Fahrenheit 451 (2018) - The Dom Reviews 

We watched this as a class in Honors English. We all hated it. Our teacher laughed at it. My best friend wrote an essay about everything wrong with it and how each thing it did wrong ruins the plot, the original idea of the story, and pretty much everything about it and turned in the essay just because he wanted to.

Still no Mechanical Hound? Man, why are all the cool monsters from literature always left out of the film adaptations?

I love how Bradbury thought we're oversensitive today even though back when he wrote 451 moralists were screaming about the threat of Elvis' wiggling hips and God forbid if they showed a flushing toilet or a couple's queen size bed on TV! There will always be people who'll fall on the ground and scream over nothing. It's just that now we have the internet and we can't avoid hearing them.

"Instead of firemen we have firewalls," said the old Firemen. "In my day we had to feel the heat of a flamethrower, not just the warmth of a laptop."

Wait, so their plan was to use *one* bird? It's a songbird, they aren't exactly at the top of the food chain, aren't they worried that it will get eaten by a falcon or get shot by a random farmer or something? I'm sure the film itself has a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, but why didn't they just make, like, a dozen or a hundred magic birds, to increase the chances that at least one will make it?

Your statement that "no one's gonna remember it" is so accurate that as of now, in February of 2019, I had never heard of this movie before watching your Lost in Adaptation video 😂

In response to the theory that it's the minorities that demand censorship, in Quebec the government removed the name of a whale shaped rock that marked a slave burial ground (I'll give you three guesses what that name was), and black people opposed the name change, because it actually followed a pattern of pretending there was no history of slavery in Canada. Censorship is often framed as protecting the 'poor put upon minorities', but it's more often something that's used to protect those in power from awkward conversations.

This sounds like they tried to combine Fahrenheit 451 with Children of Men and ruined both.

As a person who went to a British school “Banned Book Day” was so odd as so many books have been banned by lots of schools because of silly things like a gay side character or the use of one naughty word

I can see physically destroying the hardware being for the psychological effect. Having your internet shut off sucks, having your home invaded and stuff burnt in public makes a very strong statement.

Eh, burning alive is not a big deal. I set myself on fire every Thursday night, it really takes the edge off the stress of the week and gives me the final push for Friday.

And of course they make Clarisse a hot love interest... that saddens me so much. She was a teenager in the book and feel like turning her into a love interest is disgusting. Wish they just kept it more book accurate.

12:39 Your description of Montag looking at the VHS tape reminded me of an Adventure Time joke where Simon and Marceline "watch" one by looking at the tape, then saying it's boring and that he liked the book better.

The lesson movie makers should have learned from the Emoji Movie: Don't use emojis in your movie. If you do, it's probably not going to end up as an unforgettably great movie.

Alas, I'm not the only one who is pissed off at the severe lack of the ROBO DOGS!

The Mechanical Hound's absence is especially frustrating because all they'd have to do is copy the robot dogs from the recent Wolfenstein games, you'd have a frightening and cool visual that a drone can't quite replicate

I suspect this was an originally work at some point, but they either decided that they wanted to cash in on the books popularity, or someone noticed a few similarities between the two and decided to make it an adaption. Or maybe they wanted to do a modern update of it and just failed.

The idea of a room where all four walls are TVs was actually explored by Bradbury in a wonderful short story called The Veldt (which was written 3 years before Fahrenheit 451)/

For those of you who didn't watch video #1, Clarisse in the books was a preteen girl with a fascinating lifestyle that greatly reflected how people are living now in areas without the use of technology. He was married to an excessively boring woman named Mildred who can't even remember the day they met, symbolizing how fickle their lives are. In this move, Clarisse is the love interest. Gross.

I had to read this book in 8th grade, and the message shook me to the core in such a way (not sure if it was good or bad) that it was certainly memorable. I'm saddened to see it so mishandled by people who have previously proved they can do a decent job of creating movies and tv shows.

Girl with the pearl earring isn’t just on display here in the Netherlands, but it is Dutch! Made by Ver Meer

So a book about society ignoring their feelings leading to mass depression, is made into "Damn them Internets! Wait where's the Sun?" As SF Debris said. "There's a big difference between being complex, and being complicated." someone should have told that to this adaptations writers.

Funny, a second thing The Dom mentioned as Bradbury anticipating incorrectly, walls of screens instead of vr helmets, has actually become accurate 2 years after the video with things like The Mandalorian's LED screen virtual sets with real time Unreal Engine environment rendering. 2020-2021 is officially dystopian future now.

