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HBO's Fahrenheit 451 Trailer Teases Dystopian World Filled With Burning 'Chaos' (hollywoodreporter.com)
HBO has released the first trailer of its film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's best-selling 1953 dystopian tale, Fahrenheit 451, which depicts a time period where history is outlawed and "firemen" burn books. The Hollywood Reporter reports: In the Ramin Bahrani-directed film, Michael B. Jordan stars as Guy Montag, a fireman who comes to question his role in enforcing the state's censorship laws, and in so doing finds himself at odds with his "mentor," Beatty (Michael Shannon). "By the time you guys grow up, there won't be one book left," Jordan is shown telling a group of students. Throughout the trailer, a reel of destruction is shown as Beatty's voiceover warns that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." "We are not born equal, so we must be made equal by the fire," Beatty explains. Jordan will also serve as the film's executive producer. Sofia Boutella, Martin Donovan, Laura Harrier, Keir Dullea, Jane Moffat and Grace Lynn Kung also star.
Who? Me? I'm just a girl!
I always considered Equilibrium as spiritual successor to Fahrenheit 451 and enjoyable film to watch (even if bit too Matrix-like in certain places). I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to watching Equilibrium-sans-gun-kata...
I come to slashdot to be informed about trailers for movies. I don't care about actual technical news, or stuff about tech. I definitely come here to be informed about FUCKING MOVIE TRAILERS.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
A black Montag and a hip-hop soundtrack... I wonder why nobody's crying "black-washing !!!" and "cultural appropriation !!!!".
Next in line : The Life of Julius Caesar, with Chadwick Boseman in the lead role, Samuel Jackson as Pompey and Jaden Smith as Brutus.
We all remember the original Red Dawn, where Russian troops invade, the US and high school kids carry out guerilla warfare against the invading Russians.
Red Dawn 2064 opens with Evgeny Shamalov, the first candidate of the new UltraCon-Republican party, being sworn is as President of the United States. Sharmalov, it is revealed, lost the popular vote, but won the electoral college in an election widely regarded as having been rigged.
Flash back to 2013. We see a small jet land at a private airport outside Miami. A very pregnant Yeaterina Vladimirovna Tikhonova Sharmalov (nee Putin) is helped down the steps and into a waiting limo which whisks here away to a hotel reminiscent of Mar-A-Lago. A few days later she goes into labor and delivers a baby boy. A baby boy whom she named Evgeny.. Days later they fly home to Russia in possession of an American birth certificate.
Flash forward to 2064 again. Smarmolov quickly moves to cement his power, taking control with an iron fist. Wealthy Russian oligarchs move to the US in record numbers. History repeats itself. Just like the Norman invasion of England in 1066 where the Norman nobility take over, except now it's the new Russian nobility and Americans are the new serfs.
High school kids that try to rise up are quickly eliminated by US Air Force Predator drones strikes, flown by our own US military. The kids have AR-15s, but didn't stand a chance against Predators and guided missile strikes.
-- Americanus
I read Fahrenheit 451, years before I read 1984. IMO, the latter is more relevant to today's society, and gives a more complete and insightful view of totalitarianism (and it was written first, even). Oral history can be passed down even if the history books are burned (and this was standard practice until literacy became common). The practices of modifying historical records and promoting 'alternative facts' shown in 1984 are more worrisome, although Fahrenheit 451 had some of this as well (George Washington was said to be the first Firefighter IIRC).
Digital information storage makes destruction of paper books, specifically, less worrisome. The entirety of the world's history books could fit on a disc or microSD card nowadays, which is easier to hide than a cache of books (and its contents are less obvious). The internet means countries that don't do this could host websites that contain the forbidden history texts. Now in North Korea, this story might be more relevant.
Took me years to learn that that is not, in fact, the temperature that paper burns at (~450C IIRC). There is also an old film adaptation, which I don't remember a lick of, but don't think it had as many people on fire as the book did, given flame-resistant gels weren't employed in film until (IIRC) Firestarter 20 years later.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Why look to fiction when we have a dystopion present with corporate and social-activist censorship in real life?
Oh yes; that's definitely the danger our society faces today. Right-wing book burning.
(BTW, someone tell Guy that there may be a copy or two of The Bell Curve buried under that barn over there.)
Isn't that Jeff Bezo's plan?
Fahrenheit 451 was the original version of Idiocracy (2006), where bread and circuses was enforced by censorship. In the novel, destroying the past made everyone equally ignorant. Hollywood might have captured the core philosophy of this story.
If I wanted to watch listless, toned down documentaries I'd still be watching house of cards. I think I'll skip this one and keep watching Fox News.
So the 'Fahrenheit' part obviously represent an ancient civilisation that uses an antiquated measurement scale, but I wonder what '451' represents?
Perhaps the year the series is set?
Maybe how many decades are wasted by humans around the world converting normal old measurements to the new system?
Either way I'm already hooked.
