Fahrenheit 451 (2018)

Montag's black. He's not married. Clarisse is an informant, not 16 and not his neighbor. Captain Beatty writes down Goodreads quotes on slips of paper and burns them. He seems conflicted, like he's really not sure which side to be on.

I don't mind that this version doesn't "follow the book." It's cool to see that the firefighters rarely burn books. Their job is more to keep the culture pure. What they spend most of their time destroying is knowledge more generally -- hard drives, languages, art, and digital records -- anything they designate as cultural graffiti. Anything that they determine is a threat to peace and stability. The firefighters are also more specifically "American" -- in the film, the border exists, and getting across to Canada seems to be a possible goal.

I also noticed that the film is okay borrowing from other sources. It feels like this film borrows ideas and concepts from 1984, among other sources. In other words, the filmmakers aren't locking themselves into Bradbury's original vision. Instead, they use it and other sources as a way to "update" the common 20th century dystopian vision for a contemporary 21st century audience.

At the same time, when a film like this "borrows" from other sources and makes changes to original characters, it has to know that much of the primary audience is probably aware of the borrowing and the changes, and that some aren't going to like it.

Somehow the filmmakers need to be subtle and respectful with the changes and the borrowing. In my view, maybe the best way for the filmmakers to do this would be to drop the title, change the character names, and develop the film as its own original work. Otherwise, the criticism and complaints that the film "isn't Fahrenheit 451" are inevitable.

Just changing the title and the character names would probably quiet a lot of the criticism. Then, people might still complain that the film is "too close to the Fahrenheit 451 story," but they'd be arguing from the other side, noticing the similarities between the book and the film, and not the differences.

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