Dask wrote: Yeah, I think so, at least with regards to special effects.
Better special effects should never be the excuse for a "remake." Directors at any given time know what they have to work with and make adjustments. I've seen too many "because the special effects are better now" remakes where the writer/director sat on those technical laurels and left any other artistic considerations by the wayside.
Tron Legacy, for example, told a slightly different story (allegedly a sequel) and dropped lots of allusions to the first film, but it is obvious that the makers didn't "get" the original. The sequel was paint-by-numbers without a hint of the multi-faceted allegory of the original.
though Bradbury had no way of knowing about Project Gutenberg.
There's a "zeitgeist" to many stories—even ones depicting the future—that should be maintained, otherwise the identity of a story may be lost. Granted, Truffaut's take on
Fahrenheit 451 was not a literal translation from page to screen, but we've seen the
pitfalls of that approach.
The problem with updating the technology in
Fahrenheit 451 is that it will begin to look too much like Orwell's
1984. Heinlein's
The Puppet Masters was brought to screen in a paint-by-numbers fashion, and it ended up looking like a remake of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Maintaining just one thread from the book—such as the role reversal between father and son—would have made all the difference. Besides, Pixar's
Wall•E already spoofed the "zoned out zombies" talking to each other through video when they are physically elbow to elbow.
While we're at it, maybe we should change the title to
Celsius 232 to make it more international? Another problem with changing the technology to reflect today's world, then having to fight backwards to maintain certain aspects of the book, is that aspects of the allegory may be lost. For example, merely preserving the books, a la Project Gutenberg, has been done in everything from the
Foundation stories to
Lost Horizon. Having people
memorize the books has many facets: the mind is the last refuge of freedom even in the most crushing fascism, and the people know the books and are mindful of them; the books become
alive. One can preserve history in books, but if one does not read them and know them—well, you know the old adage about history repeating itself.
Remakers should be very careful about tossing what appears to be superficial detail.
