Spoilers: V for Vendetta

[Archon]

To continue the conversation about V being a terrorist or not, I would say definitely not, if it weren't for one thing. The fact that he tortured Evie was very repellent to me. I think that, all in all, it made for a good story, but it definitely showed me that he wasn't a clear cut freedom fighter.

As for the conservative deal, I personally would have preferred if the movie had used liberals, but I still like the overall message that the film conveyed. Too many people fail to realize that the same kind of threat could come from the conservatives or the liberals, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the film by any means. I realize that the fact that they did use the conservatives does mean that there is room for misinterpretation, but I think that the people who really understand the movie will look past that and realize that the movie wasn't really about conservatives versus liberals, it was about freedom.

[Skar]

...I think that the people who really understand the movie will look past that and realize that the movie wasn't really about conservatives versus liberals, it was about freedom.

I can buy that.  I'm, personally, just too sick of hearing the same lopsided take on such matters to really enjoy the thing.

Thats what the IRA think. Try to use those roleplaying muscles of yours and work out just what the guys in Al Queda think they are doing.

No matter how deeply you put yourselves into AlQaeda's shoes, or the IRA's, they're still deliberately murdering innocents as a matter of policy.  It doesn't matter how just there cause is, (I, from far away and with only an acadmic knowledge of the facts and situation, think the IRA has a legitimate beef with England but their methods cannot be allowed to be effective) they immediately remove any possibility of being negotiated with once they start murdering civilians.  Society/humanity cannot allow the murder of innocents to become a viable political tool.  Once your agents have deliberately blown themselves up in a crowd of school children negotiation must be over.

I've heard lots of people talk about how "the terrorists think they're right and who are we to say any different" or "one man's terrorist is another's revolutionary"  Once they've begun to behave like the IRA or AlQaeda have good people have a duty to see that they fail no matter what.

V, of course, was not portrayed as a snuff terrorist and so fails totally as a stand-in for AlQaeda.

[Fellfrosch]

Your gradations of terrorism amuse me. V was a terrorist--that he was attacking people you were supposed to hate doesn't change that.

Distinctly terrorist actions:
1. He blew up two buildings, with no regard for the people who might have been in or around them--admittedly he did it at night, when they were more likely to be empty, but consider also that he specifically brought people out into the open where they could be harmed by falling debris.

2. He infiltrated a news station in the middle of the day, with the sole escape plan of tricking the cops into shooting the wrong people. Before he left he set an enormous bomb; that they defused it before it went off does not excuse him for planting it in the first place.

3. He specifically and deliberately incites riots and chaos, directly resulting in the death of at least one child. True, he didn't shoot her nor did her place her in the situation where she would be shot, but his plan wholly relied on the fact that innocents would die--it was the catalyst he needed to foment his revulotion, and he went to great lengths to make sure that it happened. The final uprising would never have taken place otherwise.

Peripherally evil actions:
1. He murders a long string of people who, despite being guilty of some past crimes, deserved a fair trial and due process. Just because they demonized the priest by making him a pedophile does not make it okay to murder him. He even kills the one who has turned her life around and tried to do better and help people. Perhaps this doesn't make V a terrorist, but it certainly makes him a serial killer.

2. He kidnaps and tortures an innocent person, for the debatable excuse that it was good for her in the long run.

Caveat:
Now, to be fair, I must admit that I have some previous bias from the comic version. In those he actually succeeds at blowing up the TV station and one other major building; he also brainwashes at least one person and sends several little helpers on suicide missions. I suspect that most of this was cut for time, as well as to soften the blow of "hooray for the terrorist hero," which is risky enough for American audiences even in the watered-down version that made it to film. However, despite the changes, I still believe that the V shown in the movie is adequately portrayed as a terrorist.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

yeah in the comic v is a borderline psycho, or perhaps over the border line.

