not written about those countries.
V for Vendetta was written for people who live in liberal democracies, so they could understand what happens when things go really bad.
Parent
Re:The comic is excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
As does the British news every day now, it seems. People die when republics slide (inevitably, given the ease with which they are corrupted) into dictatorship. We've not quite reached the point of the elections being canceled due to "the emergency situation" but we're long past the point where the result of the election reflects the way people voted, which is the point where reform is urgent.
As it is, coming on to 60 people in the UK and more overseas have died to protect the interests of a tiny number of very rich people in America. Tens of thousands of foreigners have also died, but they're very poor indeed so they don't matter.
V for Vendetta or any other comic or movie isn't written for people to understand what can go really bad, they are written to make money and soothe the ego of the authors.
You're confusing the reason why comics, books, movies, etc get written with why they get a publisher/distributer. They can be the same reasons but it is possible to write something like this, or 1984 or Oliver Twist, because you want people to look at what's going on and do something about it.
TWW
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Re:The comic is excellent (Score:4, Informative)
Read more about it. [alanmoorefansite.com]
But yes, buy the comic. It's good. While you're at it, pick up 'Watchmen', also by Moore. (The movie of which is currently 'in turnaround'.)
Parent
Wow (Score:3, Funny)
I guess my penis is proud of me.
Link to Hi-Res Trailer (Score:4, Informative)
S For Slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)
I'd say Portman's hot, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Queue the Matrix III rants (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering this guy's worked on the top grossing scifi trilogies of the last few years, he must have some potential. And the bros W might have realized that while they have some great concepts, they aren't the greatest at directing.
And if you get a chance, check out the trailer in Quicktimes new HD format, I got to say it looked rather sweet on my plasma.
And the premise seems rather timely and entertaining -- Though I'm a bit worried that a Terrorist Tactic using Anti-hero might get be offensive to quite a few overly defensive Christian Neo-Arch-Conservative types, it should at least produce lots of press for the film after it's release.
However, I suspect that any paralels they make to the current state of affairs will go just as unnoticed as the paralels they made in the Star Wars Prequels.
The trailer realease is rather timely however considering this week saw a fresh round of bombings in London and the renewal of the Patriot Act in US Congress.
It doesn't look sucky! (Score:4, Interesting)
Free advertising (Score:3, Funny)
Please watch our advertisement.
Yours truly,
Time Warner - er, I mean, Anonymous Coward!
Re:mmm, grits. (Score:5, Informative)
V for Vendetta is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd (Tony Weare did the art for "Vincent" and additional art for "Valerie" and "The Vacation"), set in a dystopian future Britain where a mysterious anarchist works to destroy the fascist government and profoundly affects the people he encounters.
Parent
Re:one of the wachowski brothers (Score:3, Funny)
Dating a dominatrix and letting her wax your eyebrows is "3/4 of the way" to being a girl in your circles? What are you, Amish or something? (If so, you better get off the Internet before you get yourself shunned!)
Shit, in most of the country, that sort of thing wont even get you kicked out of an Elk's lodge. This is 2005, for fuck's sake! Let people live how they want to live.
Linda *is* a female (Was: Re: One of ...) (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the W brothers wants to be a woman. Don't you find that a little odd/disgusting/unstable? If you don't, maybe you should grow up!
Wrong. One of the Wachowski's is a woman, and her name is Linda. Despite what you've seen on Jerry Springer, genuine intersexed and transgendered conditions do in fact exist, and they have nothing to do with "wants".
Some keywords for your Google searches: Gender Identity Disorder, Klinefelter's Syndrome, Intersexed, and probably many others.
Perhaps, AC, you should grow up and realize modern science and medicine has long past the point where gender is a binary designation. I thought about trying to explain the genetic information, but chances are you aren't reading and anyone that is going to mod me up is already aware of the distinction.
~Rebecca
Parent
Re:If Only... (Score:3, Funny)
--Bullet time OFF
--Shadows OFF
--MirrorEffect OFF
--SmokingTrails OFF
--BouncingBoobies OFF
--HugoWeaving OFF
--Natalie Portman ON
--Clothes OFF
That should bump up your framerates. Betcha never heard that before, in that
Re:If Only... (Score:4, Funny)
Damn kids are lazy these days.
Parent
Re:Looks dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)
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