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V For Vendetta
154 Plays5 years ago
Considering current events, we watch V For Vendetta and are shocked at how much more relevant it is now than when it was released. We talk Hugo Weaving’s excellent portrayal, Natalie Portman’s sometimes-inconsistent accent, and go off on some tangents about Alan Moore and politics in general.
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Transcript
Podcast Promotion and Audible Offer
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Derek, guess what? Hit me with it. We just got a promotion with Audible. Audible, fantastic. I love Audible. Do you know what the cool thing about this deal is? What's that? If our listeners go to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod, they get a free trial with Audible. And do you know what they get with that?
00:00:22
Speaker
What do they get with that? Tell me. They get one free audiobook of their choice and they get two free Audible Originals, which is special content that Audible makes available free for all its subscribers. Are you kidding me? That deal is so good I may go myself and sign them. Do you think they let you keep the books after you're done?
00:00:42
Speaker
No, you're not gonna tell me they let you keep the books after you're done. Yes, in fact, you can go sign up for a trial and you can cancel before the trial ends and you get to keep the books you've already downloaded.
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, I don't see how you can beat that with a stick. Exactly, yeah. And you can, lots of great books, especially for fans of the show. You can listen to Super Gods by Grant Morrison, which is all about like how the superhero comics have changed and evolved over time. Or you can check out Marvel Comics, The Untold Story. Which is a terrific book. I have that both in hardcover and I listened to that on Audible myself in my car while traveling back and forth.
00:01:21
Speaker
And there's also another similar book that's called Slugfest, which is about like the wars between Marvel and DC Comics. Oh, okay. So that's another one you gotta check out too. So yeah, head on over to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod and start your free trial right now. You got one free audio book and two free Audible originals and you can keep them even if you cancel before it's over.
Dramatic Reading from V for Vendetta
00:02:03
Speaker
Who are you, I mean you no harm. Who are you? Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am, is a man in a mask. I can see that. Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation. I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. Oh, right. But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace super-k, to suggest the character of this dramatist persona.
00:02:33
Speaker
Voila! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the Vox Populi, now vacant, who vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent firm in vanguarding vice, and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
00:03:06
Speaker
The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you, and you may call me V.
00:03:30
Speaker
Are you like a crazy person? I'm quite sure they will say so. But to whom might I ask am I speaking? I'm Evie. Evie? Evie, of course you are. What does that mean? It means that I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence.
Introductions and Personal Updates
00:03:50
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am half of your host, Perry Constantine. And as always, I am the other half, Derek Ferguson. How you doing today, Derek?
00:04:00
Speaker
I'm doing much better, thank you. I went to physical therapy yesterday for the second time for the situation with my neck, and it feels a lot better now. Well, that's good. Yeah, I remember you were talking about having some pain over there. Yeah, yeah. Now, your wife had a birthday yesterday, right? Yes, yes. Patricia had her birthday yesterday. I can't tell y'all folks how old she is because she'll kill me. No, no, we won't have.
00:04:25
Speaker
Go on Facebook and friend her and you ask her. But yeah, yesterday was her birthday and I took her to a seafood place. Well, it's one of our favorite seafood places. People from New York will be familiar with City Island. It's a place here in New York. It's in the Bronx and it's famous for its seafood restaurants.
00:04:51
Speaker
Okay. Both Patricia and I love seafood and of course you couldn't go inside and be seated and eat but they had to take our service. Okay that's good. So yeah so it was a nice ride there, nice ride back home and uh you know we came back home and she helped me with my homework for this episode because she was asking me what are we gonna watch uh what are we gonna talk about this week and I said well movie called Beef for Vendetta she said well
00:05:18
Speaker
Can we watch it?" She said, I said, oh, you want to watch it? She said, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never let me watch one of these movies with you. Let me see what it's about. I said, well, that's because it's a superhero movie. You don't like superhero movies. But here's the rub now. Even Patricia has heard about Vivre Vendetta, and she said, yo, I heard that this is a typical superhero movie. And as usual, my wife could not be more right. Yeah, yeah.
00:05:41
Speaker
Okay, well, you know, happy birthday to Patricia. Like I've actually never spoken to her personally, but we've kind of like spoken through each other via you on Facebook and that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, quite a few of my friends, she has gotten to know. Matter of fact, she became great friends the first time she met Van Plexico of all people. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I saw Van, what was it? Was it last year when I went to Chicago? Yeah, yeah. My wife just kept asking, oh, Van, how's Van? How's Van doing? I said, wait a minute, what the hell is this with you and Van?
00:06:22
Speaker
You're giving Van the Side Eye and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. She loves that guy. She's always like, oh, how's Van doing? Has Van published a book yet? Well, wait a minute. You didn't ask me did I. She's like, well, I don't care about you. Exactly. I can live with you. You'll tell me anyway. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I see her posting articles and stuff like that on your Facebook page all the time that I always get a kick out of.
00:06:54
Speaker
like the different links and stuff that she posts over there. So yeah, always get a kick out of those things. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, she gets to know my friends better than I do. It's a good thing I'm a reasonable man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's enough for me. See, I don't have to worry about that too much because my fiance, she doesn't really speak English. So I don't have anything to worry about then.
00:07:23
Speaker
Speaking of your Beyonce, how is she feeling? How is the pregnancy progressing? It's going well. We should be finding out if it's going to be a boy or a girl later this month, actually. Fingers crossed, unless the baby's shy and covers its naughty bits up. Move your head, damn it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:07:47
Speaker
But yeah, we should be finding out later this month. We're going to be having a boy or a girl.
Cultural Insights from Japan
00:07:53
Speaker
What are you shy about? Yeah.
00:07:57
Speaker
Turn over, turn this way. Although, because of coronavirus, I actually can't go in with her for the ultrasounds now. Oh, wow. Yeah. But they do a nice thing where they record it for us, and they put it on the USB drive, and they let us take the USB drive. Oh, well, yeah. So this way, you can go home, and you can be together, and you can experience it that way. Well, that's cool. I mean, I did see one of the, not her first ultrasound, but I think it was like her second or third one I went to, because they do,
00:08:25
Speaker
uh in Japan like uh I guess this is not the same in America because in America they wait a few months or something before they do like an proper ultrasound but in Japan like every single doctor's visit they they give you they do an ultrasound and um and uh but yeah so so she went and like at very early on when you first find out you're pregnant it's like every week you have to go in really yeah yeah yeah um and that's that it drops down to like every month towards like the end of the first trimester so
00:08:56
Speaker
Speaking of Japan culture, I was really surprised I'd read something you put on there today on Facebook, somewhere on Facebook today. But you said that fax machines are still used all over the place there. Yeah, yeah. No fooling. Oh, no, I, you know, everyone, it's funny, when I came over here, everyone's like, oh, you're in Japan, it must be like living in the future. I'm like, they still use goddamn fax machines here.
00:09:19
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Like Japan, it, Japan has done such a good job of making an image for itself to the outside world that is completely incongruous with reality. Ah, fax machines, fax machines are as far as I'm concerned, the instruments of the devil. I hate, I never liked fax machines. I've always hated it. You know what the crazy thing was? Okay. So when I was, um, back when I was working at the board of education and this was like, um,
00:09:48
Speaker
a little over, oh, getting on 10 years ago now, actually. But when I worked there, the teachers would send me their lesson plans, right? Because I was co-teaching with the Japanese English teachers. So they sent me their lesson plans. And even if they emailed me, they still had to fax them in. Why? I don't know. It's just, it's insane. But everything had to be faxed.
00:10:17
Speaker
See, that would have driven me crazy right there. I don't know what it, I don't know what it is. And for some reason, I can never get fax machines to work for me. They would not, they just simply would not work for me. I have no idea. Oh, I remember in the 90s, because my dad was a real estate agent, so he did a lot of work for him home. So he had a fax machine.
00:10:37
Speaker
And when I worked at, when I was in college, I worked at a real estate office, like working the front desk and stuff. And so yeah, we all, I had to deal with fax machines a lot and they were such a pain in the ass. Every single time there was something going wrong with it. Something always, something going on with that. Yeah, yeah. And Patricia insisted that we have one and I said, why? Why do we need one? When, you know, we're not doctors or lawyers, anything like that. Well, everybody has a fax machine. No, they don't. No, no.
00:11:05
Speaker
But she insisted we had one, so. And I hated that thing. God. And when you said that Japan of all places, yeah, that's the last place in the world I would think. I said to myself, wait a minute, don't they have implants by now where they can just beam thoughts into? No, no. Japan is actually, so here's the thing. Like Japan got very, like the whole idea about Japan's technological superiority really came out of like the 80s and 90s.
00:11:30
Speaker
And that's where a lot of it happened. And like, yeah, they pioneered cell phones in a big way, right? But you know what the thing is, like, if you're talking about like home computers, that kind of stuff, like, most people in Japan did not get on the internet until they were able to come out with internet enabled phones. Hmm. Because they didn't have computers in their homes.
00:11:52
Speaker
Really? Yeah. Because, you know, everyone does all their work at the office. Like, that's the work culture of Japan. It's like, you have to physically be in the office. Oh, okay. Whereas here in America, we are constantly trying to figure out ways of working from home. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, it's like, even if you have no work to do, you're expected to stay in the office.
00:12:13
Speaker
And because, and that's just the culture. Like when I worked at the Board of Education, like every Monday, I didn't have classes, right? But I still had to go into the Board of Education and sit at my desk from eight, from what was it, from 830 until four o'clock. Every single Monday, I had to go in there, sit at my desk, even though I had nothing to do. Not a goddamn thing in the world to do, but I had to be there and sitting at my desk from 830 to four.
00:12:41
Speaker
But you know what? I kind of like that strict division between work and home, which we don't have here in the United States. But I remember that when I, OK, when I was working, when I came home, I did not talk about my job. I did not talk about it. Patricia said, well, how was your day? I would just say fine. And that was it. Yeah, yeah. Because I left it there. I did not bring it home. When I went to my job, I didn't talk about my home. Whoa, Derek, what did you do on the weekend? Nothing.
00:13:10
Speaker
i had a teacher who was like that too and in fact you know we ended up becoming co-workers after i graduated and after i graduated university i went back to that my old high school and started teaching there and i started working with him as um assistant coach on his mock trial team so you know i've been working i'd known the guy for years i've been working with him for uh for a few years too spent a lot of time with him hung out with him all the time and then um
00:13:35
Speaker
One day, this is like in my third or fourth year of assistant coaching with him, right? One of the students were sitting down for lunch or something, one of the students asked him, she's like, Mr. Rodriguez, do you have any kids? And I'm thinking like, oh no, I was about to, and I'm thinking there, I'm like, oh no, he doesn't have kids. Then he says, yes, I've got four kids. I'm like, I look at him like, what?
