Orlando Y

This film is pretentious and terrible. Reading all the 5-star reviews praising how brilliant its socio-political message was or how skilful its takedown of totalitarianism is, makes me question whether these people have seen other films. Seriously, V for Vendetta is just a poor cut and paste of 1984 but with knives. The message does not go deeper than "Dictator bad, freedom good, fight for freedom," a topical message sure, but not revolutionary in the slightest. For a movie that stresses the power of ideas, the ideas in it are ironically very trite and weak because they’ve been done a thousand times in a thousand different ways, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World for starters. V is also a terrible person and I'm sure the intention was to make him Machiavellian but then the writers turn him into a Redditor's wet dream. In the first scene he swoops in heroically to save the day, charm the girl and in general be a white knight. Then we see how intellectual and well-read V is which is supposed to make the audience go, "uWu, your fancy words and martial arts are so cooooool, please take me already, I know you’re the chosen one.” It’s genuinely annoying that they frame V as some kind of persecuted intellectual because “can’t you see how different he is from all the other kids, he reads!” And somehow that’s enough to distract us from the fact V is fighting for true freedom which sounds great until you realise true freedom means true freedom. No government, no law, nothing to stop people from doing whatever they want which is just as bad as a totalitarian government that stops people from doing anything. The setting is also extremely bland, the Nazis – ahem sorry, I meant the Norsefire party seems eerily similar to a National Socialist German Worker’s Party from a few years back and their high chancellor is shot like a certain ‘Big Brother’ from another film. Nothing about this dystopian Britain attempts to subvert the audience’s expectations or do something particularly effective. Furthermore, Guy Fawkes is portrayed as some kind of freedom-fighter carrying a noble cause when in reality he wanted to kill King James I because James was protestant and Fawkes wanted a Catholic instead. Also, I have read quite a few reviews and an article claiming that V for Vendetta 'predicted our future would be bad' (i.e. the pandemic) to this I must say no. No, this action film did not predict the pandemic and saying it did would be akin to saying the Simpsons can predict the future. The Valerie sub-plot and the mystery of the virus were interesting but not enough to redeem the film. It’s not insightful, it’s not revolutionary, it’s not funny and it’s not worth your time. I hope we can all forget about this intellectual popcorn and watch better films instead; films with more nuance or insight.