Fahrenheit 451 HBO TV Movie Review
Better Than the Original?
Could it be? Read on to find out.
Fahrenheit 451 is a movie adaptation of the novel in which Michael B Jordan plays Montague. He is a fireman but firemen don't actually put out fires in this story, no they actually start fires! They find literature and art books and they put them in piles, then they burn them because if you're caught with any of that stuff they erase your identity and you essentially become no one which means you don't have to pay taxes.
So Michael Shannon plays Montague, who meets Sophia Patellas character and essentially after that he's like "maybe what we're doing isn't so good" and it's that story is essentially Equilibrium told again, though equilibrium was this story told again, but what makes me say this movie is more or less Equilibrium is this movie does something and that is bring the story into the 21st century even when this book was written the internet was not a thing. They could have easily told this story in an alternate world where as I read the internet never really happened.
Social media is a thing even Michael B Jordan seems to be some sort of rockstar online he has fans and he's burning books, full disclosure I haven't read the book so any gripes I have in this movie that are the same as the book maybe I'm critiquing the book also best-case scenario I'm saying the movie and the book did the same thing but maybe the book did it better. It had to have if it's a classic because this is not a classic nor will it be a classic.
See the two main places where this movie fails is it's world building and character development. World building is important in a story like this, you need to know how we got here and although there are little tidbits and scraps that are thrown at you, you don't really know the path. I get that you're not really supposed to know the path you just have to know that they ended up here. The path of history has been altered. So in an already established complex world, you introduce the Internet. Now people have a hundred questions about how that works, is there someone on a cloud server who can just take information? There's one scene where there's an upload happening and they have to smash this computer, so obviously uploads happen... is there a cloud server connected? How was information so controlled with the internet better? They do illustrate that the Internet is a more refined
version of what was once called the Internet but in the world where you see these people trying to hold on to culture uploading files essentially it still works the same. How is burning books gonna really get the job done and if a movie doesn't properly set all that up and make all of it work for the audience, then we are to take leaps we shouldn't have to.
You can explain the internet existed but we eliminated it because it was problematic. That would be fine and Michael B Jordans character really flips at the drop of a hat. He seems pretty intense when he's burning books, that's so out of character for him, maybe if you had a character that wasn't the rock star of the firehouse, maybe if you had a character who was like "I really don't feel like I have a place here" and he was doubting it from the start. It wasn't enough for me to say Michael B Jordan is going to flip at any moment, he didn't seem like he was that close to flipping.
I guess there's a romance with him and Sofia Boutella, no I didn't buy that either and it's not the 90s like I'm doing it for a girl, it's not a good enough excuse for him, it's not good enough character development for her. I even do this really illogical thing where I mean this is light spoiler issue warning...there are these people, this group of people, who what they do is each of them has memorized a book which is pretty intense to memorize a book. It's like any movie that has that you can make that leap for one character like, Book of Eli, one character could do that and okay he's an anomaly fine everybody in this house is doing that that's a little strange.
Especially when they have this one kid who doesn't look any older than 14. He's memorized over 13,000 books, I'm estimating his age here, but let's say he's 14, times 365 gonna omit leap year for the sake of simple math that's how many days he's been alive, he would have to read about three books a day once and then he just hasn't memorized, and that's if he started reading books from the day he was born, like he just pops out he's like "alright get me Count of Monte Cristo". That's crazy!!
Granted they do make him act autistic, they never say he's autistic so I assume he's autistic. He's either autistic or has Asperger syndrome, but isn't that the simplest thing in cinema? It's like "oh we need someone to have a really good memory" there are worse cliches in the world then autistic people who have good memories. it's just in the words of Deadpool, well that's just lazy writing.
In the end, Fahrenheit 451 is an interesting concept, it really is, but it's a concept we've now seen a lot.
That's the danger of taking source material and bringing it into the 21st
century. Essentially any updated story that has that concept did the same thing that's just called something different, it's called Equilibrium, but directing, writing and editing in this movie wasn't
quite so polished... just came across as "yes Oh God the characters were flat"
The best thing that could happen to this movie is to make it a season of television, it's on HBO anyway, so just make it one season of HBO television, ten episodes long, could have flushed out the world, we could have gotten a trickle of information as to how we got here, could have gotten more attached to the characters. felt more conflict among the friendships. As it stands this movie is really forgettable. It's just weird to see Michael B Jordan and Michael Shannon in a movie. I feel like it's just straight to TV and it sucks. I will say I'm not gonna remember this movie in t-minus one day.
Have you seen it?
Have you read the book?
Comment below and let us all know.