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.

Comments

...there won't be one book (store) left

[wisebabo]

Isn't that Jeff Bezo's plan?

Fahrenheit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The missing points of F451

[goombah99]

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.

Re:The missing points of F451

[quanminoan]

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists, who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”

  Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business