Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trailer

Rakkis writes "A new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer is available on the frontpage of Amazon.com. From IMDb: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy follows the travels of Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), who is saved from the demolition of the Earth by his pal Ford Prefect (Mos Def). Ford is really an alien doing research for an updated edition of the universe's ultimate travel companion, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens April 29th.""

complete?

[moz25]

Cool. Does the final movie include the entire series?

I like it.

[Mach5]

I've read the whole series of books multiple times, and I'd have to say, after seeing the trailer and reading reviews on AICN, it looks like its gonna be good.

Ford's Thumb?

[teiresias]

I have mixed feelings about this. I mean every new adaptation of DNA's work is open to interpretation but....

when did Ford's thumb become a magic hitchhiking device?!?

Beyond that, It's not as bad as I feared although not as good as I hoped. I think Marvin looks kinda neat, different from the comic book version. Arthur looks about right although Zaphod I think is gonna kill me. I think they're also gonna play up a Arthur, Trillian romance more which I think will hurt it.

My bum will definitly be in a theater seat the moment this hits theaters though.

Do they mention 42 in the movie?

[nganju]

I'd hate to have our inside geek joke be revealed to the world. It's always been sort of a secret code, if you knew what it meant, then you belonged to the tribe. Now every avid moviegoer in the world will know what it means.

Re:Ford's Thumb?

[anakin876]

it looks like the Thumb has become a ring on his finger. I don't think it was ever stated in the books that it was not a ring. I may be wrong though,

Re:I find it slightly worrying...

[Fred Or Alive]

The vital question is, did they film in the same quarry as the BBC TV series?

Re:Ford?

[Tony Hoyle]

No but the book does describe ford as a misfit.. he never quite understood the earth - even his earth name shows some of that misunderstanding.

A streetwise rapper just doesn't fit.

Straying too far from the path?

[SethS]

It looks like they're taking a LOT of creative liberties with the script. Too many perhaps?

For instance... in the preview, they show Ford introducing Arthur to Zaphod. In the book, the whole comedy of the scene is that they both play it cool. Not so in the preview.

It is my fear that Hollywood is going to ruin another perfectly good book. I'd like to go see it, but I'm going to be very sceptical.

Re:Do they mention 42 in the movie?

[slim]

I'd hate to have our inside geek joke be revealed to the world. It's always been sort of a secret code, if you knew what it meant, then you belonged to the tribe.

Hmm, that may be true in the US. In Britain the TV series has been repeated so many times, and the books are so popular, I reckon at least 25% of people would know what The Answer is (which I'd consider high: something like 40% don't know what town Jesus was born in).

Obviously, far fewer would know The Question...

Re:Ford's Thumb?

[Allison Geode]

actually Alan Rickman is voicing Marvin. Warwick Davis is merely acting as the role of marvin, the man in the suit, so to speak. why they didn't just have a CG marvin is beyond me.

I thought it was great...

[Vthornheart]

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun, but it looks like Mos isn't going to be a horrible Ford as some of us feared.

But what about the towel? I didn't see him using a towel to flag down the ship... towels, as everyone knows, are a very important thing. =)

Re:Direct link to the movie

[DanCentury]

I have no problems viewing the trailer with Firefox 1.0. It might be your OS that's the problem.

Re:Straying too far from the path?

[ThisIsFred]

You know it's going to be ruined, it's the Hollywood way. All the previews I've seen are just special effects and catchphrases in the voice-over.

Re:Humma Kavula

[jangobongo]

From watching the preview, my guess is that Humma Kavula/John Malkovich is the character sitting at the dining room table that stands up and has no body below the edge of the table, just a bunch of tiny little robot legs. It went by so quickly that I couldn't be sure that it was Malkovich, though.

Re:Ford's Thumb?

[Schnapple]

I personally think it's great when people try to do things "the hard way". I mean, yeah LOTR with it's expensive special effects is great and all, but it's fun to occasionally pull out my bootleg DVD's of the original untouched Star Wars trilogy and see what a sci-fi movie made "the hard way" was like.

