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."

that isn't damning by faint praise, either...

[ed.han]

michael quoth: "looks like the film is not a complete bastardization of adams' work."

this is actually IMHO the best a fan should ever hope for WRT film adaptations of a cherished book/series/whatever.

ed

Adams wrote it

[FunWithHeadlines]

"But it looks like the film is not a complete bastardization of Adams' work."

Since Adams wrote the script from his own books, that's not too surprising. The acting, who knows? But unless they wanted to deliberately destroy the approved script, it would stand to reason that it would have the usual Adams touch. A touch that has worked in print and on radio, so here's hoping it works in film.

Fight Club

[trickster5378]

I watched the movie first and then read the book later. I couldn't believe how close the two were. And I honestly enjoyed the ending to the movie better than the ending to the book. (The only thing that was really changed).

Re:Book to movie?

[daniil]

Breakfast at Tiffany's. Both the book and the movie were great. Trainspotting. A Clockwork Orange. 2001: A Space Odyssey -- the movie was (IMO) better than the book. Blade Runner. And so on.

Re:Book to movie?

[rackhamh]

Shawshank Redemption.

Okay, it was a novella, not a book, but how many people had heard of the story before the movie? Both the story and the movie were quite good, IMO.

Actually, the fact that the original story was a novella probably helped a lot, since the movie was able to include pretty much the whole story. When you try to convert a full-length book, a lot gets left out by necessity.

AICN makes baby Jesus' eyes bleed!

[Thud457]

AICN is like the epitome of craptacular, JeffK-style web "design".

AICN

[Skyshadow]

The thing about AICN is that they're complete and utter jibbering idiots.

They routinely give lousy movies glowing reviews ("Freddy vs Jason was top-notch fashizzle!"). Some of it I can understand -- these folks like movies and get excited about them, so they're more optomistic in their reviews. Fine, whatever, what still doesn't mean anyone should ever listen to one of their reviews. Ever,

The only usefulness I ever, *ever* get out of them is in determining which movies are at the absolute bottom of the heap. If AICN says that a movie's bad (or gives it "mixed reviews"), that generally means it's so god awful that St. Peter will keep me out of heaven when I die when he finds me carrying the ticket stub.

Impossible to bastardize

[nganju]

"But it looks like the film is not a complete bastardization of Adams' work."

Since the original radio scripts were substantially different from the books, and the books were substantially different than the TV special, there really hasn't been any single consistent version of the story line.

Actually, since incessant change is the only thing that is consistent, the only way to not bastardize the spirit of the original story is to substantially change it.

Re:Book to movie?

[oirtemed]

A book and a movie are APPLES and ORANGES. Anyone who whines or cries about how it ruins the book, or isn't the same, is really missing the whole point. Books and movies are two different forms of art. With the restrictions of movies, one cannot accomplish everything a book can. The reverse is also true as there are things that can be done via film that pure text cannot accomplish. If you can't appreciate a movie as a seperate entity than the book, then I pity you. How could you even measure whether the book or movie was "better"? I just really don't see that you can -or- should, they are too vastly different to even truly compare. Consider Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. Very poppy, very much infused with modern themes and music and yet it is quite a work in it's own right. Is it as good as Willy the Shakes original? No. Is it the author's intention? Even new critical theorists would say no ;) But still, it is quite enjoyable and is independent from the existence of the original play.

and this is news because?

[amnesiaWind]

i'm a fan of Adams' work, but i hardly think some random opinion of a movie that isn't even finished yet is news worthy...

Re:Book to movie?

[Rombuu]

Contact and Hunt For Red October, are both better movies than books. Probably because the books were not written by particularly talented writers.

question

[mohrt]

How do you convey vogon ships hanging in the air much like a brick doesn't on the big screen?

Re:Article Text as /. vacine

[Ford Prefect]

And for those of you not wanting to read one giant paragraph, the entire review can be summarised as follows:

Mostly harmless.