> "A very popular book about the dangers we face in the present is now being made into a movie."
The difference is the literally burning that took place in F451 is going to be replaced by virtual burning through 'fake news' and 'alternative history' crowding out material was was formerly considered as 'relatively historically accurate' for stuff that is primarily pure falsehood (like say KnightFall, or Hunting Hitler...), while original copies of historical documents that historians had previously used as proof will be digitalized, the originals lost in 'unintentional' accidents, then the digital copies modified in difficult to prove manners. Just look at the current machine learning tech for fake celebrity porn and voice replacement/generation. Given similiar networks designed for handwriting and old parchment, it should not be difficult to alter digital copies of no longer available physical copies and then use the altered digital copies to prove fake events took place. Over time this will entirely rewrite the history of the world for whoever holds the reins of power. It will furthermore be difficult to rebel against since the surveillance society we are putting into place today is far and beyond that discussed in either piece of literature, making it even easier for dissidents to be sought out and quashed than even 1984 provided, since our level of surveillance would make 'hidden' regions like the antiques store immediately flag any individuals, even without the shopkeeper themselves being compromised.
Our future is even darker than the novels predicted if some massive social upheaval doesn't stop the march of authority into all our homes and every facet of our lives.
it would be the Bible, the Koran and the Torah
"Their commodity is fear. They blackmail their parishioners with threats of hell and damnation. These poor deluded people give them their hard earned money to save them from a hell that does not exist, and from eternal torment that was invented by the corrupt minds of priests to rob the living and in addition, they are exempt from taxation! Insult to injury! Let me tell you that religion is the cruelest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race. It is the last of the great scheme of thievery that man must legally prohibit so as to protect himself from the charlatans who prey upon the ignorance and fears of the people.The penalty for this type of extortion should be as severe as it is of other forms of fraud and theft."
Nigg3r.
They do fund Vice after all.
I âoequoteâ the âoeââ. I âoe the âoeâââââ. I âoeâââââ the âoeâââââââ
We all have lists of books we would love to have made into movies, but trust Hollywood to adapt a good movie into a bad movie. So we're about to get a version of Fahrenheit 451 with gunplay and explosions?
Michael Jordan as an agent of the state who shuts down an enjoyable activity? This sounds like a cheap ripoff of "Barkley Shut up and Jam Gaiden," in which he was oppressing people's rights to play B-Ball.
They should have just done a film adaptation of that. It would be better. This Ray Bradbury guy seems like a hack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism#/media/File:PalatiumTheodoricMosaicDetail.jpg
We've already started down this path. Statues, history books, culture, art, philosophy, worldview - anything that reflects on any good that came from Western Europe is being destroyed.
All in the name of intolerant tolerance and uniform diversity.
Fahrenheit 451 doesn't teach the lesson that everyone thinks it does. Everyone thinks it's about heavy-handed censorship and how bad it is. Not really. Here's the real lesson of the book, which I expect to be completely rewritten by Hollywood.
-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
We will build is to quell just this sort of thing at home.
Think can we all get along was a riot wait till the trickle dont trickle.
Isn't it interesting that kids and some Millennials have little interest in American history. Fahrenheit 451 is probably spot-on. Let the book burning begin... Sarcasm
It's slashvertisement for a sub-par, TV-version of an adaptation of a classic.
And the kind where someone, somewhere upstream (my guess is it's Michael B. Jordan, who's also an executive producer on this one) is pouring money into promoting the flick - but reporters have nothing to report.
So they summarize the trailer.
Personally, I think it looks cheap, dumb and misguided compared to the Truffaut version.
And cheap, dumb and misguided in general.
Visually it's a cheap ripoff of things seen in every generic TV show currently on.
Thematically it's confused whether it's taking place in a society which is clamping down on information and "chaos" - or is it a multicultural, non-uniform, dirty, gritty, information-sharing world.
Acting... well... There's Michael Shannon in it. And Michael B. Jordan if you're up for some unintentional comedy.
"I... Want to... Look... Like... I'm... Acting... With... Great... Drama... And... Emotion..."
Next up: Are you tired of your old blender?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This one looks like its had its messages contorted in its rush to be PC.
"By the time you guys grow up, there won't be one book left,"
It will all be Kindles and Kobos.
If they give it the social justice treatment or use it as modern day propaganda, I could care less. Rewriting history, even fiction, is kinda missing the point of a work like this, and it's a mistake.
That is a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.
Cue Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra...
Early editions of F541 lacked the additional third forward penned by bradbury himself on why he wrote it. I found them illuminating because most adaptations of F451 get the overt points and action points correct but mis the understated points. So we get book burning and an oppressive dystopia, and people who memorize books in the movies, along with irony of the "fireman" title. But we often lose the subtler notion that one of the good things about books is they might offend you and be politically incorrect. Another theme is ironically something we didn't have words for till about ten years ago, the "cognative bubble" and "online freinds" in which someone can immerse themsevles in something like facebook or reality TV (in the book portrayed by soap operas) in which the human part of our interactive nature is falsely satisfied by thinking we are interacting and experiencing emotions, whereas it's just a carefully scripted empty echo chamber and all we do is pick which echo chamber we want to lock our selves away from the world in.
