っぽい and... the Vatican? O_o

久々です!

After a few idle months, I return with another request for translation help. And I hope I'm putting it in the right place, because... well, you'll see.

So, for context, the guy is talking about a movie he went to see recently, but he doesn't say what it was... he just talks about the surround sound in the theater and how the movie didn't explain itself well enough, so he liked Underworld better. At the very end, he throws this in:

どんな映画観てもヴァチカンって悪者っぽいよね。っていうのが印象に残った。

Only two questions about this:

1) -っぽい means "like", doesn't it? So 悪者っぽい would be "...is like a/the bad guy" or something to that effect?

2) ヴァチカン as in Vatican? What the heck does the Vatican have to do with anything, and how can it be 悪者?? Maybe that's more a movie-related question than a Japanese-related one, I dunno... *doesn't watch a lot of movies* Unless ヴァチカン is an abbreviation for some longer phrase or something...

Anyway, the rest of the sentence I'm fine with, so these 2 spots are the only thing standing between me and the completion of my weekly translations... so I'd really appreciate any help!

1) -っぽい means "like", doesn't it? So 悪者っぽい would be "...is like a/the bad guy" or something to that effect?

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yeah, something to that effect. "seems like a bad guy" seems like a good translation.

2) ヴァチカン as in Vatican? What the heck does the Vatican have to do with anything, and how can it be 悪者??

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i'm not sure... it sounds like he's talking about an actor maybe. "no matter what movie vatican is in, he seems like a bad guy." god knows what the hell that means :?

Yeah, that's pretty much the translation I came up with... if only I could figure out what the Vatican thing means

Maybe something like, the Vatican is always... uhh... どういえばいいのかな... the movie's center of evil, or where the villain resides or something like that? *images of gloomy ancient Roman castle/cathedral settings complete with storms and lightning and organ music play in head* Cause I've never heard of any actors named Vatican, and it looks like Google hasn't either... :X

Maybe I should be asking at a movie forum after all. ☝

And thanks for explaining っぽい better than I could, hehe.

Bekkichan said:

Yeah, that's pretty much the translation I came up with... if only I could figure out what the Vatican thing means

Maybe something like, the Vatican is always... uhh... どういえばいいのかな... the movie's center of evil, or where the villain resides or something like that? *images of gloomy ancient Roman castle/cathedral settings complete with storms and lightning and organ music play in head* Cause I've never heard of any actors named Vatican, and it looks like Google hasn't either... :X

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I don't think 悪者 has to be a person it could equally well be an organisation. Just like in English you can say "Microsoft's the bad guy here."

どんな映画観てもヴァチカンって悪者っぽいよね。っていうのが印象に残った。

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No matter what kind of movie it is, the Vatican (always comes out looking) looks like the villain or bad guy. (ppoi being very similar to rashii, in other words seems or appears like). Vatican in this case is most likely a heuristic or fast and loose way of describing the Catholic church in its entirety....a recent example is "Last Temptation of Christ," which was widely seen as an artistic piece of anti-Catholic propoganda.