Re:Generic Fanboy Reaction

[huge colin]

I think the problem that most "fanboys" have is that this is now a hollywood movie, so it needs to be hollywoodized -- you don't have the same creative freedoms that you do when publishing a book because it's simply not economically OK if the movie only appears to a niche crowd.

Movies are produced to make a bunch of money, so the producers need to be sure that's going to actually happen.

Re:Do they mention 42 in the movie?

[Feanturi]

Erm, I've had '42' thrown at me by plenty of people who haven't read the books, don't actually know what they're referring to, just that it's got something to do with the meaning of life and they want to appear clever in a serious conversation when they have nothing to say. They piss me off. It's never been a 'secret code' as far as I've been aware.

Re:Direct link to the movie

[Begossi]

Definitely a must see, the Artur Dent choice of actor couldn't have been better.

It is still a bit disappointing that Zaphod does not have his 2nd head on the movie. It was the source of much humour. And Marvin looks like just a guy in a robot suit, Teletubbie-style. I thought the whole "brain the size of a planet" thing was more like a metaphor for his immense intellect, not just a huge head...

Re:Ford's Thumb?

[gamgee5273]

It looks like the Thumb actually slips over Ford's real thumb, or it's a bionic addition. But, look at the trailer again - I thought I saw a metal band at the bottom of Ford's thumb.

Re:Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster...

[Jedi Holocron]

Years ago a friend and I tried to work this out. Specifcally, we tried to find a non-toxic occilating reaction that would sequence thru several colors and repeat. We eventually settled on two colors, repeating, but failed to find the non-toxic reaction.

Oh well. Nanotechnology anyone?

Re:Not till April?

[Jack Taylor]

I feel obliged to say at this point that I've met the man Douglas Adams based Marvin on (allegedly - he definitely went to university with him). He trained as a lawyer, I think, but then he became a music teacher. He's very intelligent, talks quite slowly, and when he says "very good" in response to some work it sounds like he meant "I hate all these attempts. They're rubbish. But yours was slightly less awful than the others so I suppose I ought to say something encouraging, not that I like doing that sort of thing. Oh God, I'm so depressed..."

So I believe it's true, anyway :)

Re:Direct link to the movie

[HD Webdev]

"I thought the whole "brain the size of a planet" thing was more like a metaphor for his immense intellect, not just a huge head"

When I first read the HGTTG stories, I thought the constant reminders that he had a brain that specific size would end up with a plot 'surprise' that Marvin was in fact the computer trying to figure out the question that results in the answer 42.

After all, no other computers in the story were described as that size except for Earth itself.

Another strange thing: Marvin in fact did know the Ultimate Question. He was brilliant enough to retrieve it from Arthur's brain but was completely ignored when he mentioned that fact.

Re:Direct link to the movie

[Pdj79]

Their disinterest in Marvin's discovery wasn't really strange. I thought it was brilliant. When it came down to it, no one actually cared about the Ultimate Question being known, it was just an interesting story told to the group while they were on the hunt for Magrathea and all its "riches". In the end, no one cared about the reason why Earth was commissioned or what the final result of all its work was, especially Arthur. All anyone cared about was themselves. They were nothing but a bunch of self-absorbed wankers. Only Marvin owned up to this fact. But hey, loved the books and love this trailer...April 29th is gonna be a great day.

The trailer raised my hopes

[Scrameustache]

I'll bite, where in the book does it say what colour Ford Prefect is?

I have, for reasons I can't fanthom, misplaced that book (I have the other 4, where the helll id no1 go?), so I can't quote.

But I seem to remember a mention of his skin turning black when he becomes a penguin while onboard the Heart Of Gold. Maybe it was a comment from Arthur in the TV show or the radio series...

Anyway: Did he sound like an American rapper in the original radio show? No.
What did he look like in the TV series? It's not as though there is no source material for his appearance that was created with the direct involvment of the author.