The Government banned books to make people dumber? Nahhhh. We are plenty dumb enough already.

Rarely get to see your video that early, so just want to say a huge Thank You for your awesome content! I absolutely love it! You provide great commentary and have wonderful dry humor. Once I get on steady payroll, I will become your patreon!

5:23 “As you know, Starlings are more resistant to fire inhalation” Is that a SotL joke? _”Have the fires stopped burning, Clarice?”_ 9:00 (as we all watch this on our smart phones and laptops while drinking our B&L mega sodas) It’s interesting to see how Michael Shannon is making a career out of playing “the big bad WASP” ie SHAPE OF WATER.

11:46 Mostly, what one can learn from art is anatomy, light and shadow and gesture (the art of making even still pictures look animated). Most classical art, such as The Girl With A Pearl Earring is considered revolutionary because it marks people stopping to use art as a religious source of media and beginning to use it to depict less holy, more mundane things in life. This thanks to certain parts of Christianity.

I literally had almost the same conversation with my sister today about a current Robocop comic. The original Robocop made fun of american materialism and capitalism, but in this comic, social media is the biggest threat and was taken so seriously, I stopped reading.

In my experience with viewing movies, whenever someone tries to be too "hip" or too "topical", you get a very messy, very forgettable product, and you lose the message you were hoping to convey. It's a shame, too, because I was just talking about this movie a couple of weeks ago with a co-worker, and we were both curious about it... Thanks for saving us the time, Dom!

I don't think Fahrenheit 451 will ever work in film, it's a book about reading. It's like if they decided to adapt Cinema Paridiso into a novel.

The "getting dumber" isn't entirely accurate because it neglects the reason people were allowing it/choosing it (old vs new film). The book explains it more clearly. They have become lazy and fearful of the "other". So they allow the censorship because it's easier for them and allows them to forget the "other", which they prefer over the alternative. But the alternative, this is created by the government and it's only purpose is to cause fear and helplessness. So, they didn't want the control; they were manipulated into believing they needed it.

My heart wasn’t ready for that Ray Bradbury quote 😢. Ive always loved Ray. The disappointment 😩

I'll defend literally nothing else about this version, but I think it was a nice touch making the fire service extra militarised. Just like what happened to the police.

The book has such a special place in my heart so I'm very possessive over it. Watching the trailer with my mom I was immediately like "that looks like it's going to be shit" and I don't think I was wrong. The two things that made me so angry was the loss of subtlety and what they did to Clarisse. Everything was so big and sensationalized when in the book everyone kept to themselves. No one really gave a shit about each other and kind of shrugged at anyone who's books were burned like "Well they deserved it". And Clarisse was so interesting. She was so strange and unique, she made Montag think. I never really got a whole relationship brewing thing. I just kind of saw it as if she was like the one to "enlighten" him and he became interested in that idea of her unlocking things he didn't even know about. But killing her off early kind of took away that. She was the only real human interaction he really got. I'm probably just going to read the book again until I forget about the movie.

"Hello, Clarice."

Awww jeez... not Ray Bradbury too. I mean it’s kinda hard to argue the censorship thing when I can go out and buy Mein Kampf in Barnes and Noble.

12:25 It reminds me of birds that collect random things, and I thought "OOoooh, Like a Starling! drawing parallels!" But no, I was confusing Starlings with Magpies. I guess why they made the bird a starling (because of the *visual* of really cool it's flying patterns, which probably symbolize/foreshadow natural communication and humanity/society's reconnection) but they could have also made it *a magpie* which would have been even MORE symbolic because it COLLECTS things.

I remember hearing they were doing another adaptation of my favourite book a couple years back and was like, "Maybe this one will be better...." and then forgot about it in the upheaval that is life. At first I was like, "Cool, they made Montag black, I kind of dig that." Also, the guy they got to play Beaty is pretty much exactly as I pictured him. That's as far as I got into this review before I was like, "Wait wut.... No. No no no no. no...." Just... SOMEONE GIVE ME A HOUND GOD DAMMIT. That thing was terrifying! When his leg is pins and needles and he's running away, my god it was visceral. I was on the edge of my seat. And where the fuck is his wife?? Frankly, I know it's weird, but I enjoyed her character so much in the book for how she perfectly encapsulated all that is fucked up in a society that demonizes knowledge and introspection. I definitely don't think her OD was completely accidental. And I definitely think she had to actually try to remain ignorant and blissfully unawares. She was such a flawed, messed up character who absolutely hated herself and hated her life life, but hated the thought of denying society and facing reality even more. ...Oh god... if I go on about everything else that's missing from just what I've seen here and what's changed around (I don't even want to talk about Clarisse....), I'm going to write a frickin' essay in the comment section again. I told myself I'd stop doing that.... Dammit! Bradbury, you deserve better than this. D:

I love your t-shirt!!! Every time I see i just think "what a guy!"

