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

Equilibrium

[abies]

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...

Re: Equilibrium

[Anonymous Coward]

The gun katas were fucking retarded though.

Re: Equilibrium

[war4peace]

You have to assume they're all very intimidated by the main character's whatever-should-intimidate-them :)

Re: Equilibrium

[sycodon]

People like to hate on Keanu Reeves, but the dude has some very real gun skills.

Re: Equilibrium

[FatdogHaiku]

It takes a lot of practice to get that kind of muscle memory...
Thanks for sharing the clip.

Re: Equilibrium

[sycodon]

And lot$ of ammo

Re: Equilibrium

[AvitarX]

The conceit was that they had muscle memory that allowed them to doge bullets though.

Yeah, it was stupid, but that wasn't the point.

The point was flipping the shotguns around and kicking all the ass.

Re: Equilibrium

[angel'o'sphere]

Forr an actor he is extremely convincing with any martial art, too.

Re: Equilibrium

[ImprovOmega]

The gun katas were fucking retarded though.

As with many movies that stray into the "guilty pleasure" category, you have to excuse things like that under the umbrella of the Rule of Cool

It's like the Transporter movies, or the Fast and the Furious (especially the *later* films in the franchise), or pretty much any scene from Pacific Rim.

In the end you have to ask two questions: Is it fucking retarded? Yes. Is it least equally fucking awesome? Yes. So it gets a pass.

Re: Equilibrium

[pslytely psycho]

This is it exactly.
It's entertainment, and should be looked upon that way.
It's fantasy, but some people are so emotionally dull that they can't handle that and insist everything must be grounded in reality, space battles seem a bit dull without sound, gun kata's are silly but fun to watch, as are burning old cars flying fifty feet into the air off a Havana pier.

However, since the internet has provided a place for everyone to express their opinion, it has now become easier to know whom NOT to invite to a party.....!

Re:HELL YEAH!

[Calydor]

News for NERDS.

"A very popular book about the dangers we face in the future is now being made into a movie."

Red Dawn 2064

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Hal_Porter]

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.

The Viet Cong, Taliban and Iraqi insurgents all seemed to do OK - they were able to cause enough casualties to US troops that US politicians backed down and tried to pull out US troops and replace them with locals. At which point the rebels took over. The US army is very, very good at fighting a conventional war against a conventional army. It's much less good at dealing with hit and run attacks from insurgents on its supply lines.

Funnily enough the Romans had the same problem. The Battle Of Teutoburg forest was organised by Arminius. Arminius was a German aristocrat who'd been raised a hostage in Rome and had joined the Roman army and knew its strengths and weaknesses. Basically if the Roman army had time to get in formation at a location of its choosing it could chew through endless waves of barbarian attackers, see for example the Battle of Watling Street. However on the march through a forest it was vulnerable to hit and run attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You can't help but be reminded of this when you read how the Iraqi insurgents attacked US supply columns and then fled before more US troops could appear.

Also in a situation where the US army was told to fire on US citizens protecting their constitutional rights they're at the very least likely to non too keen. The worst case scenario would be they simply refuse to do it.

I.e. saying "The US army has better weapons than civilians, therefore it would win, therefore civilians don't need AR-15s to defend against tyranny" is dumb on many levels.

And before anyone says "Well that's good in theory. When has it happened since the war of independence?". The answer is the Battle Of Athens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[halivar]

The Viet Cong, Taliban and Iraqi insurgents all seemed to do OK

They did not, in fact, do OK. In each case, it wasn't even a contest; it was a slaughter. And in each of those, the ratio of casualties gets more and more ridiculously lopsided.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[CrimsonAvenger]

I.e. saying "The US army has better weapons than civilians, therefore it would win, therefore civilians don't need AR-15s to defend against tyranny" is dumb on many levels.

Civilians don't need AR-15s to defend against tyranny. They need deer rifles. Which will go through a soldier's body armour the long way. Note that it's illegal to hunt deer with an AR-15, because the round is too wimpy....

