"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; news, facts, memoirs, Internet of Old ... burn it!"
— Captain Beatty
Fahrenheit 451 is a 2018 TV movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury's dystopian classic, starring Michael B. Jordan as Guy Montag and Michael Shannon as Captain Beatty. It aired on HBO.
Fahrenheit 451 provides examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: While the book doesn't specify what year it takes place, the film places it some time after our own, but near enough that it looks quite similar to ours, aesthetic wise.
- Actor Allusion: Raven, a vlogger who promotes the burning of books and makes propaganda for the government, is played by Lilly Singh, who is a real vlogger.
- Adaptation Name Change: Mildred from the book becomes Millie here. That being said, Mildred is occasionally referred to as "Millie" in the novel.
- Age Lift: Similarly to the 1966 film adaptation, Clarisse is seventeen in the book, but is portrayed by an adult actress here. This is in order to make her a love interest for Guy Montag, which has been regarded as a controversial issue with readers of the novel.
- Bait-and-Switch: The bookmen's base has a little autistic kid with a perfect memory of all books, standing in for the whole society having memorized all of the books in the original text. It's a good thing that Montag got his hands on that damned tracker, because once he returns after being declared a fugitive, it turns out that the Firemen got there before him and killed all humans inside, including the kid.
- Book Burning: This is the Firemen's work. It's also been updated to include them deleting books uploaded onto "the 9", the successor of the Internet.
- Canon Foreigner: The 2018 adaptation adds some new characters, such as Raven, a vlogger who helps spread anti-book propaganda... played by one of the most successful female vloggers currently working.
- Culture Police: The Firemen, who destroy nearly all books as the ideas they contain simply make people unhappy, in their view.
- Cyberpunk: As a result of its Setting Update it showcases many things that are now considered standard of this trope, such as Advert-Overloaded Future. The fact that "the Nine" (the remade, censored Internet) looks like an endless fascist Twitter feed with its own version of the Amazon "Alexa" also makes it look like a very dark and twisted example of Solar Punk.
- Death by Adaptation: Guy Montag doesn't survive this version of the story, burnt to death by Beatty. He manages to be Defiant to the End, though.
- Death by Racism: Douglas makes a point of calling the black Montag "boy". Montag burns him to death shortly thereafter.
- The Evils of Free Will: Beatty tells Montag people are just upset by the ideas that most books contain, especially philosophical ones, since they give conflicting opinions. His solution? One opinion. Better yet, none. Ironically, he uses the debate on free will as an example of one with such upsetting opinions.
- Fallen States of America: It is mentioned repeatedly that a Second Civil War happened in the past, which is the reason why the rampant censorship has been created.
- Fallen Hero: Implied by Beatty, who despite being a fire chief in charge of book burnings is clearly very familiar with some, since we see him writing out quotes by heart when he's alone (most are very cynical, indicating he'd lost his former ideals).
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: The "book men" in this version have stolen a device that allows all of the information that comprises the collected books of the world to be encoded in genetic material, which they have injected into a bird. The reason they ask for Montag's help in this version is so he can deliver them a police-grade GPS tracker that will allow scientist members of the group over in Canada to find the bird once they let it go and it enmeshes with other birds that are migrating north.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Many people see the relationship between Montag and Beatty as having this, more so than in the original work.
- Insistent Terminology: They are not books, they are not stories, they are not discussions, they are not history or fiction or anything. They are "graffiti".
- Irony: Beatty cites the debate on free will as an example of one with ideas that upset people, and thus argues they shouldn't hear multiple opinions at all. Mein Kampf is also one of the books he has burned after saying this, by a man whose own regime was big on censorship and book burnings. Doubtless both were entirely intentional.
- Kill It with Fire: The Firemen's flamethrowers have been upgraded to highly-portable rifle-style devices with quick-reloading fuel cells. One of the showcases that Montag is The Ace within his fireman unit is his Improbable Aiming Skills with the thing.
- New Technology Is Evil: In the trailer Beatty describes the "Internet of Old", implying it's banned. The movie goes and shows the new Internet is the most twisted version of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube that you could possibly expect from this kind of world.
- No-Paper Future: All transactions are done digitally by verification with one's fingerprints. Therefore dissidents are punished with getting their prints burned off by cauterization, effectively cutting off access to society.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Beatty refers to ages past as the time when people believed in gods. That said, the Bible is one of just three books exempted from the ban, though we still see no sign of religiosity by anyone.
- Political Overcorrectness: One of Beatty's rants implies that a rampant case of this after the Second Civil War is the reason why "graffiti" (books) was banned, for expressing ideas people didn't like (he cites racist terms in Huckleberry Finn as an example, which really has been frequently challenged or edited).
- Race Lift:
- In the book Montag and his wife Millie were white, here they're both black.
- Clarisse McClellan is played by French-Algerian Sofia Boutella in this adaptation, but was described as pale-skinned in the original text.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: More than the original text. Everybody that was a good guy in the original text is dead and Beatty still lives, free to continue to lead the Firemen on their oppressive crusade and there's no world war coming, so society will remain unchanged for a long time to come, if ever. But the bird that the book men have placed all of their hopes in was released by Montag with the tracker attached to it, and it is seen among other migrating birds, but the movie cuts without us finding out if it will actually be located by the resistance members over on Canada. Beatty said previously if it got out, there'd be no stopping it.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Captain Beatty survives the film, rather than getting burnt to cinders by Montag in the climax as in the original (his Jerkass subordinate Douglas gets that death instead).
- Totalitarian Utilitarian: The regime the Firemen work for seems to believe that most books just make everyone unhappy, to judge by their propaganda and Beatty's comments. As such, they're all banned and destroyed, with only three spared-The Bible, To the Lighthouse, and Moby-Dick. They insist this is all for everyone's happiness.
- Un-person: The Firemen's new punishment (if people are not set on fire or taken for interrogation and execution, that is) is to erase a person's fingerprints by cauterizing, making it impossible for them to perform any transactions or access any networks. For this new society, this is A Fate Worse Than Death.
- Written by the Winners: The regime has edited history to claim Benjamin Franklin started the Firemen, and thus even the Founding Fathers backed their book-burning work. Franklin did in fact start the first fire department of the then-Colonial America (Philadelphia's), though he would no doubt be appalled by this.