00:13:58
Speaker
I'm like, I've known you all these years. We've talked about so much stuff about my life, because I always talk to him for advice and stuff like that. And I'm like, how did I never know that you got four goddamn kids? I'm like, every other teacher, they got pictures of their kids all over their offices and stuff. It's like, no, I leave all that stuff at home. Yeah. Yeah, that's how I was. A lot of people, when they realized that I was married, they were like, Mary, you never said you was married. Well, why would I tell you?
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah. Another time, like after I turned 21, I asked him one time, because we were working late one night, and I asked him like, I'm like, oh, suit. I'm like, do you want to go grab a beer or something? He's like, oh, no, I don't drink. I'm like, how do I not know this? You're like a total stranger to me right now. But yeah, he was just like that. He was like, no, my home life and my work life, they're completely separate entities. Yeah. Yeah, that's how I was. I maintained. I did not.
00:14:55
Speaker
work life in my home life. I worked hard at keeping them separate. Yeah, I do some of that to an extent now. Like, I don't really talk about Cotono or the baby or anything like that with people at work, unless they specifically ask me. Like, if someone asked me, like, you know, how she doing or something like that, then I'll say something. But I don't offer up any information like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was me. I mean, I wasn't anti-social. If somebody asked me something, yeah, I would tell them. But I was not the type to, like,
00:15:16
Speaker
have an intertwining of my
00:15:25
Speaker
all for information. Right, right. So you weren't like Ron Swanson? No. But like that, you know. And that's carried across on the internet too because occasionally I will get
00:15:41
Speaker
email, you know, from somebody saying, Oh, well, you know, I would probably buy one of your books. If I knew more about you, you don't say anything. You don't go into personal details about your life and on Facebook. I said, well, no, that's not what it's for. Right. Yeah. Yeah. At least as far as I'm concerned. I don't know you, you know, why do you need to know all of this personal stuff about me in order to buy one of my books? Exactly. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense to me.
00:16:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You just want to be nosy. You just want to be nosy. That's what it is. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:16:14
Speaker
All right, so all that out of the way, today we're talking about V for Vendetta. Yeah. I felt this was a really timely movie, given everything that's been happening in America lately. And watching it, because I watched it two nights ago, because we had to move our recording day. But watching it, I'm just like, it was kind of stunning how relevant it actually is. Yeah, I watched it twice.
00:16:44
Speaker
Usually...
00:16:46
Speaker
Were we getting ready for these things? I have to watch the movie again because I haven't seen it for a while. And I definitely hadn't seen V for Vendetta. It's been so long since I've seen it, I had actually forgotten that Natalie Portman was in it. Oh, really? When I saw Natalie Portman, I said, holy shit, Natalie Portman is in this movie? Which shows that the Thor movies was not her first rodeo as far as superhero movies go. No, no. This was her introduction into the genre.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah, and even then I kind of hesitate to call this a superhero movie. This is more in, let me see, who can I, because I was watching one of his movies the other night because watching V4 Vendetta inspired me to watch
00:17:31
Speaker
a couple of movies by Costa Gavris, who is a, he's a Greek director. And he was known for his politically themed movies, such as Missing and Z. And I was thinking that Viva Vendetta is more like something that he would have made with John Frankenheimer. This is more in the vein of a political thriller.
00:18:00
Speaker
you know, rather than a straight up superhero movie. I mean, it is a superhero movie, but the themes behind it, the political subplots elevate it to, you know, yeah, this is his own thing. So that was Z and what was the other one you said? Missing. Missing. Okay. I'm just, I was looking up now, so I just wanted to make a note of the, to look these up later. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:29
Speaker
Um, yeah. And well, you know, it is, you're right. You're right. You make some good points there. Um, although it is more of a superhero movie than the original book was.
00:18:39
Speaker
Like they, cause if you, I'm not sure, you've read the graphic novel? I've read the graphic novel. I didn't read it prior to us doing this because I didn't want to get the book and the movie confused in my head. Right, okay. I said, I'll read the book. I'll read, yeah. Cause I've got the graphic novel around here somewhere. Yeah. I read it years ago when it first came out, you know.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah,
V for Vendetta: Film vs. Graphic Novel
00:19:02
Speaker
I read it, you know, back when I was first getting into comics, and of course, everyone recommends, because that was like in the mid late 90s. And at that point, everyone's like, well, you got if you're going to read comics, you got to read V for Vendetta, you got to read Watchmen, you got to read Dark Knight Returns, all the like, you know, the mainstays that everybody always recommends. And V for Vendetta was in though. So yeah, I read V for Vendetta, I think when I was in when I was a college student was when I first read it. And I hadn't really read it since that now that I think about it, until
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, so I reread it, because I bought it on Comixology like a year or two ago. So I finally got around, I'm like, well, since we're gonna be talking about the movie, this is a good time to go and reread it. So I watched the movie and then I read the graphic novel again. And yeah, there's a lot of differences, but not, you know what, it's interesting, because when you're talking about Watchmen, the Watchmen movie,
00:19:57
Speaker
Right. That was very similar in like elements of the book, right? Like, you know, they show the scenes are all there, they're all in the correct order. Everything is basically just like,
00:20:13
Speaker
almost in some places almost like a shock for shock remake like Gus Van Sant's Psycho, right? Right. But V for Vendetta is different in that they do change things. However, V for Vendetta feels like it's closer to
00:20:29
Speaker
the mood and the tone that Moore and David Lloyd were trying to set with the book, as opposed to Watchmen, which feels like it got the visuals right, but the tone and the mood and all that was kind of lost and was kind of, in some cases, was the opposite of what Moore and Gibbons intended.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I thought that was kind of interesting when I was rereading the book. I'm like, okay, well, because in the book, Evie is 16 years old, right? And she's very naive, right? She doesn't know like anything.
00:21:05
Speaker
Whereas in this one, Evie's an adult woman. She's intelligent. She knows what's going on in the world. Her parents were political activists, and she paid attention to what they said. And you can tell, even from the start, when she sees Prothero on TV and she turns it off, she has that visceral reaction to it. And she's also talking about when the security guard's watching Storm Saxon, she's like, how can you watch that shit?
00:21:32
Speaker
Right. So she knows what the world's really like. She's a she's a much more informed citizen. In fact, it was kind of reminded me of a lot of like a lot of like suburban middle class white voters. Right. They complain about shit, but they don't really do anything. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's how she comes off. She complains about a lot of stuff. But hey, as long as the lights are on and she's got food in the fridge. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:02
Speaker
So that was one thing that really jumped off to me. Also, V is much more sympathetic and much more heroic in the movie than he is in the book. Because in the book, he's just a total fucking bastard. Yeah, yeah, he's much more, from what I remember of the book.
00:22:18
Speaker
He was much more, they call him a terrorist in this movie, but in the book, yeah, he is much more of a terrorist. Well, yeah, the whole thing about Morris' whole idea was the dichotomy between anarchism and fascism. That was what he was trying to explore. And so V was a symbol of anarchy.
00:22:37
Speaker
And he wasn't fighting for democracy or freedom. He was fighting for anarchy. He was fighting to get rid of government completely. It wasn't specifically about getting rid of a fascist government, but they changed that in the movie and V is much more about democracy.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, he's much more of a heroic character. He's a character that we can sympathize with. And we say, yeah, OK, well, this is our good guy, even though he doesn't do things that are kind of, because what he does to Evie is kind of messed up. Oh, yeah. Just to her, halfway through the movie.
00:23:10
Speaker
And I have to give them credit for that because for them to, because that was one thing I thought, oh, they're gonna cut that sequence out completely or they're gonna completely neuter it or whatever. But that was one sequence that they kept that pretty much true to the comic. And they didn't sugarcoat it for the movie either. No, not at all, yeah. It really didn't. I mean, there's a lot of things they didn't sugarcoat. I love John Hurt.
00:23:36
Speaker
you know, his, when John heard showed up in this movie, I said, okay, I know who he's supposed to be. He's supposed to be Big Brother from 1984, you know. Right, which is a, which is a nice little ironic twist because he was the hero in 1984. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So when I see about this, you know, this immense screen and he's ranting and raving and the stuff is flying everywhere, I said, yeah, okay, I know who he's supposed to be. And so I'm having fun with him.
00:24:06
Speaker
carrying on like a madman while everybody else is cowering and this asshole. Did you notice too, when he was on screen, like how big his pupils were? Yeah. Yeah. So apparently like I was looking at that. I'm like, why is the pupils so goddamn dilated? What the hell is going on? Yeah. Like, yeah. Like he went to the eye doctor or something. Well, I read on, so then I looked up online and apparently they did that intentionally to like the idea that he's like hopped up on methamphetamines.
00:24:35
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. And also like the screens and stuff like that, that was intended as an allusion to 1994, in fact, because in the movie, not in the movie, in the book, he doesn't appear on screens like that. Okay. Like the meetings he has with people, they're pretty much in person meetings.
00:25:02
Speaker
in person, yeah. Yeah. I like this, I like it better, you know, that kind of big brother type of reference. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, this, you know, there is, there is some Orwellian, I mean, type of touches that are in the movie.
00:25:18
Speaker
you know, that I appreciated. And I said, okay, well, I know where they're going with this. And as I posted early on, I, you know, I, I find it fascinating that the British are apparently fascinated with fascism. Well, you know what, because, because when Moore wrote this, it was basically an, an anti Thatcher work, because he wrote it in the, he started writing it in the early eighties.
00:25:42
Speaker
okay yeah yeah and in fact if you read the um i mean at least the copy of the graphic novel i've got uh it his introduction was written in 1988 and and he talks about you know how um the the torries are talking about you know trying to stamp out homosexuality and all that so like you know like uh
00:26:03
Speaker
Gay rights was actually a really big theme in the book because that was really what was kind of a trigger for more was how anti-gay the Thatcher administration was and talking about, and the whole idea of these concentration camps they have in the movie and in the book, it came from this idea that the Tories actually floated of putting people infected with AIDS into camps.
00:26:30
Speaker
which is something that never happened, but that was something that we're actually thinking about doing. And this was in 1988. He's like, I'm afraid to think of where this country is going. I think I might have to leave in a few years. And you could kind of feel his fear on the page back in 1988 when he wrote that.