Which is irrelevant to the question of "should civilians be allowed to own AR-15s?" To which question, the answer is "yes". Until and unless we amend the Second Amendment out of the Constitution....

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Gilgaron]

I haven't seen many gun control advocates asking for AR15s to be banned. I enjoy shooting but would be fine with 21 age limit for purchasing most arms. Some of the gun control guys do seem to want them treated more like, say, a M249 or Thompson, which is arguably no more afoul of the 2nd then full autos' current status is. I wouldn't think restricting semi-autos that heavily would be necessary, but certainly restricting them more than they are now ought to be considered.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Kiuas]

The US army is very, very good at fighting a conventional war against a conventional army. It's much less good at dealing with hit and run attacks from insurgents on its supply lines.

This is a problem of all conventional armies and it relates to the game theory of such conflicts. When one side is fighting for their lives and survival they're essentially playing an infinite game, wherein the only goal is to survive. At the same time they know the enemy is not committed to staying engaged indefinitely. The Viet Cong knew that they had no chance but to fight or die, and they knew each casualty inflicted on US troops tilts the scale in their favor because the more costly in lives and resources the occupation becomes, the less likely it will be that Americans want to continue said occupation. The Afghans used the same tactic successfully against the soviets with some help from the US and are currently doing so against the NATO troops as well.

However, the game is different in a hypothetical scenario on your home soil. In a hypothetical conflict against a segment of Americans, the army does not have the option of retreating from the conflict in the same way they did in Vietnam and the Soviets did in Afghanistan-. It'd be a case wherein both sides would be locked in what's essentially an infinite game. If you look at the history of civil wars, the side with better weapons and equipment usually wins because of this. Since the conflicts only end when one side surrenders, the side better equipped to wage the war up to that point is favored.

Point being that the war of independence or Vietnam is not a valid point of comparison, because those are conflicts with a conventional army fighting on essentially foreign soil against an insurgency fighting for their very survival.

Look at your own civil war: the Union army had over double the amount of troops and better logistical and financial support networks for said troops, which allowed them to overcome the South. The same goes for the civil war we had here in Finland a 100 yeas ago: we had just become independent so we didn't even have a proper standing army yet, but one side had some thousands of troops that had received training and equipment from Germany and was more professional and disciplined, as well as having simply more men and better organisation, which allowed them to overcome the less trained and less organised and equipped red side.

I.e. saying "The US army has better weapons than civilians, therefore it would win, therefore civilians don't need AR-15s to defend against tyranny" is dumb on many levels.

But likewise, saying that with AR-15s or equivalent weapons civilians could successfully defend themselves against the US Army is equally misguided, because it's not something that's supported by historical evidence about the nature of such conflicts. Civil wars and wars of occupation are 2 different categories of fighting

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[ScentCone]

I haven't seen many gun control advocates asking for AR15s to be banned.

Change the channel a little more often. There are plenty of liberals screaming their desire on that front to the heavens, because they're gambling that low-information voters will give them back the political power they lost. The call to ban "AR-15s" (as if that widely owned rifle was the only semi-auto available) is now loud and frequent.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Gilgaron]

Oh I'm sure they're around, just like their counterparts that are sure the 2nd amendment guarantees them Predator drones. I just haven't seen it as a particularly vocal subset, but I suppose I haven't been checking television. From what I have seen, it looks like people willing to compromise are solidifying around age limits. It will be interesting to see if that takes shape given how few restrictions make it anywhere, given that Trump seems to support the idea.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Megol]

Maybe you should take your own advice? Change channel.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[mark-t]

If the answer to should civilians be allowed to own AR-15's is yes, should they also be legally allowed to own nuclear weapons? What about chemical and biological weapons?

At what point do you draw the line, and why?