When I first read F451 and long before the internet existed in it's present form, coincidentally that week, the San Francisco Public library removed Mary popins from the library for it's portayl of a black maid. Later they restored a bowlderized version which replaced the offensive subservient black english of "I's been `specting you missus poppins" with "i have been anticipating your arrival Miss Mary Poppins".
In his forward Bradbury described how he didn't think firemen would arrise all at once or at all but rather he was describing something that also had no term at the time but what we call creeping political correctness and trigger warnings. An assumed civil right that the world must be sanitized so it offends no one.
At the time I thought is seemed prescient and a good warning. But that was before the internet, and boy was he right about what's happened since. Now we even have a president who starts his day in the warm soapy bath of fox and freinds soothing his ego. But he's not the only one.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I thought the Gun Katas were a sort of cinematic shorthand that sort of rolled up a long history of movie and literary device in one remarkable visual. It absorbed some of the Kung Fu (a popular tv series) styling and "the Matrix" level of style and visual art over substance. It provides triumphant eye-candy and also explains why, like james bond, a single man can overcome an army, thereby letting the story merge all its elements into one individual as a literary device. Plus it's not unlike some of the things one sees in gangsta rap these days, just codified like a marshal art.
I agree I had a hard time biting on the idea of gun based marshal art but it's not retarded.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's about the future, and they are still using Fahrenheit.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Not the same Michael Jordan, but HELL YES a Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden movie? TAKE MY MONEY
> It's slashvertisement for a sub-par, TV-version of an adaptation of a classic.
Wait. I thought we were discussing Fahrenheit 451, not Dune!
It's slashvertisement for a sub-par, TV-version of an adaptation of a classic.
"TV-version" is accurate I guess, but pretty dismissive of HBO's history. This isn't Hallmark. I didn't watch the trailer (I'll /. at work, but not Youtube), but if HBO's past performance on its productions is any indicator then this should be promising. Not everything can be Game of Thrones, but I can think of several successes they've put out. I usually think of something being produced by HBO as a strong positive.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Trump might watch this and get ideas. "Little intelligence" is in fact a dangerous thing.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
It should be 232 Centigrade.
Just saying. Imperial is dead.
All of my SJW associates who recently participated in a book burning are excited for this film. For reasons.
Kind of ironic to be making an adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 for television.
hand me my coat, I'll see myself out...
It's meaningless if people don't bother to read or understand it and if truth is buried under a huge pile of propaganda. And that's what's been happening. See, people figured out since Fahrenheit 451 that the way to control "truth" is not to silence people, but for intellectuals (authors, journalists, academics, etc.) to bury the truth. Furthermore, there doesn't need to be any plan, collusion, or conspiracy to bury the truth, intellectuals will do it out of simple self-interest, because their ideal position in life is to be the priestly high caste with everybody else worshiping them.
I never got the Hate for Little Black Sambo. Maybe people didn't read it. It can't be that difficult, it was one of the first books I read....and that was pre kindergarten.
Keir Dullea?? Possibly the most wooden actor in the business. I didn't even realize he was still working.
An object lesson in the perils of peaking early in your career.
AR-15 will not stop a line of tanks
... can we also burn Twitter? Thanks.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Um, doomed to repeat movie history? Doesn't anyone realize that this book was already made into a movie in 1966? You can expect a remake, like most remakes, to be a dud full of meaningless special effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451_%28film%29
The trailer is short on content, high on attitude music. It seems to be in favour of the book burning. Not an attitude that anyone should want to spread in today's imitation-prone thought-challenged world. The more you know, the more you can do. Ignorance is another form of oppression, and when the books are gone, the crowd will just shift it's sights to anything else you own. There's little hope that HBO will keep the subtlety or sardonic humour, and a high chance of being pro-idiocracy out of habit.
The religions think people started out perfect and were debased through some agency. Actually, evolution takes imperfect species and, through random mutation, filtering out the bad mutations and allowing the good mutations, produces a perfect species. By now, after billions of years of evolution, all species are perfectly adapted to earth. Political and religious organizations do eugenics to try to evolve supporters of their administration, but they don't know how to do this like nature does, so they breed subhumans devolving into monkeys, headed for extinction.
auto-update, possibly overnight while you are sleeping.
Every read Orwell's "1984"? (or at least suffer through the movie?)
Constant, subtle changes. Change a word here during this week's update, and a word there during next week's update. If Big Brother gets caught making the changes, dismiss them as an "accident" or "bug" and point out that the detected change was only slight and not particularly significant.
Your Inter continental Direct sales Eco system. http://yodse.io