'You know something is up when a film like V For Vendetta is a box office hit. Adapted from a series of graphic novelettes (i.e., comic books) written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd, the plot is set in a dystopian future Britain where "the Party" rules, dissidents are rounded up, the Koran is banned, and the threat of terrorism keeps the ruling elite firmly entrenched in power. From his underground lair, "V" is a kind of futuristic Scarlet Pimpernel, who strikes out at the regime – destroying the Old Bailey in a spectacular pyrotechnic display – while reciting sonnets from Shakespeare and wooing a beautiful girl whose fate has been delivered into his gloved hands. He wears a mask – a sardonic visage reminiscent, at least in my mind, of Cyrano de Bergerac – and as the plot unfolds so does the origin of his vendetta against the Powers That Be: he was tortured and disfigured by the regime's renditioners. As he kills those responsible for his agony, one by one, the viewer is led toward the denouement: a reenactment of the Guy Fawkes legend, in which the modern-day incarnation of that early-17th-century English subversive succeeds in blowing up Parliament and sparking a revolution.
'The right wing hates this movie, and it isn't hard to see why: it explodes all their pretensions about being the party of "freedom," and it pretty clearly parallels the hypocritical cant of the War Party as it pretends to battle "terrorism" while engaging in a campaign of state terrorism that far surpasses anything a small band of amateurs could possibly hope to dish out. They must find particularly galling a subplot in which evidence emerges that a deadly series of biowarfare attacks attributed to "religious fanatics" (and we don't mean George W. Bush and Jerry Falwell) turn out to be the work of a sinister cabal inside the government – the perfect excuse for a crackdown. All of this – economic collapse, political turmoil, the dictatorship of "the Party" – is clearly identified in the film as the product of a series of wars, stretching from Iraq to Syria to Iran and beyond. I was particularly intrigued by references to "the former United States of America," and hints of a future history in which imperialism has drained the once mighty U.S. until it is a pitiful husk of its former self, crippled by economic dislocation and embroiled in civil war.' (Antiwar article).
media-underground.net