00:26:49
Speaker
And in the course of the movie, they do make reference several times to characters that have tried to leave the country or want to leave the country, but they couldn't. For one reason or another, they couldn't leave. And yeah, when you were talking about the age of putting
00:27:07
Speaker
people in concentration camps, that brings me to the character played by Stephen Fry, who is one of my favorite characters that's in the movie, who is a gay talk show host who is in the closet. Right. And there's a great scene where Evie has come to his house. She's escaped from V, and she comes to his house for sanctuary. And he takes her down into his basement. And we see this American flag that's been co-joined with a swastika.
00:27:36
Speaker
Yeah. And the American flag and the British flag. And because that was apparently a reappropriated World War II slogan about America and Britain teaming up to fight fascism in Germany. I can't remember the exact quote, but it was like we the willing, we or something like that, whatever it was. Something like that. Yeah. And they intentionally changed it and added the swastika there to say that like America and Britain, you know, they used to be the fighters of fascism and now they are the proponents of fascism.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, but it's a powerful image. It is, and it's all the more chilling when you watch it now, because this was back, this movie came out in 2005. So this was about like, you know, mostly about the Bush administration and the war in Iraq and the patriarch and all that kind of stuff. And also the, you know, Britain's acquiescence to America, because you know, Tony Blair was basically like W's little puppy dog, he would do anything W wanted.
00:28:36
Speaker
And so a lot of that comes out of that era, but now you think about it and you watch it today and it's so much more chilling because you've got a fascist in America with Trump and you got another fascist in the UK with Boris Johnson. And it's just, it's even more frightening when you see like how far we've come and like people are actually, you know, people, like there's this whole narrative about like this redemption narrative for George W. Bush these days about how, oh, well, you know, like he,
00:29:02
Speaker
Here he is having, sharing candy with Michelle Obama, and here he is painting these awful pictures of dogs, and here he is at John Lewis's funeral, and you know, there's this, been kind of whitewashing of like the terrible shit he had done. Well, as I've always maintained many times, and I keep on saying this, people in this country have disgustingly short memories. Yeah. Somebody would be a total shit
00:29:28
Speaker
in January, but by December, we're ready to let them came. Yeah, we forget. Yeah, you know, we forget, you know, things, you know, we're so hungry for the next bright shiny thing. Yeah, and we are constantly looking for stimulation, and, you know, excitement and something to talk about, and something new that we forget.
00:29:52
Speaker
what people did and yeah I know I hear some people out there saying well we should forgive hey listen I'd be the first person to say yes of course forgive forgive however that doesn't mean you're supposed to forget right and also I think forgiveness has to I think you know there's some things they forgiveness has to come with a with a mea copa as well yeah
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, listen, I may forgive you that you broke into my house, but hey, I'm going to make sure I put a double lock on the door. Exactly. And I'm going to move to the, you know, I'm not going to forget you, you know, but that's how American society is. And yeah, but you make a very, you know, you make a lot of excellent points about the timeliness of this movie, especially when it gets to the part in this movie about the St. Mary's
Political Themes and Real-World Parallels
00:30:41
Speaker
virus.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yes, exactly. That was some of the reasons. There's a lot of disturbing parallels to the coronavirus that's going on here now. And I'm saying, holy shit, when was this movie? I'm looking at when was this movie made again? Yeah, yeah. And there's a great part in there where
00:30:58
Speaker
Steven Rhea, who plays the police inspector who's trying to hunt down V, he's talking to his partner and he locks off his door and he's got this scrambler set up so he can't be eavesdropped on it and he says to them, he said, listen, I gotta ask you a question and you gotta give me a straight answer. And the guy said, yeah, he said, well, and he shows him the chain of evidence.
00:31:21
Speaker
that he has, and he said, if you find out your government really did something like this, would you really want to know? Yeah, yeah. And then they just leave it at that. And you know, I think that we're at this point now with the situation in our government where we have to ask that question, well, if we find out our government did this, do we really want to know? And if we do want to know, what are we going to do about it?
00:31:44
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Well, in the end, just like the parallels with that, because obviously the coronavirus is a natural thing. It has it just happened to hit during this time. But but the parallels of what the government does in response to that, they're striking similarities like the. Yeah. Yeah. The the militarization of the police to put down protesters and that kind of stuff. And I'm actually
00:32:07
Speaker
watching this movie, I was thinking, you know what, I was thinking like, you know what, I'm legitimately surprised that there aren't like, you know, medical camps for people infected with coronavirus. Yeah, yeah. And I guess that's probably just because the virus is so widespread and the government's just trying to deny it even exists.
00:32:27
Speaker
as opposed to using weaponizing it for you know for government we have is so incompetent now that they're not even thinking on that level which I think that in a way okay yeah it's bad but in a way it's kind of good because in this movie
00:32:44
Speaker
This government that's in the movie, they're not incompetent. No, yeah. These cats know what they're doing and they know how to do it. I've always been telling people the real danger of Trump is not what Trump's fascism will do. That's bad enough. But the real danger is what someone who comes after him will do.
00:33:04
Speaker
Yeah. Because, you know, you know, there are competent fascists in the Republican Party who are looking at Trump and they're taking notes. Like, you know, like Tom Cotton is basically, you know, he published a Bible, basically, his manifesto on the New York Times, basically saying what he wants to do. So like, if you get someone like Tom Cotton into office, like, that then shit's gonna get really bad. So he's efficient. Yeah.
00:33:28
Speaker
He's efficient. And he was in the military, too, so he knows how to do shit. And he's not stupid. He's not a stupid man. So, yeah. So if he ever gets into a position where he can run shit, yeah, we're in a lot of trouble. Even when Bloomberg was running for president, I wrote a piece on Medium saying Bloomberg is a big danger, too, because he had shown that he had some fascist tendencies when he was mayor of New York during the whole
00:33:58
Speaker
occupied Wall Street thing. And the fact that he switches ideology so easily, right? Like he was a Republican back then and you know, very racist Republican at that. And then all of a sudden he's a Democrat and you're just like, you're looking at him and like, yeah, yeah, okay.
00:34:13
Speaker
Like that someone who can switch, who is that fluid with their ideology and has those fascist tendencies, they're dangerous. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Somebody who, who, you know, like, dude, you know, pick a side of the fence to stand on.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, I drew the line at Bloomberg. Like I always said, like, you know, I'll vote like I was a Bernie Sanders supporter. I like Elizabeth Warren, too. And they're my top two choices. But my whole thing was like, look, I'll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is, even if it's Amy Klobuchar, who I despised, or Pete Buttigieg, who I didn't care much for either. Amy Klobuchar, why you got to guess that? She's kind of hot. Oh, I don't care about her appearance. I'm just talking about like,
00:34:55
Speaker
Well, I mentioned this on the show before, but like when she was, when Andrew Yang brought up this whole thing about how America had intervened in elections before and Amy Klobuchar got like so righteously angry at him about that. And she was like, well, why do you say that America intervened in other elections? We had never done that. I'm like, bitch, yes, we did. Oh, of course we did. Yeah. Well, anybody would, and yeah, and anybody that would defend that we didn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You know, either.
00:35:25
Speaker
Okay, here's the best way I can put it. Either you stupid or you think I am. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's just that simple. You think I am. Plus, you know, the whole, all the allegations about how she treated her staff terribly. And then, and then you add onto that, like just the, the, uh, the, the worst personality. Like I've never seen someone try so hard to be funny, who is so terrible at it.
00:35:50
Speaker
Oh God, yeah, yeah. Like her, the joke she told about her fucking hair in the wind. She should have just kept with the soccer mom persona. Well, that's the problem. She was too much of a soccer mom because she kept getting these bad mom jokes. And I'm just like, you know what, just if I heard her tell that story about her hair in the wind one more time, I swear my TV would have been broken. Yeah.
00:36:18
Speaker
It was a clown car. I mean, I distinctly remember watching one of the debates and all of the people on the stage. And Patricia said, you know, she said, I can't take any of them seriously. She said, they should just pull up in a clown car and they should all climb out one by one. Although you got to get credit to Warren in those debates, man. She was on fire.
00:36:37
Speaker
Oh, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, there was one debate. She came out riding on a horse flinging. He sticks a dynamite, you know, challenging everyone on the chain on the stage. She's like, you want some next? You want some next? Who's up? Who's up? And then she turns on Klobuchar. She's like, I'm coming for you next, bitch. She was taking on everybody left around. Oh, that's a holy shit. She's not taking no prisoners.
00:37:00
Speaker
Even though I know she's technically in the running, but I know she would definitely not be Biden's running mate, but I would love to see her in a debate with Pence.
00:37:13
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah. She would tear him like five new assholes. And that'd just be in the first five minutes. She'd eat his ass a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Unless they gave him a shot to wake him up. Even still, I'm not sure he'd be able to do it. Well, I mean, you'd have to make sure you had another man moderating the debate because he can't be alone with a woman who's not his wife.
00:37:39
Speaker
No, please. Don't even get me started on that. And before people start thinking that they have inordinately started listening to an episode of Meet the Press, I suppose we should get back to the movie that we supposedly talked about.
00:37:55
Speaker
But the point I was making, though, is that I would have voted for any of the Democrats in that primary, even Klobuchar, but Bloomberg was where I drew the line. I'm like, if Bloomberg was the nominee, I would not vote for him. And that's because these things, like I said, he's basically a proto-fascist. And I would be scared of what he would do with the power of the presidency. Because unlike Trump, he's competent. But I think it says something about
00:38:24
Speaker
the strength of this movie in that, see how we went off onto a political discussion, a heartfelt political discussion? Yeah. Because of this movie. Right. And really, you know something? And I would advise everybody within the sound of our voices to that this is a movie that really should be rediscovered right about now. Because this is the perfect time for this movie to be rediscovered. That's what I was thinking. That's why I watched it again for a second time. Because I said, you know something? This is a movie really people should be watching now.
00:38:54
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it, I mean, 15 years later and it's so much more prescient that it was even back then. Yeah. It resonates a lot more with what is going on today because you look at it and you see elements of things that are happening in our lives right now. And you were saying, wow, you know, okay,
00:39:19
Speaker
They were on to something, apparently. They had their fingers on the pulse or something. They couldn't exactly see what was going to go on. But these are things that, and it only goes to show you that if you pay attention,
00:39:34
Speaker
You know, because you have writers that 15, 20 years later, people will say, well, how did you know that was going to happen? You know? And yeah, apparently, you know, these guys, you know, the guy that wrote this, I think it was the Wachowskis who did The Matrix, they wrote this? Double checking here. You know, the screenplay? Yeah, yeah, they wrote the screenplay. Yeah, yeah. Now, who would have figured that, you know, but then again, they are brilliant filmmakers. And no, I'm not talking about The Matrix. I'm talking about Speed Racer.
