V for Vendetta and Guy Fawkes

I've dragged Diana to two very good movies these last two weeks, and the evidence is that she's not complaining :-)

Last week it was Inside Man, which was an intelligent heist movie done through the style of Spike Lee - which means great characters from Denzel Washington and Clive Owen, and classic film storytelling without the MTV-style trappings that most Hollywood thrillers have these days. Some of the plot twists aren't that twisty but I reckon the real pleasure of this movie is in the characters.

This week it was V for Vendetta, which I also had pegged as an MTV-esque Hollywood action movie, but actually turned out to be a very though provoking and satisfying take on the fight against a totalitarian dystopia. I gather the plot was changed to make parallels with the current state of US politics (and very satisfying that was too!) but the action takes place in London and the character V styles himself on Guy Fawkes.

Diana learnt all about Guy Fawkes when she came to London so that she could understand the stuff we do on November 5th, but I've never known that much about him and always found it a bit odd that he's celebrated as a historic Briton (made the BBC's list of 100 greatest Britons, for example) when tried to blow up parliament (surely not a good thing?!). Wikipedia has helped me out a little - now I know that he was one of a bunch of Catholic terrorists (!) and when you read the rest of the 'Remember remember the 5th of November' poem it's all about giving the Pope a horrible death! Shades of Sept 11th...? Nowadays there's some kind of rosey-tinted view that he was actually a crusader against oppressive government, although it seems a confused notion to me. Can anyone help me understand??