Thank you. ;-)

Re:who cares?

[Bloodlent]

Dude, I know this is sort of stupid, but I totally friggin' agree. I hated that book. I couldn't even get to the halfway point. It's just so self-assured of it's own cleverness that it's infuriating.

Re:tv spots

[cmpalmer]

I think they should, it fits right in with the humor of the original books.

What Marvin Looks Like

[DLWormwood]

I have to admit I was one of those turned off by the first still I saw: the awful looking Marvin that looked like a pokemon.

Am I the only one who immediately thought that the movie's portrayal was right on the money? Marvin was built to be a "little plastic pal who's fun to be with" and had only the depressing sounding voice to betray his inner ennui. (Read: malfunctioning Genuine People Personality) Remember, he was built by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, the same people who made those cheerful elevator doors and way too helpful vending machines. Even the various leftover parts he was evenually built out of didn't occur until the later novels; he's just "out of the plastic wrap" at the start of this film.

Bastardization?

[CashCarSTAR]

Geeez. Talk about a neophyte reaction to it. The reality is, the HHGTG universe is constantly in a state of flux. Between the radio series and the books, there are vast differences.

A movie that played the book "straight", would be the REAL bastardization.

HHGTTG

[JWSmythe]

Ok, here's my flame bait for the year.

I read the comments on both the linked site, and here. It seems that a lot of people haven't actually read the books. I've read them a few times. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy here right now, or I'd quote from it. I've bought several over the years, but the seem to get 'borrowed' and never returned.

In the preface of one edition, Mr. Adams says something to the effect that the radio show was just something they threw together for fun. The book was the radio show, but they switched around the episodes to make the chapters, and changed plenty of things. The television show was the low-budget attempt to visualize it, poking fun at himself through the whole thing. The game was yet another scrambled attempt.

I'd fully expect the movie to be different than the radio show or the book. It's the way he would have wanted it. Every version of the story has been different, why should this one follow verbatum in the footprints of the previous?

I've listened to parts of the radio show, read all the books a few times, and watched the television series. I even beat the game when I was a kid on my old Apple IIe.

Now for the flame bait.

Books and movies will always be different. There are particular things you simply can't illustrate in either medium. The best example I can think of for this was on the "Stargate" Lowdown, on the SciFi channel. The actors were suppose to be looking at this giant spaceship taking off, and being amazed by how huge it was. They were really looking at a blue screen. The script just said a "really big spaceship". After the special effects guys got done with it, they were like "Ooohhh, a *REALLY* big spaceship". The visual effects were more dramatic than what they imagined from the written word on the script.

When you read a book, your imagination fills in all the blanks. What is a "really scary ugly monster"? They can go into details of arms, legs, eyes, size, etc. But, until you see something like the monster on Aliens, you didn't understand, "Oh, *REALLY* scary ugly monster.".

To one person, the movie may be tremendous, because they didn't imagine so deeply. To some, it may not be as great. I'm impressed by seeing what other people have put together. Sure, there are plenty of movies that I think absolutely sucked. I saw "Darkness" a few weeks ago. I kept waiting for it to get good. But I'm sure there are plenty of people who liked it.

Plenty of the science fiction that I like, bore the shit out of other people. I grasp ideas that they try to throw around as truth, while some people draw a blank at the idea of alternate dimensions, or the fabric of space. "Fabric? There's a t-shirt holding the universe together?" Some people are confused by the fact that light is influenced by gravity.

HHGTTG is just fun. Hmmm, the earth is blown up by big green construction workers, and a couple guys using a thing shaped like a thumb hop up to a spaceship, are thrown into space, and land on another spaceship with an Infinite Improbability Drive powered by a cup of tea, stolen by a drunkard two headed party animal who just happened to be the president of the universe? It's not serious, its humor.

I look forward to watching the movie. Too bad I wasn't invited to the preview, I'm only a few miles away from Pasadena.