00:40:06
Speaker
But yeah, and of course, you know, taken from the graphic novel written by Alan Moore, you know, there's a lot more going on with this than just, it's a movie where the supervillain is society, it's the government, it's big brother, it's all of the institutions that are supposed to take care of us and supposed to work for our wellbeing, instead they turn to our oppression.
00:40:36
Speaker
Well, that's a good point you mentioned about the villain being society itself. And it's because if you remember in the movie, right, like Suttler, the John Herr character, he's taken out easily. Yeah.
Analysis of V for Vendetta's Themes
00:40:49
Speaker
Right. At the end of the day, he's not as, you know, individually, he's not much of a threat. And you compare that to something like, you remember that Christian Bale movie in the early 2000s, Equilibrium?
00:40:59
Speaker
Sure, one of my favorite movies. Yeah, yeah, it's a great movie. But remember, they had the big brother character. And Christian Bale, they had that gunfight at the end, right? So in that, it was about you got to take out this specific person. But the movie makes the point of like, and the book does this in an even better way. Because in the book, even after he's named Adam Susan in the original book, actually. They changed his name to Suttler because it sounded like Hitler.
00:41:27
Speaker
But in the book, he's a very timid man and like he ends up being like kind of broke and he ends up dying very easily. Like V doesn't even is not involved in his assassination at all. But even still like the Norse fire government is still there and there are still people within the government who are still conspiring on how to keep power and how to hold onto things. So like the book actually posits it as this is just the first chapter in a long fight.
00:41:58
Speaker
So it's not like the movie where the movie does have this happy ending where you see like, okay, well, the chancellor's gone. So the people have risen up. So now things are going to change. But the book says, no, this is just getting started. Well, we're not really sure what's going to happen afterwards because yeah.
00:42:16
Speaker
You have the chancellors dead. What's that guy, Creedy, the head of the secret police? He's dead. OK. And there's a little bit of hope because you have the soldiers, they're waiting to gun down all of the protesters that are dressed like V. And they're coming in like this huge ward.
00:42:34
Speaker
and they're coming and the soldiers at the last minute they let them go through because they're not getting any orders there's nobody to tell them you know what to do so on their own hook they just let them go ahead and then they're all standing there and of course we watch the parliament blow up and everything like that and yeah okay
00:42:52
Speaker
You blew up Parliament. But yeah, but what happens after that? Well, I mean, that's true. But there isn't the but the note of hope is much stronger in the movie than it is in the book. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because there is the hint that Evie is going to go on. She's going to take up the fight because V says, well, I'm leaving everything to you. My books and right. Right. You know, that's another slight difference from the book, because in the book, she actually does become V.
00:43:20
Speaker
if you remember. Yeah, exactly. It kind of ends on a similar note to how it begins because she takes someone else in as V and takes him into the shadow gallery.
00:43:31
Speaker
And so she's like training someone else to be like her successor. So the book sets it up as like an ongoing fight and like a continuing cycle, whereas the movie, right. Yeah, I mean, that's how it should be because one of the brilliant things about this movie, and I stand up and give a standing ovation to you weaving,
00:43:51
Speaker
who plays the whole movie with his face completely covered, which is what you're supposed to do. You know, he wasn't one of these primidade actors where, you know, there's got to be a flashback scene where, you know, you see my face. No, he does not does that. He plays the scene because
00:44:09
Speaker
V is supposed to be an idea, a concept. It's not supposed to be identified as a person, per se. You're not supposed to see him as a person. That's a good transition, because I definitely wanted to talk about Hugo Weaving's performance. And we're not talking like a Batman mask or something, where you can still see his mouth and his eyes. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely concealed. Or it's not even like Deadpool, where they had the benefit of they were using
00:44:39
Speaker
kind of like a green screen technology to record his facial movements and stuff so he could still be expressive with his eyes. It's nothing even like that. It's just completely covered the whole time. The whole time. The only acting he does is with his body and his voice. And he's masterful. Oh my God. I knew he was a good actor. But until I saw this, I didn't know how good of an actor he was. Exactly.
00:45:04
Speaker
because to be able to do that and especially a character like V who is you know in the book he's not supposed to be sympathetic at all they make him more sympathetic but for for weaving to be able to pull that off without you ever seeing his face is just it you know it's it's a it's a master class in acting
00:45:23
Speaker
And it's incredible how even in the middle of when he's committing horrible acts like psychologically torturing Evie or killing people and, you know, he's just charming. Yeah. He is so charming the entire time. The entire time. There is never a moment in a movie where no matter what he's doing, he's holding people hostage with a bomb. He's going through a hallway with these huge honking knives, killing guys left and right. But he remains charming. Yeah.
00:45:53
Speaker
Yeah. Incredible performance. I love his introduction to Evie when he's using the word V, almost every other word starts with the letter V. He must use at least, I would say, a good 30 to 40 words, all beginning with the letter V. I didn't know there were that many words in the letter V.
00:46:14
Speaker
Oh my god. And he's just going. And it's like poetry, the way he's saying it. Yeah. And he's saying it in a way, OK, you know that it's the scripted lines. But he's coming on as if he's making this up on top of his head. Yeah. Makes it even more impressive. And he's charming the socks off of her while he's doing this. Because he holds out his hand like he's escorting her to the ball. And she gets up and she's like,
00:46:40
Speaker
Oh my God, he's wonderful. So the introduction, I just looked at that because I remember reading on the IMDB trivia. The number of V words he uses, the total number of Vs is 55. The total number of words that start with V is 48. Wow. Yeah.
00:47:05
Speaker
I believe it. But like I said, it had to be somewhere. Like I said, I would have said between 30 or 40 because it is staggering the amount of work and to use them in sentences that make sense. Yeah, yeah. He's not just rambling. It's dialogue that makes sense. Also, you know, credit to the Wachowskis here because I don't believe that speech was in the original because I just reread it and I did not recall reading that speech.
00:47:35
Speaker
Well, whoever wrote it. I think the Wachowskis were the ones who wrote that introduction, which is, I don't even want to know how long it took them to write that to look up all the words. No, no, no. I have no idea how long it took them to write that, but thank God they did, because it's one of the best introductions to the character that I could think of. Yeah, I'm just picturing the Wachowskis sitting there with like, you know, surrounded by dictionaries and thesauruses, like flipping through pages seriously.
00:48:03
Speaker
Oh, damn it, I found one more. Wait a minute, hold on. We gotta put this in. This is a good one. Bounce safe. Okay, that's a good one. We gotta get that in there somewhere. Oh, man. Yeah, but it's a wonderful introduction because
00:48:23
Speaker
We get so much, we've already seen him beat up a couple of guys so we know that he can fight. Right, and he's even charming when he does that. Like when he's talking to the one finger man and he's like, well, what does that mean? It repeats the spirit of the rod line to them. Yeah, he's charming when he does that. And now he gets a chance to display his intelligence, his verbal skills, you know,
00:48:49
Speaker
for this young lady, this young damsel in distress, that he's just saved, you know, which ties in later on when we see him watching the Count of Monte Cristo. And he's like a little kid, he's got a sword and he's front of the TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's copying what the guy is doing on there. And Evie comes and she says, what the hell are you doing? And he's like, well, that's another good point too, is that, you know, they showcase these insanity in different ways.
00:49:15
Speaker
Like, you know, how he does kind of revert to like a kid when he's watching the movie and he's reenacting stuff like that. And it kind of shows like it. He's such a tragic character, probably a little bit more so than in the movie, than in the book, because you feel so much sympathy and empathy for him. And, you know, like in the book, you know, like I said, he's a total bastard in the book. So it's kind of hard to feel sympathetic for him because he's just an idea in the book.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah, here he, you know, we find out just enough of his background, which I appreciate it. You know, we didn't need to go into any long deep dive as far as his background goes. But we get just enough about when he was at the, what was it? The Lake Hill detention center. And we get just enough
00:50:07
Speaker
so we can piece together his origin and say, okay, I understand this guy where he comes from and what was done with him. So we don't get a deep dive into his background or anything like that. The whole point of this character, I think, in this movie is who he is now and the mission that he's dedicated himself to. And it's a, and
00:50:31
Speaker
And what I like is that if it was just about just killing the people that did him wrong, that would cheapen his whole concept. Right. But he is trying to be the living embodiment of an idea. And that's extremely difficult as Captain America. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what I like about this character, you know. Well, something else about that too is
00:50:58
Speaker
It goes back to the Spider-Man thing, and I think you mentioned this once before as well, whereas the reason why Spider-Man is such a New York hero and such a beloved hero of so many people is the fact that anyone can be Spider-Man under that mask because you never see his face.
00:51:17
Speaker
You know, that's like V, like V takes that to another level because you really never see his face. Like you, he could be, and especially with the types of people who were imprisoned in these detention camps, like he could be a gay man. He could be, he could be a Muslim. He could be a Palestinian. He could be black. He could be anything. Right. Right. There's a great scene. Well, there's a great line. We're in a great scene where
00:51:45
Speaker
The trick after he's taken Evie.
00:51:47
Speaker
and he's showing her the stuff that's in his basement and everything like that. And she said, well, what's that? Because there's this huge book that's open. He said, well, that's a Koran. He said, it's a copy from the 14th century. And she said, well, why do you have it? You're not Muslim, are you? He said, do I have to be Muslim to appreciate the language, the poetry? Which is a lot of what V is all about. Do I have to be one thing or another in order to embrace this idea that people should be
00:52:18
Speaker
that the government should be afraid of their people, not the other way around. That's a great line he has in there. People should be afraid of their government. Yeah, government should be afraid of their people. People shouldn't be afraid of their governments. Yeah, that is real. I use that line so many times when I teach Battle Royale in my film class, I always bring up that line.
00:52:38
Speaker
because it's so, it fits to so many different movies. It's a powerful, it's a powerful, no, it's not even just a line, it's a philosophy. It is, yeah. It is. That one line, that's a philosophy. And then again, that's something that the Wachowskis added, I believe, that wasn't in the original.
00:52:56
Speaker
I told you, these guys are brilliant. They're not guys now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that. No, no, no. Totally, totally fine with that. But yeah, they're women, they're ladies now, so. Yeah, so I would say guys is...
00:53:14
Speaker
You guys know what I mean. Well, you know, I mean, I use guys interchangeably. Like I use. What's on the wire, but you know, and I really wish I didn't have to throw that disclaimer out there, but I know there's going to be somebody that's out there that's going to be said, Oh, how dare he? Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm offended that he didn't acknowledge that. Yeah. So that's why I threw it out there. But no, I use, I use guys as a, same thing with dude, like dude is a general gender neutral term for me.