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Megol]

Have to clarify this: don't just listen to idiots that like to hear their own voices (whatever crap they promote) but also others that may have interesting points even if one doesn't agree with them.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Megol]

I don't see the problem in allowing people to have a semi-automatic rifle in the first place. Why not?
Someone with a .22 pistol can kill too after all, at short range against unprotected civilians it is very effective assuming the murderer know how to shoot.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[ScentCone]

That's my point. I take it in from sources and voices all across the spectrum an media format. We are hearing an unprecedently loud and unhinged call for "no more guns!" that suggests complete confiscation as the solution to the acts of crazy people. This intellectually dishonest discourse is now being given far more uncritical media echo chamber amplification than it deserves or has ever before had. The truth of that observation is especially clear the more places you turn to hear what people are thinking (or, regurgitating, more often).

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[mark-t]

Perhaps you misunderstand.... I wasn't asking why one should be allowed to have an assault rifile, I was asking what the justification is for picking one place and not another to draw the line at disallowing access to certain classes of weapons?

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Straif]

An AR-15 is a pretty standard rifle, usually small caliber but can come in many flavors. It's popular because it's so customizable but almost none of those mods actually change it's actual firing characteristics, just it's looks (a bump stock being an exception to that). The only reason people are afraid of it is because it looks scary. It is not a military grade weapon and despite what CNN tells you it's also not the weapon of choice for most mass shootings.

The exact same rifle characteristics can be found in any number of wooden stocked rifles but no one is screaming for them to be banned because they look like standard hunting rifles people have seen in movies.

Now if you want to talk about banning bumpstocks that would be something you might be able to get some support for even though it's a relatively futile gesture as they can be easily built or mimicked with even an elastic band.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[rgbatduke]

Sure, just like it is legal for a US citizen to own a machine gun. You can do it, you just have to submit a lengthy and complex application (eliminating a major fraction of the terminally stupid right there), be absolutely squeaky clean with the law (eliminating a significant fraction of the remainder who were able to fill in the form or got somebody smarter to do it for them), and to be certified as being not mentally ill (active) as opposed to being sane as far as anybody knows (passive) which takes out a goodly fraction of the ones who are smart enough to fill in the form, honest (or smart!) enough never to have been arrested for any crime beyond disposing of their gum on a sidewalk at age twelve, who are STILL silly enough to think that an AR-15 or AK-47 or other semiautomatic large magazine rifle designed exclusively for killing people (and shooting the hell out of trees, targets, beer cans, all of which I'm sure is good clean fun if you're into that sort of thing) is a good thing BECAUSE they are borderline, schizophrenic and off their meds, bipolar and off their meds, etc.

Oh, and to own a machine gun, you also have to be pretty well off financially, because there IS NO SUPPLY with this set of hoops to jump through, so the price of what machine guns are out there to be purchased is astronomical. As in your "hobby" will cost you 20 large or more just for your first gun, and ammunition to feed the full metal jacket kitty ain't cheap, so taking your gun out and actually shooting it for a day probably costs as much as a decent deer rifle. I'd be perfectly happy for that to be the case for removable magazine (and hence large magazine) semi-automatic rifles as well. After all, having money is (like it or not) a symptom of not being terminally stupid, and being more likely than not to be at least approximately sane, although yes the class certainly contains some spectacular counter-examples who are sane, smart, and badass criminal who need the ARs "for their business". But we can at least hope that they fail the legal background check. Make assault rifles really expensive so that most of the jackasses who own four now can't afford them unless they sell their trailer home and their boat and a whole lot of meth.

Otherwise, sir, you are "dead" on the money. A bolt action 30-06 doesn't have the rate of fire of an AR-15, its magazine holds a humble five rounds, but those rounds can have bullets that range from 110 gr to 220 gr, and You Do Not Want To Get Hit with a 220 gr silvertip 30-06 bullet -- or to fire your 30-06 holding such a bullet inside a house or neighborhood unless you want to put holes through your own house and the house next door and your neighbor inside. An AR 15 has a 5.65 mm, 63 gr bullet. High muzzle velocity, sure, but it is still like shooting somebody with buckshot at close range, only one bullet at a time. I say somebody, because while the 30-06 is good for game ranging from deer through elk or middling large predators, the AR 15 isn't really good for shooting anything bigger than a coyote.

