I was at the library the other day and saw that there is a movie version of this book, so I went ahead and got it, thinking it would be a nice refresher on the book I just read. It wasn't really. The movie was only vaguely similar to the book. I know books are always better than their movie counterparts, but come on. The technology didn't look at all like it was described in the book. I do understand that this move was made a long time ago (it is on VHS after all), but even then, they could have paid more attention to detail.
Another thing that really bugged me was when Clarisse didn't die. I suppose that would be a good thing in real life, but, in the book, she is supposed to die. When I managed to completely ignore that fact, I rather enjoyed the film's interpretation of the novel. The end where it showed Montag, Clarisse, and all the other books walking around reciting themselves was my favorite part. That scene left a bigger impact with me than the end scene of the book.
One other thing that the movie did that I enjoyed was that they left out the old professor that Montag associates with. He just seemed like such a static character to me. And he always got Montag in trouble. Montag also relied on the old man's help, rather than figuring things out for himself, and I thought that stunted his intellectual development.
I loved the bit of self-promotion for Ray Bradbury in the movie. As Montag and his guide walk around camp and the everyone is introducing themselves, one of the boys introduces himself as The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Little things like that just make the movie more enjoyable.
I thought it was pretty fun to go through and find all the ways the book was different than the movie. There were a lot of differences, but the movie still stayed true to the essence of the book, which I really appreciated.
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