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I don't get hung up with stuff like that. But yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point that what you make. And the movie kind of like hammers it home at the end of the movie. They really didn't have to do that when with all of the people that are dressed like V, they're watching Parliament blow up and they all take off the V masks. And it's all people who have died. All people who have been killed by the North fire government. Yeah, it's everybody's died on through the movie.
00:54:07
Speaker
You know, so yeah, okay, we got the point. Everybody is V.
00:54:13
Speaker
V is everybody. We are all V. And then you have Natalie Portman. She says it again. Yeah, yeah. OK, we get the point. You don't have to beat us over the head with it. That is really like my only quibble in otherwise a movie that I really don't have a quibble with. And I was actually surprised. And once again, I got to go back. I know people get tired of me saying this. But one of the good things about me and you doing this together is that I get to watch these movies all over again.
00:54:42
Speaker
Yeah. I had completely, like I said, I completely forgot Natalie Portman was in this movie. I had forgotten how good Hugo Weaving is. I had forgotten how good Stephen Rhea is. John Hurt, you know, the guy that played the kid pick up Smith. Yeah. You know, yeah. I had forgotten how good these people are in this movie. And I had forgotten how good the story was.
00:55:08
Speaker
how it's not just a guy in a costume and a mask, where am I beating up people? No, no, no. The movie was called for being about that. I was actually very surprised when I saw this movie in the theater, because I was prepared to hate it, right? Because Hollywood has never done, up until this point, Hollywood had never really done any favors to Ellen Moore.
00:55:34
Speaker
No, no. And I know you like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it's completely removed from the graphic novel. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But listen, let's be honest. I've read the graphic novel. There was no way you was going to get that on American screens. No, no, no. There was no way in hell they were going to put that on American screens. So when they said that they were going to make a V for Vendetta adaptation, I was prepared to hate it.
00:56:02
Speaker
thankfully my friends they're like no no no we want to go see V from vendetta so they dragged me to theater i was prepared to hate it and i'm sitting and i'm watching it and after the when the credits rolled i'm like you know what that was different from the graphic novel but they still got a lot of it right in fact i'll go as far as to say like i think this is the um you know aside from tv right because the
00:56:26
Speaker
you know, Swamp Thing on DC Universe and Watchmen on HBO. Those, obviously, were really good adaptations. But as far as movies go, I think this is probably the best adaptation of an Ellen Moore work we've seen on screen.
00:56:43
Speaker
You know what, I'd have to go back and read the graphic novel again, but I would, yeah, I'd probably have to go along with you on, I mean, you know, on that one. And just let me say this about Alan Moore real quick. I know a lot of people, and I'm getting arguments with
00:57:01
Speaker
people about this all the time. But I have a serious problem with writers who get paid very good money for TV or movie adaptations of their work, take the money, cash the check, and then proceed to trash the money. Whoa, whoa, whoa. To be fair to more, he does not take the money. Yeah, he does. OK, that's what I was getting into. OK. This is why I respect him. First of all, he says, no, don't put my name on it, and don't give me the money. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know what?
00:57:28
Speaker
More writers should do, if you think that, you know, that they have trashed your work and, you know, oh, this is horrible, everything like that. I don't know. I have a problem with the hypocrisy of taking good money from people who adapt your work and then you make a career out of trashing.
00:57:45
Speaker
you know, that Alan Moore doesn't do that. He doesn't take the money. He doesn't put my name on it, which I respect highly. I just wanted to throw that out there for, you know, no other reason. So yeah, that's a good point. And yeah, I am glad that he's, you know, he has disowned it. And also like Joe Silver, who was the producer, did a really shitty thing in the lead up to this movie, right? He went out there and he said, oh, Alan Moore loves, is really enthusiastic about the movie.
00:58:13
Speaker
And when Moore heard that, he right away, he called up the closest reporter you can find. He's like, I didn't say that shit. Yeah. And that's actually why that's actually what triggered him taking it because his whole attitude about film adaptations of his work. He's like, look, I don't care. Do whatever you want. Don't involve me.
00:58:32
Speaker
that was all yeah and that was all that was the only thing he said and then joe silver goes and he goes on goes to a reporter he says oh well you know alan moore is really enthusiastic about the movie and you know like a hollywood guy making bullshit up without thinking of the consequences and moore hears that he's like i didn't fucking say that shit you better take my name off that yeah good for him yeah good for him although let me say this not speaking for alan moore i don't know the man i wish i did but
00:59:00
Speaker
going by this and the Watchmen TV series, I personally think that he would be proud to have his name on this, because this is a very good movie, period. This is a very good movie. This is not a kids movie. This is not one of these movies. And I'm positive that people drug their kids to this, like they took them to Watchmen because it was people in costume. And they said, what the hell is this shit?
00:59:29
Speaker
This is actually when people talk about a superhero movie made for adults. See, this is what...
00:59:37
Speaker
I consider, you know, not the violence, not the saying fuck every 30 seconds, which for some inexplicable reason, screenwriters seem to think that, you know, y'all white people say fuck every, all the time. Well, you know, I actually do. So that makes sense for me. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, but yeah, but you're unusual. In fact, you know what? It's funny.
01:00:02
Speaker
I've sworn a lot more since I moved to Japan because there's no social filter because I speak English and everyone else speaks Japanese. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, you get what I was saying. Exactly. So when I went back, I remember one time when I went back to the, this is like after I've been in Japan just like a few years or so and went back to the States, mom's like, why do you swear so much? I'm like, oh, I didn't even realize it.
01:00:24
Speaker
yeah you didn't really yeah you've been away for so long because i don't have any social filter now there's nobody to like judge me whenever i say it yeah oh my god i told i told uh i told coach no that you know what i said look i'm gonna tell you right away like our kid is gonna hear the word fuck early and they're gonna hear it often and it just may be their first word
01:00:49
Speaker
Listen, I hear, listen, I know people that the kids, you know, the kids, that the customers, that was the first thing that they learned.
01:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, I knew a kid that was saying motherfucker by the time like he was, you know, that was practically his first word. Remember in Endgame when he says shit and then his daughter repeats it? And he's like, no, no, no, no, we don't say that word. That's mommy's word. Mommy pointed. Yeah. So that way, if she does say it around beverage, you'd be like, well, mommy, I learned it from you. And there you go. Listen, bring it on to wife. Why not? But Kevin Smith told his daughter about swearing.
01:01:27
Speaker
He said, you know, swearing built our house so you could swear all you want. No, I hear that. Yeah, I hear that. So that's good. I'm glad he's not a hypocrite about it. No, I mean, listen, you know, listen, it is what it is. And if your kids have to learn that kind of language, why not learn it at home? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At least this way, you know where it came from. Now, the opposite side of Ellen Moore is
01:01:57
Speaker
you know, even though, you know, I'm glad that he removed his name and he was, you know, he was committed to his, to his values and his opinion about that and how he didn't want to be attached to this in any way, shape or form. But that being said, you know, I think he gets a little bit too up his own ass when it comes to these adaptations. Like I think like, because this is, this is a really, like he complained that the whole idea is that
01:02:25
Speaker
Like he complained that they changed the idea from about being, you know, fascism versus anarchy to being neoconservatism versus liberalism. And he complained about that. And I'm like, well, looking at it now, like it's very clearly still fascism versus, okay, democracy. But even still, even if it's like anarchism is a tough thing to get across in a mass market movie.
01:02:50
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's this very complex ideology. And like, there are so many different factions of anarchism. So it's, I mean, which, you know, probably fits because, you know, anarchy is because of the, because of what it's all about. But, but still like, I think he gets a little bit too up his own ass about, about these adaptations. Let me, okay. As much as I admire Alan Moore.
01:03:15
Speaker
Albemarle is a guy that not only reads too much of his own press, he believes it. Yeah. You know, I get that because when you have so many people telling you, you know, how brilliant you are and oh, you're a wizard and oh, you come up with these incredible concepts and everything like that. Yeah. You have a tendency to start saying, well, you know, if everybody's telling me I'm this brilliant,
01:03:44
Speaker
then quite obviously it must be true. And then you can go off and write self-indulgent, thousand page books that nobody reads. Maybe
Alan Moore's Complex Legacy
01:03:58
Speaker
some people have read it, I don't know. I have not met anybody to date who has read that book. But yeah, I think that, yeah, you know what?
01:04:11
Speaker
If I ever met him, I would probably say, you know something, Alan? You really should learn to relax a little bit. Yeah. You know what? Dude, it's not that deep. Yeah. At the end of the day, once the rubber meets the road and we remove all of the trappings and
01:04:30
Speaker
and all the accoutrements and everything that goes along with your career, at the end of the day, you're still sitting down and making up stories. Right. The thing that always gets me about him is how he's come out in such a harsh way as condemning superheroes. I'm like, well, dude, you wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for superheroes. Yeah, well, exactly. See, this is what I'm saying. I don't hold much with people that build their careers on
01:04:58
Speaker
a genre or some, you know, um, how can I, how can I put whatever phase of their career that they built that career on? Yeah. And then they turn around and say, well, how much they hated. Well, if you hated it so much, why did you get involved in it in the first place? That's like Michael Jordan coming out and saying, you know what, basketball sucks.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I hate basketball. I can't stand basketball. I wish I'd never picked up a basketball. And people look at him like, what are you talking about? This is what built your fortune. This is what enables you to live the lifestyle that you do. How can you say you hate it? Also something else too. And like I, cause I know everyone's always about Moore's rights as a creator and how he got screwed out of the Watchmen rights and all that. The truth is actually a little bit different because Moore knew
01:05:45
Speaker
what kind of deal he was signing. Of course he did. I mean he said at a convention, there's something that came out back at the time, he was at a convention, they were talking about watchmen and he had said that the deal is if the book goes out of print, we'll get the rights back. But if it stays in print, the DC keeps the rights and we're fine with that. He had said that on the record and then
01:06:09
Speaker
The thing is, like, nobody expected Watchmen to be as popular as it was. So everybody who thinks that DC has been doing this to intentionally screw more out of the rights, like, if the book had stopped selling, DC would let it go out of prison. Thank you. Thank you. And plus, that was a better deal than any other creator at that time was getting. That's it. Are you kidding? I would love a deal like that. Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You mean as long as my boots keep selling?
01:06:39
Speaker
You're going to keep publishing it. You're going to keep publishing it? Yeah. Shit. I would give people money every month to go out and buy 50 copies. And it's not like Moore wants the rights so that he can do more Watchmen stories or anything like that. He wants the rights so he can kill it.