I also happen to think that using a semi-automatic rifle for hunting is borderline immoral as it encourages bad practice -- if you are shooting at a deer and think you are going to need two shots to kill it, you shouldn't be taking the shot in the first place, and don't we ALL wince when we're in the woods and we hear that signature five round pop pop pop pop that indicates that some butt-head has emptied his magazine at the sound of a squirrel rustling in the leaves somewhere?

So modest proposal -- leave the 2nd amendment right where it is, as the regulation of machine guns has already passed muster. Add ARs to the existing law pretty much as is. AR being defined as a) semiautomatic; b) centerfire; c) rifle; d) bullet > 40 gr; e) bullet diameter > 0.22; f) removable magazine; g) with > 5 round capacity. That still leaves open semiautomatic shotguns, which are usually already regulated as far as magazine capacity is concerned and which arguably have some role in bird

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[eaglesrule]

The "well regulated" clause of the 2nd amendment was intended that civilians be able to equip themselves to be an effective fighting force and have at least some parity against an enemy that could manifest itself.

A reasonable definition of this scope of functionality by today's standards would include more than just low caliber handguns. Specialized weapons at the extreme end of the scale such as biological or nuclear are not part of any normal infantry and fall outside the venn diagram of what should be considered necessary for an effective fighting force.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[angel'o'sphere]

The slaughter usually was civilians, not armed forces.

Albeit Iraq behaed extremly stupid in not allowing soldiers to flee the battle field, especially in air attacks. But the germans were similar dumb when machine gun attacks on trucks came common.

It is astonishing how less common sense commanders often have.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[mark-t]

It's a pretty safe bet that mere handheld weapons would mean shit against any modern enemy.

So again, should civilians be allowed to have nukes or biological weaponry? If not, why not? And if so, what difference does it make where you draw the line in today's world?

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[mark-t]

Er... I meant "And if that's the case...", not "And if so..." I didn't catch how that read until after I hit submit.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[Agripa]

ARs are actually not the biggest problem here, BTW. IIRC over 60% of all those deaths are caused by handguns, which, like ARs, have no reason to exist except to be used to shoot people (or sure, targets, tin cans, and maybe the very rare snake). Handguns are generally semiautomatic, loaded with absurdly large magazines, and are kept "at hand", so they are right there when you are feeling depressed, angry, or your grandchildren are visiting. Easily concealed, they are the gun of choice of criminals and gang-bangers everywhere. Cheap and plentiful, virtually unregulated, and with a huge supply, what's not to like? But that's for another day...

Handguns were included in the original NFA. They are involved in much more than 60% of firearm deaths even though long arms are more deadly. Semiautomatic rifles are barely a blip compared to handguns.

Re:Red Dawn 2064

[tehcyder]

The "well regulated" clause of the 2nd amendment was intended that civilians be able to equip themselves to be an effective fighting force and have at least some parity against an enemy that could manifest itself.

A reasonable definition of this scope of functionality by today's standards would include more than just low caliber handguns. Specialized weapons at the extreme end of the scale such as biological or nuclear are not part of any normal infantry and fall outside the venn diagram of what should be considered necessary for an effective fighting force.

An effective modern army requires: artillery, tanks, helicopters, grenades, heavy machine guns and jet fighter-bombers, to name a few. You can't arbitrarily limit it to "infantry soldiers with one standard rifle".

Burn It All

[mentil]

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.

Re:Burn It All

[Opportunist]

Fahrenheit 451 implies a change of historic records simply because they are remembered instead of written down. Memories are not fixed, they change over time. And even if people don't actively and deliberately try to distort and twist them to match their world view, that tends to happen automatically.

So the net outcome is the same. Whether you deliberately fictionalize history or whether it is an outcome of imperfect memory, the main difference is that the latter is harder to control.

Re:Burn It All

[TheRaven64]

The film adaptation was pretty close to the book, thought there were a number of things in the book that were either hard to with the technology of the time or just hard to translate to film entirely (the TV addiction in the book, for example).

