What I love are the trailers and the marketing campaign. "It's just like The Matrix! You liked The Matrix, right? Or maybe you're more the Die Hard type. Look! Natalie Portman goes bald just like Bruce Willis!" All the while never telling you anything the movie's about. It's a little like the bait and switch of the red-state Brokeback Mountain ads that focused on the guys' wives and children.
But the slathering cover story in Entertainment Weekly gives it away.
"V for Vendetta is set around the year 2020. The world is in turmoil. News reports announce that the 'Ulcerated Sphincter of Asserica' is torn amid civil war and chaos. Meanwhile, England is ruled by fascists that control the media and suppress free speech. Homosexuals have been rounded up and shipped to internment camps. Citizens are executed for owning copies of the Koran..."
"[It] may be the most subersive studio film to come out in the wake of 9/11. It's hard to think of a current hot button the movie doesn't press. State-sanctioned torture? Check. Wiretapping? Yep. The politics of homosexuality? You bet. Bioterrorism, the avian flu, the Iraq War, and pedophile priests? They're all covered."
Oh, no. No tinfoil hatted agenda here. I predict a big opening weekend but that's about it.
Truly ironic as we watch the UK and Europe being taken over by Islamic extremists that some movie-maker would postulate this of all things. Guess they didn't get any input from Theo Van Gogh....
I doubt the movie will even touch on some of the affronts to liberalism that the book did.
Though the serial was pure anarchist propaganda, and was "inspired" by conservatives, the movie (renounced by the author) will be a strict bashing of Bush in symbolic ways, the studio is even careful not to call the main protagonist a terrorist but a freedom fighter.