Snoqualmie

Vantastic.

I saw V for Vendetta last night. It was vreat!

That's not to say it was necessarily subtle -- it wasn't -- but it was exciting, sad, scary, and strangely sweet. I mean, vexciting, vad, vcary, and vtrangely vweet. The people who were mostly good got back at the people who were mostly bad, and even though at one point I desperately wanted Evey to bash V's smarmy manipulative head in, I was glad despite myself that she didn't.

I was thinking two main thoughts as I walked out of the theater. The first one was about what would happen if you made this movie set in the US instead of England. Mind you, as is, it's basically "set in England" with the US seeping from every pore. But if you were just a little blunter about it? I'm imagining the entire Bush administration too shocked to believe its collective eyes or figure out what the hell to do. Wait-- did they really-- blow up the-- call us-- but-- they can't do that!

The second, and related, thought was about the Joe Loves Crappy Movies review of V for Vendetta. It's quite possibly the most appropriate review comic that could have been written. Note, if you care to do so, the change in subsequent comics.

According to Jacob and Wikipedia, that is essentially the reason that the author of the graphic novel had his name taken off the movie: it looks a whole lot like it's about the US and the current administration. Here's the excerpt from the Wikipedia article: "After reading the script, Moore remarked that his comic had been 'turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country.... [This film] is a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives â which is not what [the comic] 'V for Vendetta' was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England].'" I can see his point. If he was writing not about a government but about any government, the movie didn't do him much good.

Still, I don't think I would have enjoyed being beaten about the head and shoulders with anarchy for two hours. But I enjoyed the hell out of being beaten about the head and shoulders with revolution.