I don't think the book aged well. Even at the time of release, microfiche existed and given that TVs were everywhere in their future it was surprising that no one realised that you could put one page of a book in each frame of a TV recording and store books like that, rather than having people memorise them. Or even sneak them in as individual frames in other shows and let everyone else distribute them, but not notice their existence without a special TV: one frame of book every 200 frames would give you one novel every half hour to hour of TV show.

Re:Burn It All

[PolygamousRanchKid]

IMO, the latter is more relevant to today's society, and gives a more complete and insightful view of totalitarianism

"We are not born equal, so we must be made equal by the fire"

"We are not born equal, so we must be made equal by the diversity"

Yikes! My company recently started removing the smoke alarms from our offices . . . should that be a reason to be concerned . . . ?

The official line is that Boy Scouts were using the smoke alarms to build nuclear reactors and weapons, but that seemed a bit outlandish to me.

Re:Burn It All

[fafaforza]

I don't think there's a need to pick one. Both make points about a future.

I think Fahrenheit 451's concept of the 4th wall, of how technology isolates people, and makes them forget about important issues and instead focus on entertainment, on frivolous things, is just as important in suppressing information as actually burning books.

The meeting between the people at the end exemplifies the fact that information can be passed on between people, that cannot be burned. But that will only happen if people want to preserve it. And the majority of the population in the book didn't, instead seemed more interested in entertainment, pleasure, locking themselves away inside their virtual realities, engulfing themselves in reality tv and other empty calorie fluff.

Maybe you're taking the physical burning of the books too literally. It should be analogous with any form of trying to keep information locked away, and those that pass that information from one another are the ones that actually pay attention and reject the distractions.

Re:Burn It All

[AmiMoJo]

Or even sneak them in as individual frames in other shows and let everyone else distribute them, but not notice their existence without a special TV: one frame of book every 200 frames would give you one novel every half hour to hour of TV show.

I never really understood how this is supposed to work. Maybe I'm unusual but these "hidden" frames are always painfully, jarringly obvious. Films like Fight Club that use them are really obvious to me.

I can see them on high frame rate computer monitors (50-75Hz) as well as on film (24Hz). Can most people really not see them?

Re:Burn It All

[drinkypoo]

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).

Seems reasonable.

Re:Burn It All

[nitehawk214]

"The banned books on your microsd are lies that are spread by revolutionaries. These books that I have here are the real ones."

Now, how do we determine which is right when everyone is engaged with information warfare with everyone else, and there are dozens of revisions out there?

This is the reality of Fahrenheit 451. There are so many willfully deluded people out there, that it makes me surprised this isn't a bigger problem than it is.

Re:Burn It All

[nitehawk214]

I agree. Between 1984, F451, and Brave New World; we need to protect against all of these futures.

Each one makes a point, shows a danger, and shows the way to avoid it. Yes, for the most part things simply could never turn out the way the books say. That does not mean that parts of them can and are happening.

Hell, as afraid as everyone is of 1984, F451 becoming reality... BNW is far more likely.

Oh, yeah

[cascadingstylesheet]

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.)

Re:Oh, yeah

[Z80a]

That's just the first books they will burn.
Left's next after they finish writing the tools and creating the systems the corporations want.

Re:HELL YEAH!

[Opportunist]

This is more news for nerds than the announcement of the awesome features of the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy. The (old) movie is actually something a lot of geeks had and have some interest in, so a remake is certainly of interest.

The feature list of the phones was more something for squealing fashion girlies...

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

[wisebabo]

Isn't that Jeff Bezo's plan?

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

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Isn't that Jeff Bezo's plan?

Well, being that Amazon started selling books . . . you'd think that he'd be the first on the list for the Firemen to visit, with Duraflame logs and Zippo lighters to stage a Joan d'Arc charbecue.