01:06:59
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, he doesn't want the book in print anymore. That's the thing. Because he hates that his career has been defined by it. So if he ever got the rights back, first thing he would do is shove it in a drawer and never open it again. Okay. Okay. As far as Alan Morgan, one other thing I would say.
01:07:21
Speaker
The thing about him also too is that he's created this whole mythology around him that I that I personally think has sustained him Through those dry spells when he wasn't
01:07:36
Speaker
quote unquote Alan Moore and people want, and he wasn't as hot as he was, you know, but he's got this whole mythology that he's created around himself and that his fans have created around him too that sustains him. So he's got that going for him as well. And yeah, you know what? I don't know. On one hand I can understand how you can be a creative person and
01:08:03
Speaker
The only thing that people ever want to talk about or that they remember you for is something that you wrote 30 years ago. OK, I can understand that as a creative person myself. Yeah. That's kind of frustrating. Well, you know, I just wrote this last year. Did you read? No, no, no. Fuck that. I want to talk about watching. Oh, shit. Yeah, I got to talk about Dr. Manhattan's blue dick again. So I understand why that's kind of frustrating. At the same time, though,
01:08:33
Speaker
Isn't it better to be known for one thing and revered for that one thing than not to be known for anything at all? Right. And you know what? If I was ill- Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. That's the question I want you to answer. No, no. I agree with you. I'm completely with you. And yeah, I agree. I would much rather be known for one thing than not be known for anything. Because I've read a lot of different book series. And in a way, not to the same level, obviously, but most people only know me from the Luther Cross stuff.
01:09:03
Speaker
That's been my most popular series. Most people don't know about the Vanguard superhero books. Most people don't know about the Myth Hunter. Nobody knows about the Infernum books. But nobody ever talks about those. They only talk to me about Luther Cross.
01:09:23
Speaker
I'm glad because those books, they pay my bills. Bingo, there you go. I mean, most people, I ask them about my other books they don't know anything about. Oh, Dylan, that's all they know. And me? Listen, I'm cool with that. Yeah. Yeah, fine. Hey, as long as I keep cranking them out.
01:09:42
Speaker
And they keep buying them. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm happy. Now, would I like for people to buy them? Of course I would. I'm not sensitive. I'm human. Of course. But I am grateful for the fact that this is something that people love so much. Yeah. And I can't help but think that maybe if Alan Moore could disconnect
01:10:04
Speaker
from his own ego for a while and stop reading his own press and just be grateful for the fact that he wrote this one thing that is a worldwide phenomenon.
01:10:14
Speaker
Also, if I was Alan Moore, I'd be very happy that people mostly know me from Watchmen and V for Vendetta than they do from that weird porno comic he did about Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella. I wasn't going to go there. See, I wasn't going to go there. But now that you've opened that door, Counselor.
01:10:44
Speaker
You know what? But I have no idea. OK, sometimes writers will do things. And I will read it, or I will hear about it. And I will say, OK, who do they think is going to be interested in this? Who is in your book? Or did you just write it just because you say, you know what? I really don't care if anybody reads it. You know, I just want to do it.
01:11:10
Speaker
And sometimes I wonder if they're just like, you know, I'm gonna write this like like the Frank Miller of all star Batman thing where it's like, I'm gonna write this so bad, just to see how people will react to it. Yeah, yeah, sometimes I can sometimes I get that impression too because
01:11:27
Speaker
OK, for instance, if I could talk about myself for a minute, one of the things that always irritates me is that people talk about, well, when I read a book, I need to have characters that I like. And I said, well, I'm going to write a book where every single character is a horrible person. Well, that was American Psycho. Yeah.
Writing Unlikable Characters
01:11:47
Speaker
Because in the movie, at least, you got the secretary. But she's not in the book. In the book, everybody's a piece of shit. Yeah.
01:11:56
Speaker
Yeah, so I wrote a book where everybody was a horrible person. And it turned out that a lot of people who have read that book, they said, oh, that's their favorite thing. Oh, that's the best thing you've ever written. Was that Diamondback? No, Frankenstein. Oh, OK, OK. Although it could be Diamondback, too, because Diamondback is the same thing. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people in that book. There's not a redeemable character in the whole book. Everybody's a shit. Yeah, and that was a good book, too, by the way.
01:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, you know, you don't need likable characters to write a good book. So yeah, so I'm just agreeing with you that I wonder sometimes a writer just say, you know, so I'm just gonna write this just see if anybody buys this. Yeah, he's in a financial situation where he can do that. But I mean,
01:12:46
Speaker
He went through a lot of work on that porno thing. What was it? It was Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy from Oz, growing up Dorothy. That's right. Yeah. And I think it was Cinderella. Maybe it was Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I can't remember exactly. But some fairy tale characters. But yeah, it was like a trio of them. Yeah. I know. It was a lot of sex. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was funny because then he writes this thing about childhood
01:13:16
Speaker
uh fairy tale characters having sex with each other and and then he complained about you know DC doing before Watchmen and he was and he was saying like well this is not true to the spirit of the characters you had Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland eating each other up for fuck's sake yeah you're right you know you're not just writing fan fiction you're writing pornographic fan fiction what are you talking about
01:13:42
Speaker
about. Well, I mean, I remember this was this is what I said at the time. He's like, I don't see anybody going back and rewriting Moby Dick or doing a sequel to Moby Dick. And my response to that was, well, yeah, that's because you haven't figured out a way for someone to rape a whale. That's why.
01:13:58
Speaker
And as a matter of fact, Philip Jose Forma did write a sequel to Moby Day. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, The Wind Whales of Ishmael. Oh, OK. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, like, I mean, it's just like the arrogance, because he's someone who always takes other people's characters and twists them and puts them in different situations that know that obviously the original writer never intended for. Oh. But then he gets pissed when someone does it to his stuff. Like, it's just that,
01:14:24
Speaker
The hypocrisy just annoys the shit out of me. Yeah. And see, that's what turns me off from a lot of writers, more included. I don't appreciate the... Be what you are and do what you want, but don't be a hypocrite about it. If you're gonna take other characters and you're gonna do whatever you want with it, then you know what? You gotta be open to people doing that to your characters as well.
01:14:52
Speaker
right i mean like he and he has and you know let's let's let's be give the man credit he has done a lot of good work with a lot of characters like he yes he is his superman work was amazing his he made wildcats relevant like wildcats was basically just jim lee telling the stories that he could no longer tell with the x-men and then he turned it into something you know meaningful in just a short run i mean he took um you know supreme you know rob liefeld supreme character was just like a
01:15:24
Speaker
It was basically Superman if he was an asshole. That was the whole concept behind Superman. And then he took it and he turned it into a love letter to the, to the silver age Superman. And you know, he'd done all these things. He'd turned these characters around. Um, but for them, for him to then get pissed off when people do it to his characters is just that sort of noise. Yeah. I mean, you gotta be, I mean, you know, you gotta be open, right? You gotta be open. I mean, when, when, uh, when,
01:15:55
Speaker
The Dylan book came out, I mean, the odd jobs. And I was telling my wife about it. And she said, oh, well, you're letting other people write these. I said, yeah. She said, well, how do you feel about that? I said, listen, I've already given them permission to do it. I guess I just got to deal with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if I didn't want them to do it, then I should have told them, no, don't do it. Right, yeah. And that's how I feel about that whole thing. If people are taking characters,
01:16:23
Speaker
you know, that don't belong to them and they do all of these things without any thought of what the creator might've had in mind for them, then yeah, then I guess you gotta be open when the same happens to you. Exactly, yeah.
Natalie Portman's Performance
01:16:38
Speaker
And also just one final thing on Alan Moore, like let's be frank here. There are creators who have been screwed. Jack Kirby got fucked. Siegel and Schuster got fucked. Bill Finger got fucked. Alan Moore did not get fucked. No. Like that's just, and I mean, he could still be getting all the royalties he wants from this stuff.
01:16:59
Speaker
but he's turned it down. So it's not, it's not, when people bring him up in the same breath as like Kirby and Siegel and Schuster and Bill Fanger, like it's not even the same thing. Oh, I hate when people, yeah, I hate when people do that. I said, no, it's, you know what, you can't even compare the same thing. It's like trying to compare Mars and Uranus. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it's two different, I mean, Kirby, that was, he just happened to be born in a time when, you know, screwing over Tommy Bogard, that was the thing to do. Right. You know?
01:17:28
Speaker
That's a, you know, if Kirby was working today, he'd be a multimillionaire. Right, yeah. But back then, yeah, that wouldn't happen. Yeah, but Moore, he turned all that shit down. Exactly. He's the grown man that turned it down. So I don't want to hear, yeah. But you always have these people, and I don't understand how they do it. And then when you question them on, OK, well, what about this? Well, I didn't know about that. Well, then why are you talking about something you don't know about? Yeah, yeah.
01:17:58
Speaker
You know, keep your mouth shut until, you know, you sit in front of a computer 27 hours a day anyway, go research what you're talking about, and then come back to me and then we can have a meaningful conversation about it. You know, I think we should probably title this episode V for venting. Yeah, right? Wouldn't that be cool? I was just thinking about that. We've been going off on Alan Moore's, oh, poor Alan Moore. It's not like he listens to this anyway.
01:18:25
Speaker
No, but listen, I like Alan Moore. I do. I like his work. I read articles about him, and I chortle. Chortle, chortle, chortle. I am sufficiently amused by his, but it's just that I don't worship at his feet like a lot of people do. I know. Yeah. But the man puts his pants on one time, one leg at a time, just like me. Well, I don't know. He's into that wizard shit, so who knows how many licks he's got hidden around. Oh, well. OK.
01:18:55
Speaker
Like I said, mythology. But listen, the man is extraordinary, talented. I do not take that away from him. But like I said, I just think that he has bought into his own mythology. Yeah, he's got a crawl out of his own ass. Yeah, he's created this whole mythology for himself. And he needs to stop reading and believing his press. Exactly. Yeah, I agree.
01:19:22
Speaker
Okay. Let's see. Well, you know, I want to talk a little bit about Natalie Portman in this movie, because her, like I mentioned earlier, she is, she's pretty different from how she's portrayed in the book. Like in the book, she's much more naive. She doesn't know anything about the world. Also, Gordon too is very different in the book. Like he's actually kind of a, he's, you know, he's kind to Evie, but he's kind of like a scumbag type of character as far as like how he makes his money and everything.
01:19:47
Speaker
And he's not gay, obviously. They end up being lovers. But I do like what they did with Gordon in here. I like him a lot better in the movie than I did in the book. OK. But yeah, what did you think of Natalie Portman?
