John Hawkins over at Right Wing News ^[1] posted an interesting review of the recent Natalie Portman movie V for Vendetta. V for Vendetta takes place in a totalitarian future-Great Britain and involves a masked vigilante (known only as "V") and Evey (known only as "Natalie Portman"), who conduct terrorism against the "Conservative" Party government.

Hawkins complains that the Conservative Party characters are "cartoonishly" evil. This is one point I really don't have a problem with, since the movie is based on Alan Moore's graphic novel ::wikipedia("V for Vendetta"):: (and originally a ten-issue comic book limited series). In fact, Moore very publicly dissociated himself from the film, calling it "imbecilic." Moore's original story used anarchy and fascism as the two forces at play for his stories. Heidi MacDonald interviewed Alan Moore ^[2] in November, and he spoke to the political themes of his original work compared with the movie:

It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged.

Hawkins submits that this movie goes further than most Hollywood movies and is directly pointed at current American events, despite the changes in location:

The movie isn't subtle. It uses a jackhammer to thunder home its political points. At one point it shows a "Coalition of the Willing" poster with a swastika on it. It blames the current troubles in Britain on, "America's war." The whole movie is built over top of the lunatic vision that wild eyed liberals have of America.

Should this really come as any surprise? Hollywood continues to use their powers of entertainment to push their agenda and influence the impressionable youth of the country. It's going to be a long time before that changes in Hollywood.