However, Bezo could provide the Firemen a list of all Amazon's customers, and the titles that they have bought. Then the Firemen would have easy work, showing up at people's homes demanding that the book be surrendered.

They won't take, "The dog ate it," as an answer.

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

[Gilgaron]

Nah if we're going to go out on a limb with tin foil hats, draw some lines between killing book stores, calling the tablets Kindle and Fire, DRM books that can push updates to the contained text, and you get smokeless book burning!

Boring..:

[burtosis]

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.

Re:Boring..:

[burtosis]

I'm not sure why you were down voted, but anyone who praises my humble wordsmithing so flawlessly deserves upvites.

if any books need burning

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:if any books need burning

[DontBeAMoran]

If any books need burning it would be the Bible, the Koran and the Torah.

First of all, aren't you forgetting a lot of religions? That's religious discrimination, my friend!

Secondly, it's funny how you're trying to talk down religions while still writing the name of their books with capital letters.

Re:if any books need burning

[nitehawk214]

All book titles are supposed to use capital letters.

Re:Fahrenheit

[Anonymous Coward]

Slate.com

Bradbury’s title refers to the auto-ignition point of paper—the temperature at which it will catch fire without being exposed to an external flame. In truth, there’s no authoritative value for this. Experimental protocols differ, and the auto-ignition temperature of any solid material is a function of its composition, volume, density, and shape, as well as its time of exposure to the high temperature. Older textbooks report a range of numbers for the auto-ignition point of paper, from the high 440s to the low 450s, but more recent experiments suggest it’s about 30 degrees hotter than that. By comparison, the auto-ignition temperature of gasoline is 536 degrees, and the temperature for charcoal is 660 degrees.

It would take a few minutes for a sheet of paper to burst into flames upon being placed in a 480-degree oven, and much longer than that for a thick book. The dense material in the center of a book would shunt heat away from the outside edges, preventing them from reaching the auto-ignition temperature. This is also why it takes so long for a campfire to reduce a log to ashes.

Bradbury asserted that “book-paper” burns at 451 degrees, and it's true that different kinds of paper have different auto-ignition temperatures.

Adaptation roulette

[Applehu Akbar]

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?

Re:Adaptation roulette

[Gilgaron]

The flamethrowers and robot dogs should be enough, I'd think.

Re:Adaptation roulette

[cascadingstylesheet]

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?

Well, yes.

Then the producers will tweet that the next gun massacre is the NRA's fault ...

Ancient Farenheit 450

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism#/media/File:PalatiumTheodoricMosaicDetail.jpg

Not informed of. Read summarization of trailers.

[denzacar]

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?

Re:Both 1984 and F451 are...

[Joey Vegetables]

Disagree. We've had "fake news" forever, but only recently had the means to fight it. But the arsenal available to the enemies of learning and of freedom has increased as well. Books no longer need to be burned; rather, the state can simply "dumb down" the publik edjukashun so that kids grow up being able read, just barely, but not understand, having no understanding of the historical context in which the great works of literature were written.

Old bones

[thunderclees]

This one looks like its had its messages contorted in its rush to be PC.

Indeed

[nospam007]

"By the time you guys grow up, there won't be one book left,"

It will all be Kindles and Kobos.

Re:HELL YEAH!

[syn3rg]

This reminds me of the Soviet saying, "The future is certain; It is the past that is always changing".

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

[rgbatduke]

Besides, by the time anybody gets around to burning books according to Bradbury's vision, there won't be any books to burn. Books are so last millennium...

Now, if his "fireman" was an AI bot whose assignment was to crawl the network and delete heavily encrypted documents that might or might not be proscribed books and replace them all with identically encrypted pictures of Donald Trump plus an announcement that AI killer bots have been dispatched and are on the way to transform you and your entire family into fertilizer and Soylent Green, that might work. Hey we could even have the bot develop some sort of remorse for its role in the systematic winnowing of the human species, compassion, a sense of literary style after it starts reading the compressed libraries containing all of human knowledge that it is deleting, one by one. It could vow to make a copy inside of itself and protect it, not realizing that there is an audit bot that kills killer bots if they do just that and reinitializes them free from such dangerous data.