01:20:02
Speaker
You know what? Natalie Portman is the weirdest chick, because I watch her in movies. And either she would be in a movie, and I would absolutely love what she does. Or I look at her and I say, what the hell is she doing in this movie? Like, Black Swan, to this day, if I ever meet her, I'm going to drag her in an alley. I'm going to beat her up. You know? You didn't like Black Swan? Please, the less said about that nonsense, the better.
01:20:32
Speaker
You know, I liked her in the Thor movies, as we talked about, because I think that by that time, she had learned how to work with special effects, which she hadn't learned in the Star Wars movies, because when she worked in the prequel trilogy, to me, she was walking around like, you know, how the hell did I get into this? And where's my agent? Like I said before, like when we talked about Thor, like I blame George Lucas for that, because he just did more work with actors.
01:21:00
Speaker
But in this movie, I found myself amazingly enough enjoying her a lot, her character, because she's a point of view character. Yeah.
01:21:17
Speaker
I like, okay, once we get, okay, once we got to the spot where she started talking about her parents and their background and how they became, okay, she had me sold. Because she wasn't acting like the typical, first of all, when the guys try to rape her and she fights back right away, only to back off when she finds out that they're these dreaded fingermen. Yeah.
01:21:39
Speaker
you know, and she's like, oh shit, you know, I don't fucked up, you know, because, you know, but she was ready to fight up until then. And then when V shows up and he rescues her, I love how they didn't do this thing where she's screaming, who are you? Stay away from me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She has a conversation with her. She says, well, who are you? Quite reasonably, well, who are you? You know, and she listens to him and he says, and she said, well, the guy did rescue me and, you know,
01:22:05
Speaker
He could have killed me if he wanted to. And they go up to the roof, and they watch the old Bailey blow up. And it's really charming how she's working with this actor whose face she can't see. So there's a lot that's on her, too, because she's got to register emotions that she's hearing in his voice, but she's not seeing on his face. Right, exactly. It's a good performance from her in that, you know,
01:22:33
Speaker
OK, because when she has the scenes with V, all the emotion that we can see is coming from her. So in a way, she's emoting not only just for her character, but for his as well. Right, yeah, yeah. And that's what I really liked and what I really enjoyed seeing. I thought she was very good in this.
01:22:50
Speaker
Yeah I thought so too. Now I do have to mention though just because like I apparently I've talked to some British people and they said like her accent is terrible. Like I- Oh well it comes and goes. Like I personally didn't really notice like I don't really notice that much unless the accent is really really bad. Like I don't really notice like you know like Storm in X-Men.
01:23:10
Speaker
You know, I'm glad you said that, because you know what? People say that all the time. And I said, really? I really don't pay that much attention to accents. But people say that, oh, I hated his accent. Well, what was wrong with it? Oh, you didn't hear that? No, I didn't hear anything. And I'm someone who grew up, my father was British. So I grew up listening to a British accent all my life. But I didn't notice anything weird about her accent. It just didn't hit me at all.
01:23:40
Speaker
No, it's toward... Yeah, because there's a couple of scenes where it does sound like she's attempting a British accent, but most of the time, she sounds like a regular... It's an American voice to me. It doesn't sound British. Okay. But like I said, that kind of thing really doesn't register with me. People...
01:24:04
Speaker
What's one movie that people complain about that? They complain about Kevin Costner all the time and Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Oh, right. I never noticed a thing. That's a white accent. Well, because he doesn't do an accent. That's what they're complaining about. Yeah. Well, you know what? Because remember, they spoof that and Men in Tights, because Keriel says in that, unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.
01:24:27
Speaker
But you know what? I appreciate an actor who's smart enough to know that they can't do that. And they say, listen, people are just going to have to listen to me speaking my regular voice, then try to attempt a bad accent. Well, you remember when Iron Man 2 came out, everybody was bitching about the fact that Black Widow didn't speak in a Russian accent.
01:24:48
Speaker
And she's a spy. Well, yeah, exactly. She's a spy. Why would she speak with a Russian accent? And she's been working around the world for so long, and she worked in this elite spy agency. You'd think they'd trade her to drop the accent to speak in something more neutral. Now, I'm sure that when she goes home to Russia, the Russian accent comes out. Yeah, but when she's going around the world doing spy shit, no. She's not supposed to sound like a Russian. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, well.
01:25:17
Speaker
But okay. Moving right along. Moving right along. You know, also about the EV and V relationship. It's also much more of a romantic relationship in the movie than it is in the book. Because in the book, it's almost like a father-daughter type thing. But in the movie, there's like this affection that's brewing between them.
01:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's a romance that's never consummated, which I actually like. Yeah, yeah. Because now we're in that like Phantom of the Opera sort of thing. And in fact, it makes V's torture of her all the more terrifying, I think, because you see how much affection he has for Evie up until that point. And then for him to still do that, she's like, oh, wow, that's terrible.
01:26:11
Speaker
Yeah, but then again, he does it because he knows he's not gonna be around. Well, yeah, I mean, no, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying like it's- Oh, it is bad. I'm saying like it does. It shows like how strong his convictions are that he knows that he has to do this to her to wake her up to the reality of the world. Yeah. And so, but it makes it a lot more
01:26:37
Speaker
It's a lot more profound, I think, basically in the movie than it is in the book because of it because of how much they build up their relationship up until then. And that's exactly what it is. It's profound. I mean, let's not get around it. It's bad. You know what he does, but
01:26:54
Speaker
And this goes back to what I always talk about when I talk about motivation and everything like that. If you can make me understand why a character is doing something, I'll go along with it. I understood why he was doing it. Yeah, yeah. Now, I don't like it. I don't approve it. I'm saying, well, dude, you could have just sat her down and talked up. But I do understand why he did it the way he did it, because it's kind of like,
01:27:21
Speaker
Know what it was like? It was like the old way of teaching somebody how to swim. You just throw them in the deepest part of the pool and just hope they don't drown. Right, yeah. And that's essentially what V does to her in this movie. He throws her in the deepest part of the pool. Not only the deepest part of the pool, but the ones he's already put sharks in as well. And just hopes that her mind is strong enough that she won't break.
01:27:49
Speaker
And she didn't. And matter of fact, she came out of a, you know, stronger. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm so glad that they didn't hold back on that scene. Like they portray it pretty much exactly as it's portrayed in the book. Like they don't hold back on the torture that she goes through. They don't hold back on the, and it's just the, and also like her reactions when she's reading Valerie's story, or again, you know, credits are important. Oh, yeah, yeah.
01:28:17
Speaker
she really feels you get you get the sense that she's really feeling that as that emotional as she reads it and especially at the end when she kisses the letter yeah like that it's it's a it's a really moving part of the movie like one of the strongest parts of the movie i think yeah because i mean
01:28:35
Speaker
And it seemingly comes out of left field, but then later on when V is explaining why he did that, then it all comes full circle and you say, oh, shit. Especially when he tells her, like, I didn't write it. Yeah. Right. Because up until that point, because like after, when she finds out it was V the whole time,
01:28:57
Speaker
And up until that point, she thinks that he wrote that letter and that it was all part of waking her up. But then she finds out, no, this is what he experienced too. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's why they did that thing where when he takes her up to the roof and she goes out and it's raining and it's lightning and thunder and then they
01:29:21
Speaker
and to cut that with the scenes when the facility he was in, when it blew up. Right, yeah. And he's got the fire all around him. Right, and that was a nice contrast, right? Like him being reborn with fire, her being reborn with water. Right, exactly. So, yeah, it was a nice little way to illustrate the fact that he put her through the same emotional catharsis that he did in order to wake her up.
01:29:47
Speaker
You know, like I said, there's something you don't expect to find in, you know, like a superhero movie, you know, there's something you really don't expect to find something.
Heroic Tragedy and Modern Relevance
01:29:58
Speaker
that little chunk of emotionalism right in the middle of all the killing and the mayhem and the political stuff and you know something else too like um you know the fact that he has to die in order for this new world to be born that kind of as i was watching it i was thinking back to uh you remember serenity the movie that was uh the conclusion to uh firefly sure the the operative right when he's talking about building a better world
01:30:25
Speaker
And Mal's like, how many people have to die so that you can live in your better world? And he says, you know, just, you know, very matter of factly, he's like, I'm not going to live there. There's no, I don't belong there. Yeah, I don't belong there. Yeah. And it's the same, I get the same sense from V. Where he knows that he's got to create this new world, but there's no place for him in it. Yeah, it's kind of like, it's kind of like the
01:30:51
Speaker
one of the one of my favorite tropes in western movies is that you will have the people you'll have a town and it's being beleaguered by you know all these rustlers and you know bad men and prostitutes and everything like that so then towns people reach out to gunslinger to come and clean up the town
01:31:11
Speaker
And he cleans up the town and he kills all of the prostitutes and the gamblers and the gunslingers, everything like that, until he's the only one left alive. And once that's done, then the people say, okay, well, thanks a lot, Connie, now get the hell out. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's that kind of thing that you need this type of person to make a better world. But once he's made that better world,
01:31:30
Speaker
It doesn't need them anymore. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in one way, that's kind of messed up. But in another kind of way, that's kind of noble, actually, when you willingly know that you're going to create a better world that you have no part of. Right. Well, it's the same thing. And, like, you know, I'm thinking about movies that, like, you think of Shane, where, you know, he ends and the boy's telling him, you know, it's like, well, why do you have to leave? And he says, look,
01:31:56
Speaker
This is who I am. I'm a killer. There's no way I can break free of that. So I can't be around you people then. Right. And same thing also with, you know, remember Seven Samurai too, at the end when the young samurai and the farmer's daughter and
01:32:16
Speaker
they have this tryst. But then at the end, she looks at it, she sees him and then she just runs away from him and she goes back to farming. And he realizes there's no place for him in her world. So that was the kind of feeling I got as well.
01:32:36
Speaker
Sad. It is. It is very sad. It is. And it's very sad. But let me ask you something. Why do you think that this is something that we see reoccurring in heroic fiction, the hero creating the world that he has no place in? Why does he do that? I think it's because it adds an element of tragedy to it.
01:32:59
Speaker
Right? And it also, it makes the hero seem a little bit more heroic because he's, you know, then that there's, there's no question that he is absolutely not fighting for himself. That he is fighting for, for other people. Hmm. Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's a form of a heroic sacrifice, basically. Yeah. So I think that's probably where it comes from. Cool. Thank you. All right.