Please do a Lost In Adaptation of Lolita, the 1990s version is more accurate in portraying the sinister tones of Humphrey with little details such as asking about a boy Lolita plays with instead of how she's doing but the 1960s version is more famous so whichever you prefer to use is okay.

Ayy! I see that Ace Rimmer shirt!

The Omnus thing actually isn't that far out. The concept is based on tech we have today, scientist say it's possible to graft data onto DNA and a strand of DNA has A RIDICULOUSLY MASSSSSSSIVE amount of storage. The equvalant of 1,000,000TB of storage (1 exabyte)

Those kind of bird parties are called a murmuration

I just read the Fahrenheit 451 novel, and I loved it. It's like finding out Kafka was actually a white supremacist all over again. Godddamn it.

When Dom says Clarice I always think about The Silence of the Lambs

So Bradbury was an "anti-sjw"...I'm not really surprised. That's not really as uncommon with social commentary as it seems.

Wow...talk about in name only. Jesus. What a mess

There are some artworks that go on tour so to speak and are sent to museums and galas all over the world. There’s also a possibility of it being sold to another museum. When I interned at the Norman Rockwell museum in Lenox MA one of the things I learned was how to properly pack a sold painting worth millions. It could be that girl with the pearl earring just happened to be in the wrong place wrong time, but who knows

Wouldn’t Canada have all those books anyway? And couldn’t Beatty have just pointed his flamethrower UP at the bird first?

I didn't really remember it and was very surprised when I found the name of the protagonist in the comments after I watched your video. "Montag" is Monday in German and I think I understood something like Montague whenever you said it :D

Just watching this now, but I noticed how badly they screwed up with the firemen burning the keyboards and modedms... They could've used that scene that Dom mentioned and called that division the FIREWALL ffs. It's about as accurate as calling those guys "firemen" and gives you the feel that there is the digital side of the job

Equilibrium didn’t have the level of thought of the book but at least had some (half) decent action. This movie has neither

Considering how the book was about ppl allowing themselves to be dumbed down by their own technology, I actually wouldn’t be surprised to see the (over)use of emojis being the primary mode of communication among the youth of this adaptation. (That said, however, the _execution_ of such a thematic adaptation would still need to be considered…)

No true adaptation till we get the hound

Dammit, Michael Shannon is a fantastic actor, why does he keep making these crappy movies? Modems? Really? Modems?

I forgot that movie even came out.

I give credit to Michael B. Jordan (though I love Dom replacing “Jordan” with “Montag” during the review) & Michael Shannon for trying their best. Updating most of the tech made sense for this adaptation since we have many of the tech available that Bradbury predicted, but was excessive in the long run. I really did want to like this adaptation, but I’ll stick with the ‘66 film and the novel thank you

You should do "Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children" lost in adaptation

I adore your Red Dwarf shirt. That was an unexpected. treat to find on this video.

I haven't read this book in a while so the details were coming back to me slowly as the synopsis began, and while the the first thing I realy objected to was the punishment for books being changed to the fingerprint thing as opposed to the mechanical hound (seriously, WHERE is the mechanical hound??) I didn't actually realize how big a of a clusterfuck this was going to be until he described Clarisse. How DARE they butcher her character like that

I get that they needed the internet to replace still exist in the adaptation to serve the same role as television did in the original, but I still think they could have found a way to remove the concept of the written word while keeping the internet involved. Rather than having emojis make up the majority of text, why not just establish that recording media is no longer available, and the only form of mass communication utilized is live streams and video chats.

I mean...Bradbury is KINDA right. It did sort of happen, just...there's as many people thought policing as there are oversensitive soccer moms trying to keep their children pure without doing work themselves. Censorship of Mark Twain's works kinda gives that some credence. Edit: As does Michael B Jordon's opinion based on not reading shit apparently.

PLEASE do Perks of Being a Wallflower!

I love your t-shirt.

I was actually really interested in this movie. Sadly I couldnt make it 30 minutes before i turned it off

Kind of seems like they wanted to make 1984 a lot more than they wanted to make Fahrenheit 451...

Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite sci-fi novels and Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors. I was planning on watching this movie but, bad adaptations kinda ruin books for me. These videos is super helpful to me. Also I totally agree with you about the hound, technology using nature's image to create something horrifying is kinda a key theme in all of Bradbury's work.

