Loan Shark

this feels like the writers just read the little blurb on the back of the book but not the entire thing and just tried to write Fahrenheit 451 from that. It’s like a high schooler giving a book report without ever actually looking at the book. This is, at it’s barest bones, Fahrenheit 451. But so much has been changed or added or removed that I would never recognize it as Fahrenheit 451 if I wasn’t told it was. The ending, however, is the worst part. In the book, Beatty is burned alive, Montag goes on the run and eventually escapes, meeting a group of homeless scholars in the middle of the woods. These scholars explain a way forward to Montag: their memories of the books can be unlocked, even if they can’t just remember them on the fly. They have hope that, eventually, they’ll be able to recreate the books they lost. And maybe, they don’t have to wait long, since a nuclear war breaks out and the city Montag flees from gets nuked. The ending in the movie is so much less hopeful. Montag kills off some insignificant fireman and is about to kill Beatty, but then gets scared off and meets up with Clarisse, they try to head to a safehouse, but the Firemen get there first, burn all their books, kill a bunch of the people, and lights all their buildings on fire. Montag runs into a burning building, and finds a caged bird and a hole in the ceiling. He places what I think was a tracking chip into the bird (it might have also been like some sort of advanced usb containing the books, which would be kind of hopeful I guess). The bird flies away, and Montag is killed by Beatty. The movie just ends with the bird and the chip meeting with a bunch of other birds and then all the birds fly in fancy shapes and the movie ends. The movie’s ending is hard to follow, heavily unresolved, and much bleaker than the hopeful future of Bradbury’s original piece. Overall, this movie absolutely sucks.