Fighting the government in fiction

In movies, comics, etc, corrupt authorities will have a ton of soldiers and guards ready to do their bidding, and at the top is an insane megalomaniac who knowingly causes evil.  The solution is a hero who knows martial arts, hacking, and how to use guns, and will be able to use these skills to bring down every threat until going up to the top of the ladder to face the person responsible.  The entire organization can a crime syndicate,  a company dedicated to being evil, or a government that is despotic and under martial law.  A good example is the movie Equilibrium, where one man takes down an entire government using machine guns and the ability not to get hit.

This scenario is merely a wish, if things were to work out in an ideal fictional sense.  Since they don't, chances are the hero would be shot early and often, so a group of elite soldiers would be needed.  Since they would be taken out by floors of guards, an entire militia would need to attack the place instead.  At this point the militia is declared an enemy of the government, or evil terrorists.  Even if the "heroes" manage to kill only guards and the people in charge, or destroy the headquarter buildings, they will probably take down civilians and office workers, and be blamed for destruction of property.  More likely, the buildings will not be armed very well aside from a few security guards, and walking in with fully automatics to get to the main office will be excessive.  Shooting the man in charge will be an act of murder, not to mention trespassing and illegal possession of a firearm.  So the heroes are villified by the media, sentenced to prison, and seen as the true villains.

There are a lot of authoritative organizations that could be justified as "evil" and from an ideological standpoint, need to be taken down.  But no one can walk in, start blasting, and call themselves the hero.  Even if we'd like to.

... Yeah ... Sucks, doesn't it?

Most movies take into account the spin and bullshitting, but they instantly believe that the good guys or the poor guys or the underdog is incapable of spin and bullshitting also.

It didn't work for Russia whe nthe stalinists take over and it didn't work for Iraq when the Ba'ath party took over. Underdogs can be huge bastards too.

Though I guess there is a fair share of good authorities after bad underdogs movies.

>>1

That is why I liked Vedetta (the comic).  He did very little killing of party leaders; he just took away their ability to monitor the population.  The end of the book is very open ended since you have no idea what the population was going to do.  They could have just gone back to their old ways, or could have taken V's advice/warning.

Although it has been awhile, 1984 and Anthem are not like what the OP described.