01:33:28
Speaker
Anything else to talk about with V for Vendetta? I think I've pretty much exhausted myself on it. How about you? I would just like to say that the visuals, I love the visuals of this movie, especially during the fight scenes. Oh, yes. It's not just
01:33:45
Speaker
There's a terrific part where Creed says, oh, well, we got all of these guns and all you got is your karate tricks and, you know, your knives. And V says, yeah, well, that's all I need. And by the time this shit is over, I won't have my hands around your neck. And then he proceeds to take out, like, what? It must be at least about 20 guys. You know, it's a terrific fight. All of the fight scenes in this are very good. Yeah, like the choreography of the fight scenes. I like the...
01:34:11
Speaker
I like the look of the movie because it's one of those movies where you can't pin down what year is taking place in.
01:34:21
Speaker
You know, I like movies like this where it doesn't, you never see like a date. Nobody ever mentions a date. Well, they do, but so you can, they mentioned like the date of like the St. Mary's thing. Yeah. And so like you can actually like determine what the date is from that, but yeah, they don't make a big deal about it though. Yeah, they don't make a big deal about it. What else? Something else I wanted to mention.
01:34:49
Speaker
No, I think that was it. I like the, yeah, I love the choreography. I like the set design. I like the production in this. This was not a cheap movie. No, no, no. And you know, we got to give credit to the director that got to name him because even though the Wachowskis produced it and they wrote it, but it was actually directed by James McTeague.
01:35:14
Speaker
And I believe this was his first movie. And just based on this, I'm gonna find other movies that he did. If this is his first movie, my hats is off to him, because this is excellent. This is his first movie, although from what I'm looking at with his credits, doesn't look like his follow-ups were all that great, because he did Ninja Assassin, which was like a low-budget action movie. Oh, God, I've seen that.
01:35:39
Speaker
And he did that one. He did that. And he also did The Raven with John Cusack, which was apparently wildly consistent. Oh, I saw that. That wasn't half bad. OK. I haven't seen that. I just heard about it. That's the one I'm thinking of when he plays Edgar Allan Poe. He gets caught up in his murder mystery. Yes. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. Yeah, that wasn't half bad. Yeah, it's worth checking out. OK, I'll check that out then. And then he also, yeah. And then just asking that so much.
01:36:06
Speaker
And he also did some episodes of Sense8, the TV show that the Wachowskis did on Netflix. And he did some episodes of season two of Marco Polo. He also did another, looks like a low budget action movie called Survivor, which Pierce Brosnan was a British-American action spy thriller.
01:36:35
Speaker
Never. Never heard of it either. But oh, it looks like it was directed video in the US. So that's why. But Novich was in that too. And so was, oh, wow. Robert Forster was in it. So was Angela Bassett. Really? Yeah. It might be worth checking out, actually. OK, yeah. Apparently, it did get a lot of negative reviews. It holds on Rotten Tomatoes. It's got an approval rating of 8%.
01:37:04
Speaker
And then he also directed another one called Breaking In with Gabrielle Union. But that also, yeah, it seems like other, outside of B for Vendetta, none of his stuff has really gotten any sort of good reviews. Wow, that's wild. Yeah, I don't know what happened there.
01:37:28
Speaker
Well, listen, well, listen, at least he can make at least he's got one movie that he could point to and say, I'm proud of that. Exactly. Yeah. That's when I got right. Yeah. Yeah. And anybody that can do that. Yeah.
01:37:41
Speaker
Yeah, so at least he's got that under his belt, although yeah, it's too bad because he shows a definite flair for directing in this. And I would hope he gets something that's got a bigger... You would think after directing this movie, because this movie was really popular, that he would have gotten something better. He would have been offered something more than just direct to video stuff.
01:38:05
Speaker
Listen, the movie business, who can figure it out? That's why I'm glad I'm not involved in it. Well, Luchowski's coming back to The Matrix. Maybe they should have him direct one of those. Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, I heard that Keanu Reeves, he's filming it now, right? Oh, really? I didn't hear about that. Yeah, they're going to do another Matrix movie. Speaking of Keanu Reeves, did you see the latest trailer for Bill and Ted?
01:38:31
Speaker
Yes, I did. I think that's actually coming out on iTunes, Sam. Yeah. They're shipping that to all the various streaming services and stuff like that. I'm looking forward to show up, hopefully, on Amazon Prime or whatever. It'll show up on that. Yeah. So yeah, it's supposed to be coming out. Oh, it has a new release date. This actually just came out today, this article I'm looking at now.
01:39:01
Speaker
Okay, so it's gonna be coming out. It's gonna be in theaters where possible while also being available on a video on demand on August 28th. Oh, okay, cool. I'll be looking for it. I'm thinking of that. They had to use makeup to make Keanu look like he had actually aged.
01:39:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know what I'm saying? Yeah, no lie. He actually looks older in the trailer than he does in real life. Yeah. Yeah. I remember people saying, like, why does Canada look so old now that had to have been intentional? Because he does not look that old. Yeah. And I don't know if that's padding or whatever. But he looks like he's also gained weight for the role. Yeah. That might just be padding. I don't know. But it looks like he gained weight. Yeah. Yeah.
01:39:48
Speaker
Cause of course, I mean, you know, he's supposed to be the middle age, you know, suburban dad, I guess, going by the, uh, you know, but wow. You know, he's also been, he's reportedly been in talks with Marvel several times. So, which has led some people to think like, all right, so, you know, this is a complete digression. It's got nothing to do with P for Vendetta, but I just shrunk to mind. If, if you could cast Keanu Reeves as anyone in the Marvel universe, who do you think you would cast him as? Adam Warlock.
01:40:17
Speaker
Oh, okay, I can see that. Adam Warlock. I don't know who I'd cast him as, but there's been a lot of speculation that he might be up for Wolverine, which would be interesting. Yeah, it would definitely be interesting to say the least. I saw a lot of people mention Namor, but I don't see him as the Namor type. Physically, yes, but not,
01:40:45
Speaker
you know, personality wise. But you do know, did you watch the Hobbs and Shaw, did you watch the spin-off?
01:40:54
Speaker
That one from The Fast and Furious? Hobbs and Shaw? Oh, yeah, yeah. OK, you saw Hobbs and Shaw. Remember that voice that came out of the machine at the end of the movie after they busted it up and after they killed Idris? Well, they didn't kill him. They just threw him over the cliff. I think he's still alive. Idris Elba. And it was the mysterious leader of that organization. Oh, right, yeah, yeah. That's Keanu Reeves' voice. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. The speculation is that, yeah, that, you know,
01:41:21
Speaker
He's going to join the franchise at some time. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I did remember. You're right. I do remember hearing about that now. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people tell me, get out of here. I said, yeah, look it up. I said, that's Keanu Reeves. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah. All right. So that about does us for, uh, for V for Vendetta. You know, like we said, it's, it's different from the book, but you know, I think we both agree that it's, as far as movies go, it's the best adaptation of any of Alan Moore's stuff to date.
01:41:48
Speaker
And if you want a superhero movie that you can feel that you can watch it and you don't feel bad because you think you got to stay plugged into what's going on today and, you know, yeah, watch this movie. Yeah. It's so much, it's haunting how much more relevant it is today than it was back, you know, 15 years ago when it came out. This is an extremely timely superhero movie. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
01:42:19
Speaker
OK, so that does it for for this week. So what are we going to be watching next week? Because we're going back to your pick now. OK, and you know what, since we.
01:42:30
Speaker
touched upon the theme, very briefly, of superhero movies that have the theme of society being the super villain. I thought we'd go with something that's a little bit more recent that we haven't yet talked about. People keep asking me about it anyway. And we would talk about Joker. Oh, OK.
01:42:53
Speaker
this is really creepily timely because, you know, I teach, well, cause I teach a class about, we watch English movies, right? And so I asked, and right now we're doing, we're doing social network for, as our current movie, but like in a few weeks, we'll, but next month I asked the, I asked, you know, the staff at the school, I'm like, what do you want? What, what would you think you want to do for next month? And she's like, let's do Joker next month. Wow.
01:43:18
Speaker
So yeah, she- Did she give a reason why? Or did she just, you know? No, she was like, yeah, she's like, oh, you want, how about Joker? I'm like, okay. I didn't even ask why, but no, but it was just, but yeah, just interesting how those, these two things connect. Yeah, but it occurred to me while we were talking about that in, you know, Viva of Vendetta, how it's a movie where the supervillain is society. In that movie, Joker, in a lot of ways, yeah, society is the supervillain as well. Right, yeah, you're right, yeah, yeah.
01:43:48
Speaker
Okay, that's a good choice. All right, so join us next week where we'll be talking about Joker and going into that. Because that was a movie that got a lot of mixed opinions about it. And I had a... Oh, highly controversial. I mean, people either loved it or completely despised it. And I'm just kind of like, it's okay. Yeah, yeah. But you know what? I'm old, so I don't get excited about much anyway. I'm like, well, it's a movie. I couldn't understand.
01:44:16
Speaker
the, you know, the vitriol. Right. That this movie, you know, because me, I just took it as the Elseworlds. Yeah. That's how, you know, it didn't have to conform strictly to the Batman legend as we know it, or the story of the Joker as we know it. Because right from the start, once I heard what it was about, I said, Oh, well, this is the Elseworld thing. Yeah. Well, in fact, it was actually supposed to be much more different because
01:44:41
Speaker
Originally, because you know when the Waynes die at the end? Yeah. Apparently, it was supposed to be the Joker who kills them. Yeah. And then he turns the gun and he kills Bruce Wayne too. That was the original idea behind it. They were going to completely remove any question of ambiguity if this is connected to the DCAU or anything like that.
01:45:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was supposed to be incredible. I mean, at one point, Martin Scorsese actually was supposed to direct it. Right, yeah. I remember there's speculation that DiCaprio might play the Joker. Yeah, right. The DiCaprio was supposed to be playing Joker. Yeah, it went through a lot of permutations. Yeah. Because this was going to be like, they would determine that this was going to be a Joker movie that nobody had ever seen before. Right, yeah. And we get into it.
01:45:27
Speaker
Well, I'll just say for now that yeah, I agree with them 100 percent. This is a movie that's totally unlike. Yeah. Yeah. Any iteration of the Joker that you've ever seen before. Yeah. Okay. All right. So join us next week. We'll be talking about Joker. Until then, you can go over to Facebook. Join our group Superhero Cinephiles or find us on the web. Superherocinephiles.com. You go there.
01:45:50
Speaker
leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you like, because the reviews, they help boost the show up and the rankings, help us find more listeners. They start showing it to more people. So we've also got a donate button on the web page. So anything you can do to help us out, please do that. But yeah, that does it for now, and we'll see you next time.
01:46:12
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening. Good night. God bless. Remember to continue to stay safe out there. Wash your hands, wear your mask, and maintain that social distancing. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you.