Hey, maybe Mos Def is gonna do a kick-ass job. One thing is clear: Casting a black guy for that role is a deviation from the established appearance of the character. No matter how unable you are to recall a specific mention of skin tone in the book.

P.S. I've been defending the choice of Michael Clark Duncan for King Pin in Daredevil on the basis that the definening visual characteristics for Kingpin are size and baldness. I can't think of one actor with a better morphology for that role than Duncan, therefore the change in skin colour is unimportant. But for Ford: It's not as though they're running out of gangly, wild eyed actors. Casting him is a CLEAR case of tokenism, make no mistake about it. When you release a movie in the states, you HAVE to have a black actor, otherwise, you're a racist! The irony of this escapes most people, but that is usually the case.

Mirrors

[nfsilkey]

The Amazon link is a.) overwhelmed, and b.) flash. Eww!

Enjoy the following mirrors:
-http://216.69.167.204/hitchhikersguide-1.mov [216.69.167.204]

-http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/02/16/hitchhik.s html [waxy.org]

-http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jkbrooks/pictures/hit chhikersguide.mov [vt.edu]

Re:Exaggerated exasperation

[biglig2]

The Director of the Incredibles was on the Radio last night and mentioned that the reason why animated films are often so good is because you can't muck about with the script after you've started because every frame is so expensive.

Re:Humma Kavula

[Tim Browse]

If it makes you feel better, I can confirm that it is a fact - Douglas told me and some colleagues about HK a few years ago. In fact, one of the purposes of HK was to solve a problem with Zaphod. Whether or not you believe me of course, is another matter.

It is fun watching some of the other people here posting their "Oh no! Dinsey hacks have ruined teh Hitchhiker!" opinions though :)

Re:A few thoughts

[wintermute740]

"The trailer does make it come across as very, MIBish."

I keep hearing this from people who have seen the trailer as if it's a bad thing. DNA was upset when MIB came out because he felt they borrowed his ideas very heavily, while his movie was still being rejected by the studios.

Re:Direct link to the movie

[David Gould]

The movie has to QUICKLY sell the idea to the audience that Marvin has a big brain. But if he says it, and his head is normal sized, does that even work?

But some plot elements are supposed to be subtle. A bigger-than-normal-sized head is still nowhere near "the size of a planet", which makes Marvin's claim sound like incredibly dramatic exaggeration.

But he keeps saying it, doesn't he? Does he maybe mean that he's actually connected via some sort of Sub-Etha link to a computer that really is, literally, "the size of a planet"? Then at some point maybe the reader notices: "Hey, isn't there another planet-sized computer in the story? Hmmm... Naahhhh..." Then there's the little scene where he claims to know The Ultimate Question (and of course, nobody pays any attention (okay, they get distracted and forget about it, but it amounts to the same thing)). Are these hints that Marvin's brain actually is the Earth? (Or conversely, that his body is its I/O terminal?)

I haven't been on the H2G2 discussion boards or anything, and I don't know if Fandom has an answer (official or otherwise), but I've always assumed Adams' intent was to drop those vague hints, but leave it ambiguous, so we'd just have to keep wondering.

Re:Direct link to the movie

[meringuoid]

Another strange thing: Marvin in fact did know the Ultimate Question. He was brilliant enough to retrieve it from Arthur's brain but was completely ignored when he mentioned that fact.

In fact, Marvin is more than capable of doing the jobs of both Deep Thought and the Earth by himself in far less than millions of years. While sitting bored in the Krikkit command ship (coordinating the planetary war effort being a trivial task) he solves all the political, social, economic and personal problems of the entire Universe - except for his own - several times over purely as an intellectual exercise. He then proceeds to compose some rather dolorous little lullabies.

If only he was prepared to talk... but of course if anyone had actually asked Marvin what the Question in Arthur's brain was, he wouldn't have given a straight answer, he'd have droned on about his diodes instead. In any case the version of the Question in Arthur's brain was corrupt, incorrect; it's Fenchurch's short-lived but dazzling insight into Life, the Universe and Everything that we really need to find.