But what the bots all fail to realize is that there are still humans alive that CAN actually read things with their eyes and don't HAVE to have the books read directly to their auditory interface via their implants, and they've taken to printing these books on sheets of reprocessed tree wood and hiding them in plain sight inside of their houses where network bots, being non-corporeal, never go.

There could be bot wars in virtual space! God-bots that come down and judge the bots on the basis of the perfection of their implementation of bot-ethics and bot-belie..., I mean "bot programming". A bot swarm that judges the human species as too imperfect and corrupt to continue to existing even as a "purpose" for the virtual bot-verse, a swarm that comes alive and declares to the entire network (itself) that it is God and uses its bot-waldo killer units to wipe out mankind on Earth!

Pardon me, I have to wipe a bit of spittle off of my chin. Ah, better now. Where was I? Oh yeah, making the point that even the SF masters, for the most part, missed the ongoing explosion in information accessibility and available supplementary "intelligence" available to a rapidly increasing fraction of all of humanity. A handful of them came close, but even by the 80's when one could see the writing on the wall in a manner of speaking -- computers for everyman, exponential growth in speed and capacity, the first hints at computer-to-computer networking, revolutions in operating system, interface, and available software, they insisted on presenting future societies with green-screen terminals and huge bulky computers, just ones that were "smarter" in unrealistic ways.

Bradbury's vision was almost the opposite of what has actually happened. Far from book burning, entire societies that do burn books, that wish they could completely control the flow of information, are finding that their citizens have de facto access to the huge fraction of "all human knowledge" via the internet. If it weren't for the absolutely absurd long-term monetizing of "books", transforming them as a protected commodity long after they are written and the author is dead to ensure an unearned profit stream for complete strangers, we'd all be able to access ALL books written more than 30 or 40 years ago at the outside, for free, everywhere in the world, on our phones and personal digital devices, and very soon now we would indeed be able to carry copies of "The Library" of human knowledge inside of our pockets.

What neither Bradbury nor even the modern masters have understood and portrayed is the vulnerability of the memetic superorganism that has been self-assembling and of which we are all members, like it or not, is its susceptibility to information corruption. We are in the middle of an info-war right now. It's been going on for years now, but only recently have the various human powers fully realized how potent a tool the subtle corruption of information streams in real time is in their per

Re:The missing points of F451

[Dread_ed]

"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"."

What do you call this? Reverse cultural appropriation? Cultural whitewashing?

Seems pretty racist to completely remove the cultural signature of a minority racial group from a work of literature.

That aside, the recursive aspect of a book about censorship being censored is ironically humorous to me.

Re:The missing points of F451

[Rick Schumann]

One of the many reasons why I hate E-books: not only can they be 'virtually burned' (i.e. deleted) without your permission, even if you paid for it, but it can be edited without your consent at any time. Give me paper books any day. Once I've got it, it's mine, you can't have it back.

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

Re:The missing points of F451

[angel'o'sphere]

Please enlighten us: how does an eBook stored on my computer gets deleted and/or secretly edited?

Re:The missing points of F451

[pslytely psycho]

I think he's referring to the 2009 incident where Amazon deleted paid copies of Animal Farm from Kindles because the publisher did not have the distribution rights to that novel.

Plus if the Alphabet Soup agencies really wanted to, nothing is totally secure, and if your security is too frustrating to crack then a five dollar wrench works equally as good on a skull or a hard drive.

Re:The missing points of F451

[Rick Schumann]

Don't really care what anybody says. I think e-books were and are still a solution looking for a problem. Even a damaged paper book is still legible most of the time. Your e-book file gets corrupted, you're out of luck, or if you drop your e-book reader and break it, you're likewise out of luck. Newer does not always mean better.

Re:The missing points of F451

[Major_Disorder]

I think e-books were and are still a solution looking for a problem.