[Eagle Prince]

Your arguments for V being a terrorist are very fast and loose.  If blowing up a building is an act of terrorism, then why not civilian demolition crews who knock down a run-down building to put up an new orphanage.  A girl tries to stand up for her basic human rights and gets shot by a nazi cop, so now V is a terrorist.  Maybe I should be blamed for the Columbine massacre because I own a trenchcoat, or all Americans are terrorists because of the Revolutionary War?  Most of your reasons have way too much grey area to be useful IMO.

Okay, was there any point to America having been at cival war in the movie?  The way they showed it seemed like it was supposed to mean something, but I didn't get it if so.

Something else I thought of I wanted to mention.  Sorry I forget her name, but the doctor who was running the bio-weapon tests.  She did seem to regret what she did, but even still we put to death people for past crimes... all crimes are past crimes, that is not too important other than maybe something like statute of limitations and what-not.  Yes there is lots of talk about the death penalty, which shows there is a grey area and so I think not too good of an argument.  As far as giving them a fair trial, that is obviously impossible as there is no way to do that, these are the terrorist goverment founders and need to be taken down before you could start a new goverment where such is possible.  Plus there was already enough proof around that they were guilty, even after their attempts at coverup and many admitted to guilt out of their own lips.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Your arguments for V being a terrorist are very fast and loose.  If blowing up a building is an act of terrorism, then why not civilian demolition crews who knock down a run-down building to put up an new orphanage.  

Part of it is intent -- the crew isn't doing it to cause damage and hurt people, and it will in fact HELP the economy. But they also have permission and follow safety regulations and are only doing it because the owner of the property needs it taken down to do something else.

Whereas V is.... trying to hurt people. I don't think you take this conclusion seriously, though.

I"m not sure how you can *not* call someone a terrorist who is working on his own and is causing damage and hurting civilians without an actual approach that will effectively take down a government with minimal damage.

Let's dissect the American Revolutionaries were terrorists argument, shall we?

They had formed a separate government, organized an army, and announced formal intentions, signing their names to it. It was even known where most of these men were. I suppose you could argue the Boston Tea Party was terrorism, and I wouldn't disagree with you too much. It was a protest intended to cause damage to property using a non-military, non-governmental target (though non-governmental is arguable, given the nature of the East Indian Tea Company). They were attacking private citizens. Whereas when the war started, there was a Continental Army, that fought to hold territory and remove a hostile army. Now, war is never clean, so there was a lot of abusing private citizens too. But these days we call those war crimes, and I'm not familiar with documentation saying that the leaders (Washington, et al) ordered these tactics. I'm quite willing to call those encouraging the rape of an innocent by a soldier a terrorist. But the methodology endorsed by the leadership was certainly not terrorism.

V, by selecting his targets has made himself a terrorist. He is not trying to make it militarily unfit to control, he's scaring people and causing property damage. Innocent people. His intention is to hurt civilians in non-leadership capacities.

Now, you can argue whether that's called for in desperate situations, but I have great difficulty accepting that someone who does those sorts of things is not a terrorist

[Eagle Prince]

Whatever, I am not defending him.  I don't really care about a fictional character and I didn't think the show was that good anyway.  But you are also ignoring stuff too.  The building at the end is hardly to blow up people, it is advertised on every tv station and then talked about for the next year /and/ you have armed soldiers who are supposed to keep people away from the building... that is a hell of a lot more to make sure nobody is in the building then a demolitions crew does.  If you are in that building when it blows up, you wanted to die.

The tv station he had a bomb in supposedly, you can't say for sure that it would have blow up the whole building or even if it was real at all.  Plus there is the point that there was time to evacuate the building, but that guy just jumps in, not even a police or with any kind of authority and does he even have any experience I wonder?  And he doesn't even wait until the building is evacuated before trying, like should be done.  And he cleary says why he does this is because of the money, that is all he cared about and knew all of his news was crap the goverment was making up, they all did, but they didn't care cause of money and/or fear.

The first building he blew up if anything you assume he knows nobody is in the building.  It never says anyone dies in it, if he spent time rigging up all those explosives ans fireworks he clearly would have had time to check it for people.  So whatever.

