Blogtrek

V

I see they are bringing V back. They are going to publish a sequel. This story came out in the mid 1980s as a very, very long TV movie, exceeded in length only by the dragging episodes of a movie later in the decade that envisioned a US taken over by Soviet communism. V was about aliens who come in huge flying saucers over the cities and say that they are trying to protect our civilization, while preparing to eat us. People have compared the aliens or "visitors" to Nazis. The visitors take the form of lizards with human suits. A revolt against them was stirred up by Julia, whose forces chased them off into the wild black yonder near the end of the movie.

I am not sure this is the type of movie to bring back now. It is violent and favors small groups revolting against a society. While that may seem good, remember that the foremost group in our world doing that right now is al Qaeda. Many people, including perhaps most Arabs, will see the rebels as like al Qaeda and the visitors as like the US. The same holds true of Star Wars, where the Jedi Knights take the part of al Qaeda, and the Foundation trilogy of Isaac Asimov, featuring a rebel organization called the Foundation. Indeed, the translation of this book into Arabic translates "Foundation" as "al Qaeda". I would favor instead a movie which has people (or extraterrestrials) coming together and negotiating a brighter future for all.