Hysterical, no? Seeing as they’re the ones making a Fahrenheit 451 movie.
[Michael B.] Jordan portrays Montag, a young fireman who forsakes his world and struggles to regain his humanity as he battles his mentor, fire captain Beatty, played by [Michael] Shannon. Sofia Boutella (The Mummy, Kingsman: The Secret Service) stars as Clarisse, an informant caught between the competing interests of Montag and Beatty.
The cast also includes Lilly Singh (Bad Moms) as Raven, a tabloid reporter who works with the fire department to spread the ministry’s propaganda by broadcasting its book-burning raids to fans.
…Yeah. Let’s unpack this a little, OK? One of the themes of the original novel — and bear in mind that I don’t have the same basic contempt for modern civilization that Ray Bradbury had — was that society largely drifted into destroying books because they were increasingly out of sync with the shallow, sensationalist, and ultimately mind-dulling entertainment that the masses preferred. Some thoughts in some books bothered people, and more and more books bothered more and more people, so eventually it was deemed easier just to burn all the books and be done with it. That’s the book.
The movie adaptation will apparently give us an aggressively book-burning dystopia with informants and police states and all sorts of whiz-bang action and dramatic close-ups because it’s boring to watch a bunch of people sit around a campfire and proudly announce “I am Plato’s Republic!” Which is, if you will forgive me for saying so, possibly a shallow, sensationalist, and ultimately mind-dulling entertainment for the masses. I don’t actually know that it will turn out that way — movies can always surprise you — but if it does the irony will be nigh-overpowering.
Moe Lane
PS: One thing’s for certain: after a certain point in the afterlife, you cannot return from Heaven. We know this because if you could, Ray Bradbury would have done so upon hearing of this movie idea. And he’d probably be toting a chainsaw.
“One thing’s for certain: after a certain point in the afterlife, you cannot return from Heaven.”
.
You say that like that’s a bad thing. :/
I wrote fan stuff for the In Nomine RPG for years. The ability to bring in historical figures as recorporalized Saints was *very* useful.
On the brightside, the girl from The Kingsman is in it. She’s getting work. Yay!
Sounds like they’re trying to make a poor remake of Equilibrium. I think we’ll need to rate this one EC-10. And an undead chainsaw-wielding Ray Bradbury would be awesome especially if backed up by the flamethrower troops from Equilibrium.
It could be okay… if part of what we see is Montag (and possibly Clarisse) grow increasingly distant from the action super fast cut closeups, until at the end it’s almost a shot for shot reenactment of the last ten minutes of the Truffaut film.