I don't care how many years old this is I love that shirt so much.

Regarding banning old books because their content is offensive, it doesn't seem that far off. I've seen posts, especially on Tumblr, demanding to ban old books because their content is offensive by today's standards: Agatha Christie's books are racist, antisemite and misogynist, Robinson Crusoe is racist, Dracula is racist and misogynist too, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are anti-feminist, everything Lovecraft wrote should be banned because he disliked immigrants, etc. As a bookworm myself, I gotta say it's a little scary.

This video had an hour long advert... i watched it. for you the dom.

Thank you for your work, I loved the video as usual, (even if i don't really care for that film or the book) :) Have you considered doing an episode on Will Smith's I am Legend film? Honestly, it's a pretty bad adaptation, but the book is one of the best sci-fi stories out there I think, and it certainly deserves a lot more recognition that it has (or maybe compare Flowers for Algernon? That's a rather old one though).

The ending sounds like the Will Smith I Am Legend.

Cyril Cusack was the best thing in the older movie. I think he expressed Bradbury's view that the dumbing down was the people's own desire and they were afraid of ideas, preferring the pap on TV. Read his short stories "The Murderer" and "the Pedestrian" to see how the government is actually serving the people's desire for peace and order over intelligence.

Watching this at 17.June 2020, with the uproar about "Gone with the wind" and Events like CHAZ happening in the world sets a completely new light to the matter.

How did I miss this jewel of an episode and YOUR SMASHING SHIRT 💖

Great review, and huge fan of the channel since I found your Dune videos. Heard about this movie Friday, glad I didn't waste my time.

Prometheus: "No, you idiots! Don't burn knowledge and art with it!"

19:30 *Eels taking US jobs makes no sense* This isn't an issue. Irrationality is a hallmark of all forms of bigotry. So the fact that his claims make no sense is actually correct here. Think about all the pseudoscience and other claims made by racists to support slavery before the civil war. They range from gross misrepresentations to outright lies. Not to mention, if his claims did make sense then they would go from unfounded bigotry to accurate concerns.

I just read the book so I'm glad I get to see this review of the movie before watching it

Yaaaaay The Dom is back 😍❤️

So really this was they wanted to make a topical anti-Trump’s America message and decided to shove Ray Bradbury into it rather than let it stand on its own because they weren’t smart enough how to take Ray Bradbury’s writing and make it relevant to 2018

In high school we did Fahrenheit as our school play. We read the book and watched the movie before reading the script. As such, I place Equilibrium as my favorite action film that dose not come out of Hong Kong. I am so happy I found your review before watching this.

“Particle of DNA” cringe

"in a few months no one will remember it" dude called it I forgot this movie happened lmao

It seems that the film has more to do with Brave New World than Fahrenheit 451.

The part about the movie not aging well and being completely forgotten is accurate- I didn't even know this movie was a thing until this video popped up on my feed.

I'm surprised I didn't wake my mother up laughing over 'If I smash the keyboard that will delete the Facebook'. Oh my gods, The Dom...

"If I smash the keyboard I delete the facebook" - The Dom , 2018

That shirt is such an obscure reference...

I love your humor! I watch your vids every day.

My opinion. Equilibrium was a musical. The pills just stopped all singing and dancing. The only dance allowed is gun-kata.

The fact that bradbury thought social justice was making people dumber makes me like this adaptation just because it would piss him off more than anything I could do.

listening to this review in 2020 feels almost like a forshadowing of the current internet events.. 😳

Also as a linguistics enthusiast this bothers me but you cant write with emoji! Not an attack emoji mind you, i quite enjoy them, but they are strictly ideographic, qnd people use them almost entirely as a way of conveying body language in casual text on the internet amd in texts- it is NOT a writing system amd wouldnt work as one

Great video, as always, but that llama king thing at the end was hilarious! Makes me think of Film Cow's work and had me laughing.

I LOVE!!!! That little pokeball earing

I love the Red Dwarf shirt! I didn't know you were a Ace fan, Dom :)

okay but like... you literally cant maintain a modern society without writing lmao. its actually impossible. Also, emoji dont work as writing at least not our current emoji and the way they function. They do ofc trend on having specific meanings, but these meanings all revolve around embodying body language in a digital format. It be like trying to speak without words, in essence.

Does using torrents in this universe make you a warrior for freedom? Asking for a friend.

He's Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer Without him life would be much grimmer Obvioushly 😊