Maybe we should watch it again and see how many civilians he kills.  He even doesn't kill the Fingers at the first who were trying to rape someone.  Even that "Voice of London" tv dude was not a civilian, he was a goverment soldier.  So a soldier guilty of numerous crimes, that is hardly killing 'civilians'.

Now to the actual movie side of this.  Not even to focus on the liberal vs conservative, but there was actually just too many political/social stabs in the movie period.  Now you could probably have a lot of the ones in it, had then been quick small little details that you don't end up noticing until you've saw it a few times, then maybe okay.  But there are just so many that are in your face that it completely derails the movie.

Also, the fights were okay, but these are the same boys who did the Matrix?  That almost makes them a bit disappointing.  It really needed one or two more fight scenes and something a bit better/longer for the end fight.  It was pretty good but... the bullet-proof vest reminded me of Clint Eastwood/Fist Full of Dollars, however it didn't even work.  I mean why put it in at all if he just dies anyway.

Then the whole deal with the letter, way way too long and just a poor excuse to throw in more gay rights stuff.  You could have done that who dragged out scene in 30 seconds and have the note written by her mom or dad.  And the like 5-minute monolog 'for a minute everything was connected and I saw the past and future' blah blah blah... that is really lame w/o some kind of twist or shocking revelation at the end like you are expecting to get after a scene like that.  So it makes the ending a bit of a letdown.  The show started off a lot stronger than it ended.

All of this hurts it too much as a movie, so I would only rate it probably 2 1/2 stars out of four, or 4 of 6 clocks.

[Fellfrosch]

Eagle Prince, V was destroying buildings he didn't own and had no permission to destroy, for the distinct purpose of causing terror and chaos and inciting political change. Then he released a video in which he took credit for the act, explained why he did it, and threatened to do it again. Comparing that to a sanctioned demolition crew really just shows me that you're not taking this discussion seriously.

As for your thing about Columbine, I honestly don't know what you're talking about.

You make a good point that V's murder victims were all obviously guilty and would never get a fair trial, but once again, you say that because we happen to agree with his morals--from our point of view they need to be punished, and the government is evil and will never do it by themselves, so he is justified in taking the law into his own hands. That doesn't change the fact that V broke the law on a dozen or so occassions and murdered several people in cold blood. If he committed the exact same act against targets you sympathized with, I can't imagine you'd be so quick to excuse him.

[Eagle Prince]

No I don't care too much above V, I mostly care how good of a movie it was, which I'd say is only above average at best.  I just find your arguments for him being a terrorist are based on loose rules and involve too many grey areas.

"he didn't own and had no permission to destroy" well I don't think a goverment building is private property, and over 200 thousand people marching down in masks at risk of their own life, I find that hard to swallow.  The people wanted that building to blow up.

[Fellfrosch]

I was actually really pleased with the lack of fight scenes in the movie. I liked that it was trying to be about something, rather than just falling back on special effects and guns. You obviously didn't like what it was trying to be about, or the method in which it carried it off, and that's fine. Let's just say that I loved it--and I love you.

(Also--the letter from Valerie was taken virtually word for word from the comic. It was originally written by the person in the cell next to V, as he said, and was a major turning point for him in deciding to fight back against the government, so having it written by Evey's parents wouldn't make any sense. I also find it to be a fine piece of writing, so chalk it up to bias if you like.)

[Skar]

Your gradations of terrorism amuse me. V was a terrorist--that he was attacking people you were supposed to hate doesn't change that.

My point had nothing to do with his attacking people "you were supposed to hate" This sounds like you are deliberately misstating my position in order to refute it.  Surely not.

1: Your first sentence is self-contradictory.  "He made no attempt to safeguard innocent bystanders...except that he did make the attempt."  Did you mistype?  As for drawing people out to be hurt by falling debris, you're referring to the music right?  The 30 seconds of music?  That was just long enough to get people to look out the window but nowhere near long enough to let them walk out of their homes and over to a government building, nor, had they desired to do so, gave any indication where they should walk to in order to be hurt by the falling debris?  This doesn't hold up.

