Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Screening Reviews

Doctor Monkey writes "Initial reviews are up at Ain't It Cool News from a 'work-in-progress' screening of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in Pasadena, CA. Reaction seems mixed-to-positive, mostly due to some uneven performances. But it looks like the film is not a complete bastardization of Adams' work."

toys and such from the movie

[spoonyfork]

Here's a linky [chud.com] to the toys and office products from the movie. Marvin looks too cute and I want one of those mugs!

Here's the BBC Series

[pdhenry]

In other news, the BBC series is available on Netflix [netflix.com].

Roger Rabbit,?

[AtariAmarok]

"Can someone please give examples of when a book converted to a movie was anywhere near as good as the book"

Here's one: "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (adapted from "Who Censored Roger Rabbit")

In related news...

[hollismb]

There's also a fairly good Q&A with the film-makers at Coming Soon! [comingsoon.net]. It's hard to take much of what you read at AintItCool seriously, when you consider that the guy reviews movies from the standpoint of a five year old at best.

This is really radio to movie

[rufusdufus]

Hitchhickers guide was originally a radio program. The books are derived from the radio scripts.

Not applicable

[JLavezzo]

Douglas Adams seems to have looked at everything as a work in progress. His attitudes are generally the opposite of the tendency that many folks have to "canonize" works. "The Hitchhikers Universe" is really a Multi-verse like Adams tried to portray in "Mostly Harmless." The book he wrote was different from the earlier radio show he wrote and the movie (he helped write) will be different from the book and the radio show. Different, not wrong, incorrect or inaccurate. And if it turns out to be bad, it can be just bad (or not great) without that judgment carrying any moral connotations.

I can't really think of any parallels that match very well. The closest thing I can think of is the way old (pre 1900) folk songs used to 'mutate' or be adapted to suit the new singer(s). Lyrics would change, rhythms would change. The new way of singing it wasn't a 'wrong' way, just different. And the artist was able to make a new statement and connect with his audience. This hasn't happened much since the dawn of strong copyrights. The very unusual aspect of H2G2 is that it's the original artist who's doing the adaptations.

I for one hope it's a great film. I don't, and in many ways am glad, expect it to be the book pulled out of my imagination and put on screen. If Disney messes it up, it won't ruin the books for me.

Re:how can it NOT be a complete bastardization....

[advocate_one]

since when did Marvin have a gun????

Re:Book to movie?

[Amadawn]

Neil Jordan's adaptation of "Interview with the Vampire" with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and even Kristen Dunsk was MUCH better than the Anne Rice's book!

I saw the movie first and I thought "that must be a great book". So I read it and I was very disappointed. Anne Rice has a great imagination but she just can't write (IMVHO). The book seemed slow and barroque (in the worst possible way) compared to the movie.

I must confess that I read the book in Spanish so perhaps the translation was not very good though...

Hitchhiker Movie FAQ

[yomahz]

Ran across this the other day. [douglasadams.se]

Gives some really good insight on what exactly is going on with the movie (in regards to the casting, plot, etc.):

http://www.douglasadams.se/forum/viewtopic.php?t =2 288

Re:Roger Rabbit,?

[DigiNic]

Fight Club. The violence from movie stands out in my memory much more clearly than the book's.

Re:Book to movie?

[Naikrovek]

read the forward in the book. they were written in unison.

Re:Book to movie?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umberto Eco's The name of the rose.

Re:Book to movie?

[Anonymous Coward]

The full-length book was an adaptation of the movie. The original version was a short story.

Douglas Adams on the movie.

[tedrlord]

I remember going to see Douglas Adams at a local bookstore a couple of years before he passed away, and even then he spent half the discussion talking about the movie. He was really excited about this. I've been waiting for it for a long time.

Of course it will be different from the book, but he made sure to keep what he could. This may be a different screenplay entirely, but I really hope not. I remember one of his concerns was whether he could accomplish some of the scenes with the special effects back then, but by now I'm thinking it should look really polished.

Re:Book to movie?

[jesterzog]

Can someone please give examples of when a book converted to a movie was anywhere near as good as the book?

Well in this case, it's really a movie converted from a radio series, which the books came after... or a TV series, which is also widely respected by some as being just as good, sometimes better.

As someone else pointed out, though, Douglas Adams really treated all incarnations as equally valid to his universe, even when they blatantly contradicted each other... and he's commented on this many times in his book introductions. As far as he was concerned, the story should be adapted to best fit whatever medium it was being told in. This led to some quite substantial differences in characters, plot, the extent of the story, and the methods of storytelling, depending on whether you were listening to the radio, reading the book, watching TV, playing the computer game, or drying yourself off with the bath towel.

This film will almost certainly be different. It'll have an inconsitent plot, a different script, and maybe some different characters. But if it's good as a film and it gets across the general hilarity of the Hitchikers' universe, then I won't personally be considering it a bastardisation. Based on everything he's done in the past, I'm pretty sure that it'd be something that Douglas Adams would have supported.

Re:Black RAPPER Mos Def Ford Prefect RUINS IT

[Gondola]

Although I can't recall if Ford's color was ever mentioned in the books, I've always envisioned him as a pasty white British fellow just because that's the stereotypical Brit from TV and movies. Is Guildford a city with a higher than average black population?

Really, it shouldn't matter. As long as he has a British accent and acts well, who cares?

Personally, however, I really don't have high expectations for the movie. When I saw that Marvin was going to have a huge globe for a head, I thought that someone with a very literal imagination had read the books and immediately equated a large brain with a huge globular cranium. On a robot, a big brain doesn't have to be located above the shoulders. None of the descriptive text in the books refers to a huge head on Marvin, and the pictures I saw were of a grossly-exaggerated head. Anything that key would have been mentioned.

I've just recently finished watching the BBC's DVD version of HHGTTG, and I enjoyed it for the most part, even though it didn't have a lot of redeeming qualities, technically. Sets were extremely rough and cheesy. Trillian was a whiny, nasal exhibitionist with too much makeup. Zaphod and Ford were overacted. Arthur was tolerably well done, but seemed out of place among the other actors. Marvin's voice could have used some adjusting. The graphics representing the Guide pages were horrible, but I suppose representative of graphical effects of the time.

The film rushes through some of the explanations too fast, and a lot of detail is glossed over -- the twists of logic, puns, and wealth of sarcasm and irony in the book are too hilarious to miss out on, so please read the book(s).