angelamarymartin
For months, I waited with anticipation for HBO's adaptation of my favorite book Fahrenheit 451 to make its début; I was a huge fan of the book-obviously seeing as it's my favorite-and I also quite enjoyed the first 1996 movie adaptation when my teacher shared it with our class in 2011. Naturally, the 1996 lacked a few things, but seeing as the technological capabilities were limited then compared to what we have now that is to be expected, so when I heard HBO was doing an updated movie I was ecstatic and couldn't wait to see all of the things that had had to be left out in the 1996 version and when it popped up on my Hulu account to watch I was definitely excited...until I turned the movie on.The cast wasn't anything close to the characters in the novel, nor were the personalities that they portrayed onscreen. The story itself-to me at least-seemed to be changed and even dumbed down for the audience of todays generation and that saddened me alone. I could have stomached most of the movie if they had stayed true to the original plot. To me they have utterly destroyed one of my favorite books.Long story short, if you genuinely love the book and want to see it come to life on the big screen, don't watch this. If you're looking for an action/thriller sort if thing that seems to barely have a decent storyline and you've never read the book, then you're good.
cheytacsnipes .
The book is short and easily adaptable into screen form, but somehow, that's gone horrifically wrong. The first thing is that it is only loosely based on the book. A lot of the characters are completely different and the story is entirely different too. And not in a good way either.And secondly the writing of this movie is so bad. It makes Michael Shannon and Michael B. Jordan look like bad actors. That doesn't help the cause either..___________________________________________________________
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS PART
___________________________________________________________Here comes the spoiler review. This movie is just laughable and clichéd. There are a few scenes where the actors open books at a random page and start reading an inspirational quote. I'm sorry but what? Does this movie really think that I will believe that there just happens to be some meaningful quote on that exact random page? Also, entire characters are left out. Leaving out Mildred really makes the movie a lot less interesting. In the book, Mildred is the wife of Montag, and she's way out of touch with the world, so out of touch that she doesn't even remember when she and Montag met. I really thought this was a great dynamic, to show just how out of touch people are supposed to see in the universe of Fahrenheit 451.This isn't the only part of background story that is left out. All the atomic wars stuff is also left out. In my opinion this makes the movie feel quite dead. It feels like an action documentary of a single person, instead of sketching a bigger picture about the entire imaginary world.
TL;DR everything except for the casting in this movie is bad. Besides the fact that the story is completely different from the book, it does all the storytelling very badly. Everything is made very linear and predictable, and the movie kind of tries to create a good guy vs bad guy story, but very oddly, because it somehow also tries to keep the dynamic that Beatty is actually against the burning of books.
educallejero
This was a really poor Black Mirror episode. Like, of the really worst. The freedom of thought is a good premise, I guess, but its been done before too many times. Without a budget (clearly), at least you can write something new to the tale. You can make the characters more nuanced, or smart. And that's the problem with this movie, I just don't really know what I saw. Was the protagonist a repressed book lover doing what it was easiest or just doing what his father did or the opposite of what his father did out of fear? It's not clear. Was the villain Michael Shannon a secretly book lover, a selfish dude that play the part of books hater because it was easy but secretly loved to read and create? It's not clear. Nothing was clear in this crap
bryangary65
Interesting concept about books being banned in the future But film a bit disjointed with Michael Shannon as always playing the bad guy the same as he plays the other bad guy roles
AD
