Brave New World

'Brave New World', the 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley, told of a new world where babies were decanted as Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Epsilons, or Gammas, all designed to know their places in society, and in the case of the lower classes, decanted as multiple identical twins to staff entire factories and production lines. Their God is Ford (as in Henry) and their motto is 'history is bunk'.

In the book, Bernard Marx is a fish out of water, an Alpha of stunted growth who has dangerous ideas, who refuses to act like he is expected to, and is generally despised. The film's Bernard is Peter Gallagher, a kind of magnetic Romeo figure, popular with the girls, and a confident success. Already there's been some tampering done with the source.

With Rya Kihlstedt as a colourless Lenina (again nothing like the book's character, who is conventional to a 't') and Leonard Nimoy as the Controller, Mustapha Mond, the film loses impact and goes downhill very quickly.

Nods can be given (grudingly) at the attempts to develop computer generated conditioning forms, and to give some sense of a futuristic world. It just doesn't come off. The savage reservation is simply full of young Americans out to pick a fight, while John (the savage child of Linda, a Beta stranded in the reservation) does speak Shakespeare, but is otherwise of little interest and very unlike the book.

A disappointment and a huge bore, missing both the humour and the science-fiction/faction innovations of Huxley's novel.

The "Brave New World (TV Movie 1980)" from the BBC was a billion times better, you can find references to that adaptation in IMDb

Just watch the BBC version or read the book, there is nothing in this one to redeem itself, awful.

The 3 hours long BBC version and the book can be found in the website Huxley dot net at the very bottom, there are the links to the book and the movie Sadly the copy came from a bad VHS, but watchable. There is no better copy as far as I know. A bit cartooned in style, worth it anyway, so the book.

Bottom line, do yourself a favor, watch the BBC version or read the book

What would Huxley think? His masterwork now fodder for the MTV culture of the world. It was interesting that the writer and director chose this particular style to shoot BNW from. Granted the cliche' of Hollywood and American culture in general may seem like a Huxleyian paradigm but really, here it seems a little pretentious, as if to make some vocal statement saying "America has finally caught up to the novel's vision." Oh brother! This almost cynical disregard for respecting the author's true vision of his own work is pretty sad, as every nuance of Huxley's story has its meaning and characters stomped upon with references to rave culture, soap opera scandal type revelations and media blitz culture. The video and vocal overlays that are supposed to drive us through the films locations....superfluous. THe concepts of life inside the Brave New World become so much pseudo intellectual rambilng, the characters merely philosophical mouthpieces. If I didn't know any better I would have thought this film was French in origin. One can almost sense a level of shame being heaped upon us, the viewers as if this is the world we want and the writer and director know what we WILL become in the future. How odd. This is the second movie I have seen based upon the novel, the first being the 1980 movie with Bud Cort and Marsha Strassman. Somehow they never seem to quite get it right, but this one missed the mark the furthest in my opinon. Definately skip this version.

The book by Aldous Huxley is a classic, not just for its intrigueing plot and characters, but its prediction of the future which seems eerily like our own. And this made for TV movie shows just how our minds have changed, as it completely ignores the moral issues in the novel and falls prey to itself.

For example, the frequent makeup commercials airing between breaks. Beauty is everything. Nobody looks old or gets ugly.

The previews on TV. Sex sells. Sex is good. Sex is harmless. Everybody does it.

The savages being portrayed as white rather than how they are in the book. Don't offend anyone. Avoid racism.

The flashiness. Leonard Nimoy. Ooh-ahh. Everything is happy.

All the themes and slogans that cloud the minds of the common citizen to the point where it becomes human nature to them, seem to have clouded the minds of the people who made this movie. They fall to their own society's entrappings, not seeing themselves for who they are, but falling to spur of the moment emotions, be it passion or extravagance or just trying to make an extra dollar on a TV movie (games must have an economical purpose, afterall). Anyway, read the book. You'll see how you live in a whole new light.

This Hollywood makeover stylistically embodies many of the points made in the text; the victory of shallowness over sincerity, style over substance, sloganism over communication -- the movie is less than the book in so many of the ways that mankind is made less in the Brave New World. Coincidence? But who DOES read Shakespeare? Or for that matter, Huxley? If the movie were made true to it's original form, the intelligentsia would cheer and marvel just as they admired the original masterpiece, but what of those who need these insights the most? This movie reaches out to the brainwashed: the production / consumption units among us born and bred in the artifice of western civilization. Who needs these concepts more? Those who have already ascertained the game, muttering amongst themselves in coffee houses? Or those to whom the idea that this so-called reality is somehow "less" than the uncivilized world is a new idea and difficult to swallow . . . even in small bites? The American public is deeply asleep in a shared symbolic consciousness that obliterates the real. This movie eases the uninitiated into awareness through a television medium with which they are familiar and can relate. The characters, their motivations and dynamics have an air of familiarity in the TV world. It has the familiar hooks and subplots that would be expected in a quest for ratings, but is that all bad when it floats out at least some of the book's main ideas in a palatable form, diluting yet expanding Huxley's reach? The movie DOES make many valid and thoughtful statements that just don't get a lot of airplay in this society and deserves credit for making some bold statements - especially right before commercials.

I think the purists are being too harsh. This version of Brave New World reaches the most important audience - the uninitiated - in a way that's entertaining and understandable. It's a good start, and I recommend it as such.