2: Number one, that the cop shot a man stumbling toward him pleading with him not to shoot is not V's responsibility it's the cops.  I would instead describe his plan as meant to confuse the cops about who to grab, giving him the opportunity to slip away.  This is supported by the fact that he was actually surprised at how quickly the cops showed up.  As for the "enormous bomb"  well, it really wasn't that enormous. It was quite small enough to allow the cops and the civilians to get away entirely, leaving the facility to be destroyed.  You'll notice that Finch was intent on making it to safety, as though it were a real possibility, and that the guy who disarmed the bomb stated quite clearly that his reasons for disarming it were to save the building, not to save himself or anyone else's lives.  So there's actual evidence from the film that V arranged things in such a way as to allow the people to escape the building.  Not terrorism.

3:

A girl tries to stand up for her basic human rights and gets shot by a nazi cop, so now V is a terrorist?

Eagle Prince answered 3 just fine.

Peripherally evil item
1: Yes, V does peripherally evil things, this makes him potentially a serial killer or at the least a murderer, not a terrorist.  Unless you want to argue that every murderer ever convicted is also a terrorist?

2: As for the whole Evey being tortured thing.  Yeah, that's a rather silly part of the story.  Being imprisoned and tortured for a few days does not magically make people into strong fearless folks.  Read Solzhenitsyn or any of the holocaust survivor works to see that.  Despite it's being silly, yeah V's crazy.  No argument here on that score.  But it doesn't make him a terrorist.

As for the caveat.  We're not talking about the books, as you freely admit, and as someone who hasn't read them I can say 2 things, 1:He may very well be portrayed as a terrorist in the books, irrelevant.  and 2: From my perspective the film did not show him to be a terrorist.  You're probably right, they most likely watered his actions down in order to make him more sympathetic.  In doing so they made him something other than a terrorist.


e:

I"m not sure how you can *not* call someone a terrorist who is working on his own and is causing damage and hurting civilians without an actual approach that will effectively take down a government with minimal damage.

 As you yourself said, intent.  I'm sure V hurt civilians.  But he went out of his way not to, at least in the film.  Such is not the case with the people we're calling terrorists nowadays, who deliberately hurt innocents.  I'll concede that V is a terrorist in the same sense that eco-terrorists are, in that ecoterrorists blow up sources of pollution but try not to hurt actual people... but if it were up to me I wouldn't have labeled them terrorists  because of that regard for human life, I would have labeled them criminals.  But I'm not in charge.  As for having an approach that effectively takes down a government with minimal damage...V did pretty well, if we're to assume that he took down the government.  Two buildings ain't much.

[Eagle Prince]

"Let's just say that I loved it--and I love you. "

LOL

Yeah I haven't read the comic.  Weren't they written in the 80s?  If that letter is very close to the one in the comic, then it is cool they put it in.  BUT-- I still think it would have been better w/o it.  I'm not sure if the directors were trying to stay close as possible to the core material, but if they were then its forgivable.  Of course, I never would have known that if you hadn't said it (or maybe if the movie had ispired me to go read them).

Also take no offence about my case of V being a terorist or not.  If you think he is a terrorist, I don't care.  I just never thought he was one (and still don't after reading your reasons for him).

This might have got lost in my other post, anyone have any ideas on the significance of the USA being at civil war in the movie (or also in the comic if that was in there too)?

[Fellfrosch]

We're obviously defining terrorist differently, which will make this discussion impossible. In my eyes you don't have to kill innocents to be a terrorist--blowing up non-military targets with the intent of causing terror and chaos is enough.

[Eagle Prince]

Well I don't think he was blowing up parliment to cause terror and mass panic.  E said something about the Revolutionary War and this distiction about declaring your actions and such.  V did not go onto the TV and say "I want this and this or I will blow up a building" but rather he declared his actions and the reasons for them to everyone.

[Fellfrosch]

Oh, okay then. Well of course he wasn't a terrorist.