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Essay 2
Yiling Yuan
ENGL 101
10/30/2019
“V for Vendetta”
“V for Vendetta” is a dystopian political thriller movie which was released in 2005.
Directed by James McTeigue, the film revolves around a character named V, who is the
protagonist of the film. The movie takes place in 2032 Britain, which is being ruled by dictators
of the Norsefire Party, and the country is basically as a fascist police state. The people living in
the country are not allowed to do anything and are strictly prohibited from doing almost
everything and are kept under constant surveillance. While no one protests against such
government and simply follows them out of fear, V, an unknown man in a Guy Fawkes mask,
acts as a catalyst to give people hope and strength to speak against the government. V himself is
a byproduct of an experiment and the only to survive. As a result of surviving the experiment,
which took the lives of thousands of children, he does not only have some superhuman powers
but also is on the run to kill anyone who was associated with the experiment. Throughout the
film, the only motto of the character is to end the tyranny government. While he becomes the
most wanted criminal for the government with numerous detectives and individuals working on
his case to capture him, his rebelliousness rather encourages others to follow his steps instead of
making them more fearful. The film ends with the protagonist fulfilling his lifelong dreams of
not only killing the people who did him wrong but also saving the country from the dictator
government. He dies in the film, but still, yet his death was not in vain as he gave rise of anarchy
in the country and made massive changed within the people as well. There are also many
historical events in the film which play a very significant role. The movie “V for Vendetta”
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relates to the historical context that tyranny government, which deceives people into believing
them as “good guys” is wrong and will inevitably be confronted and ended by the people through
rebelliousness. Furthermore, the film also tackles the dictatorial government’s desire for creating
“perfect” humans and its unjust nature.
First and foremost, the film tackles with the desire of government’s and scientist’s desire
to create the “perfect human” who work in their favor. Taking the protagonist of the film, V into
consideration, he is the only survivor of an experiment which was done amongst 100,000
children. While the other children died, the government masked the incident as a move by a
terrorist organization instead of coming clean. As a byproduct of the experiment, V has some
unusual power, and producing humans with such power was the primary intention of the
experiment. This particular scheme of the film perfectly aligns with numerous historical contexts
