all of them are designed to counter a specific set of threats while providing some way to (counter)attack.

most developed because some high ups removed the peoples ability to arm themselves...

Best argument for gun control ever: "By taking your guns away, we are enabling you to become Super Death Ninjas of Doom and Badassery"

Some of us practice with both.

Yes, Iron Man is.

As for V... Yeah... I'm gonna have to go and disagree with you on that. The Wachowskis took a great grahpic novel and gutted it like a fish. And not a professional gutting and cleaning like you get at a fish market. But a gutting you get from some drunken idiot who spent the day at the lake as an excuse to drink a case of piss water.

Yes, of course your unsupported assertions about a movie beloved by an entire generation are going to go unchallenged. Good day, sir.

An entire generation, huh? Which one? Because I know plenty of people, of plenty of ages, that wouldn't use the word "beloved" anywhere near V for Vendetta.

only good thing about that movie that i remember was the music . .
and yes, iron man is about 85 to 90% true to the comics . . and it more or less hints at those missing % too . .

The main problem with the V for Vendetta movie, is that they completely removed any capacity for the lead character (Evey) to grow in any way, thus obviating the need for V to recondition her as he did in the comic. She starts the film as a strong smart character, and ends the film similarly.

They also lost the whole Fate plotline, which dropped the human spirit vs soulless tech element of the whole story.

The setting in the comic was one of impoverished and brutal repression. In the film folk were generally affluent, and even the surveillance was toned down.

It was OK as a movie, but they let down a seminal work of fiction pandering to a modern desire for action sequences.

Evey in the comic was one dimensional. Weak as a bunny rabbit -> Strong as an invincible assassin. And all it took was a little torture... Comic Evey was actually like a little girl, V read to her, and taught her about really basic facts of history, because the tyrannical regime had turned people like her into ignorant peasants who needed a Villian to pull them out of the dark ages. She was more like an actual person in the movie, more like you or me, which made her more relevant.



Fate was neat, but it was hopelessly dated. The movie would have lost all believability and turned most people off if it turned out that V overthrew the government by hacking just one single computer system that the government was stupid enough to rely on. That would have divorced it from modern cultural relevance, which is what makes the movie good in the first place.

The worst part about the comic is how Moore treated mental illness. The comic relied on the idea that you can not only induce psychosis in someone, it can be the exact right kind of psychosis that you want, and have the exact crippling effect you want it to have. Somehow V was able to make the Voice guy think he was a babydoll by burning his priceless babydoll collection. Pure, unrealistic fiction. And wrecking the Chancellor's mind by showing him disturbing images through the computer? Yeah... brains don't quite work that way. Even people ridden with guilt over their past crimes can't be broken that easily, or more importantly, that predictably.



The movie was an reinterpretation of the comic, not an attempt to reproduce it. And it did a marvelous job of making a scenario that is actually relevant to people today--government becoming tyrannical out of fear over terrorism. A government producing a bio weapon that accidentally kills everyone except in London where they sell the antidote and get rich is just sorta too far beyond the pale. Who would want to be rich in a world where essentially there is only one city left? Not even a big drooling idiot would hatch that kind of a plot, although it is clear that the Chanellor and Prospero and the other ruling elites, except for the chief detective, were big fat idiots in the comic, not the sorts of people you'd predict rising to control all of society. The whole afluence thing is exactly why the movie matters. It's just like America. The government tells us that we can be rich and safe and happy as long as we turn over our freedoms to them.

As for pandering to action sequences... The movie didn't have all that many. It had only two fights, the first one (against the fingermen) was very short and not Hollywooded up at all, and the second was very fancy, but wasn't just pandering. The whole "ideas are bulletproof" thing sort of kept it from being meaningless flash. In conclusion, you're wrong

I was actually prepared to let this slide with a shrug and a "well, people's opinions differ" until I read your last line. That level of pompous assery is ridiculous, and must be opposed.

I'm perfectly prepared to accept that there were some aspects that could be updated, but the relationship between V and Evey was utterly wrecked. In the comic she was a child, brutalised by the government's policies, educated and moulded by V into the character she eventually became. In the film, she is V's equal from the start, thus diminishing his character, and making Evey's development unbelievable.

Fate was neat, and not necessarily hopelessly dated. Supercomputers still exist in popular culture, and having a soulless machine behind the rise to power of singularly unpleasant men would probably be more acceptable than such people gaining power by themselves. Fate wasn't necessary, but did provide a level of complexity to the story as well as explaining how V was able to evade the authorities.

Regardless of how accurately Moore portrayed the breaking of Prothero and the Great Leader in terms of psychology, the viewing public could easily be expected to accept it. From a biologist's perspective, a devastating bio-weapon is unrealistic, but we are expected to accept that all the time in movies, because most people don't have and aren't expected to have a firm grasp of the science. Similarly with neuroscience.

Quite were you got the impression that all the other cities had been destroyed I don't know, but it's irrelevant to a comparison of the film with the book.

I am prepared to concede that the affluence depicted in the movie wasn't a deathblow, and in fact, aside from wrecking the dynamic between the two core characters, it was an alright adaptation, even standing alone as a quite alright film. It could have been better.