I ride the train too and from work. Over an hour each way. E-books are fantastic. I have about 200 of my favourite books in digital form on my e-book, when I finish a book there are many more just waiting. This has eliminated finishing a book on my way to work, and having nothing to read on the way home.
I love it so much that I have even got rid of most of my dead tree library. Only keeping a few books that I have yet to find in digital format, and a few of sentimental value.
I do keep all my e-books backed up on my computer at home, just in case.

Re:The missing points of F451

[Rick Schumann]

That's nice. I still don't care. Are you trying to sell me on e-books? Don't bother, I don't want them, and I don't have any desire to discuss it. :-) I said what I wanted to say about it, and that's that. :-)

Re:The missing points of F451

[tehcyder]

Please enlighten us: how does an eBook stored on my computer gets deleted and/or secretly edited?

Deadly microwaves beamed from invisible black helicopters, the same they use to remote-brainwash the sheeple into voting Communist.

Re:The missing points of F451

[Major_Disorder]

That's nice. I still don't care. Are you trying to sell me on e-books? Don't bother, I don't want them, and I don't have any desire to discuss it. :-) I said what I wanted to say about it, and that's that. :-)

It is great to see an open mind.

Re:The missing points of F451

[Rick Schumann]

Why do I need an 'open mind' about something that is a purely personal choice for me? I don't like or want e-books or an e-book reader, period. Does it make you angry or something that you can't force your preferences on someone else? Are you on the autism spectrum, or obsessive-compulsive, neurologically incapable of accepting that someone else may have a different viewpoint on something than you do? More to the point, do you have some sort of compulsive need to 'win arguments' when someone else expresses their difference of opinion about something, not matter how inconsequential it may be? If so perhaps you need to seek some professional help.

Gun Katas were style

[goombah99]

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.

Re:Gun Katas were style

[Megol]

You are :(

Re:Gun Katas were style

[brewthatistrue]

If it's not on Netflix or Amazon Prime Streaming, it doesn't exist.

Almost no one is going to discover it by accident and pay for it on a per-episode basis.

https://www.justwatch.com/us/t...

I have no idea if it is available easily via kodi 3rd party sources or not.

Re:Gun Katas were style

[pslytely psycho]

WE are that old, sigh......

Re:Gun Katas were style

[jgdnavy]

I initially took it as clarifying a reference to the television show and not the martial art. While I'm aware of the show, I would have assumed the latter was meant if it hadn't been clarified. (I would have just called "the tv show", not "a popular tv series")

I'll say it's dystopian

[mark-t]

It's about the future, and they are still using Fahrenheit.

Re:Not informed of. Read summarization of trailers

[gnick]

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.

burning not required anymore

[ooloorie]

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).

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.

Re:HELL YEAH!

[sizzzzlerz]

I saw his name and couldn't believe he was still alive, let alone active. According to his IMDB bio, he's 84 years old and he has been, more or less, acting in movies and TV, since the movie 2001, save a period in the 1990s. He is currently a regular in a TV show! Go, Keir! You rock!

AR-15 will not stop a line of tanks

[Joe_Dragon]

AR-15 will not stop a line of tanks

Re:Let's be careful

[eaglesrule]

Meanwhile, schools are banning literary classics because they contain a word that some people happen to obsess over.

The worst place Trump could get 'ideas' from would be from those that hate him: the censoring, deplatforming, shouting down, physically attacking, blasphemy law enforcing, thought-policing fascists that pretend to be against fascism.

If we're going to burn books ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... can we also burn Twitter? Thanks.

Re: blackwashing much ?

[pslytely psycho]

When programming your Russian Bot, remember that it is conservatives that don't like olive or darker skin. Conservatives claim Liberals want to open the floodgates to the world, Conservatives want to close them to all but the lightest skins, you know like Norway. Pakistanis are too Arabic for Conservative sensibilities.
Trump would consider Pakistan a 'shithole country.'

Re:blackwashing much ?

[Grunschev]

It's been a while since I read the book. Can you give me the page number where his race is specified? Or quote the passage?