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."

Book to movie?

[Quasar1999]

Can someone please give examples of when a book converted to a movie was anywhere near as good as the book? Some are satisfactory conversions... but I have never had one instance where a good book became a better movie...

Re:Fight Club

[Ender Ryan]

The author of the book even liked the movie better. I forget where I read that... Either somewhere on the special edition DVD, or the book.

Either way, both were great, and the film is a good example of a book to film adaptation done right.

huh?

[geoffspear]

it's possible and, in this reviewers opinion, likely that Adam's vast and flip universe is genius best left on the page.

Uh, don't you mean best left on the radio?

Ok, to be fair, the TV series was kind of bad, and some humor works a lot better in print than you can do on the radio. But this is sort of a unique adaptation in that the subject matter has already been adapated into every form imaginary. It's not like a crappy movie based on a Tom Clancy book, where the entire plot is changed because a movie about middle eastern terrorists nuking the Super Bowl would be insensitive.

The movie would have turned out better if DNA had spent the entire filming sitting next to the director and changing the script on the fly. Wanker reviewers who've only read the book would complain about details being changed, but major changes happened between the radio series and the books and they just made things better. Bah.

Re:Book to movie?

[Naikrovek]

Everything Douglas Adams wrote, he rewrote differently later. Readers have come to expect a certain level of change from him... to not get that amount of change in HHGG's next incarnation would be a greater change, and blasphemy.

To not change HHGG per incarnation would be too great of a change.

I'm not kidding. I would be disappointed if the movie were exactly like the book. DA did not intend it to be exactly like the book.

any real DA fan would know this.

Re:Book to movie?

[Random BedHead Ed]

I've got one for you: The Hunt for Red October. Clancy's novel was interesting, but long and winding, with characters less well-defined than in the film and a lot of technobabble (OK, so it was probably REAL technobabble, but it was tiresome nevertheless). The movie was a great improvement - an intelligent action/adventure that kept the audience guessing about Captain Ramius's intentions. In fct I found all of the first three Clancy movies to be general improvements.

Infocom Version

[buckhead_buddy]

The Infocom text-adventure of the Hitchhiker's Guide should be a requirement for every high school student considering a career in computer science. Unfortunately the plot of the movie may simplify some of the rougher puzzles in the game.

***Possible minor spoilers***

It's been a long time since I've played the game, but I still recall the way one acquires tea is a nice way to approach the concept of double negation and the final puzzle reminds me of the frustration of hunting for bugs in a program with a poor debugger and finding the bug to be inadequate tools rather than the concept of what one is solving.

*** End spoilers ***

As an eighth grader playing this game, I thought this was an incredibly frustrating and ultimately quite enlightening and satisfying game to play.

I'm sure there will be computer games based on the HHGTTG movie, but whether they are rehashes of Frogger with different character maps and models or whether they actually pay homage to the brilliance of the Infocom game remains to be seen.

Re:Book to movie?

[hachete]

I think "second-rate" books - i.e. books that aren't canonized as "classic" or great - tend to make better movies. Take Jane Austen books: they rarely make "great" movies because the director is often constrained by the expectations of the audience, particularly those who wish to defend Austen's reputation. The director is less likely to tear it apart and make it into a decent film. See adaptations of Shakespearean plays. The keyword is usually "faithful". Once that comes into play, then you know you're likely to have a turkey to hand. If someone does make a good film out of a "classic" novel then it's more often than not, damned for not being "faithful".

It's the inverse with The Hunt for Red October. This can be taken apart at will and re-constructed as a movie because there's no need to defend Tom Clancy's literary talent or ouvre. I suspect he wants to make a buck or two rather see a "faithful" adaptation and the audience for TC's books don't have any great expectations of his work either.

As further weight for my assertion, I can't remember any adaptations of classic literary making it into anyone's top ten. Take this: poll [bfi.org.uk] from 2002. There are *no* adaptations of classic lit works here.