More on H2G2, Including an Early Review

mwilli writes "Ain't It Cool has an early review of the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. Along with the review is a short video showing Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, and Trillian and some pictures. Also, 'I understand that in the movie, Zaphod's second head is inside his nostril. And this all ties in with the increased prominence of the Church Of Arkleseizure in the movie (a race with fifty noses, and the first to develop the aerosol deodorant before the wheel) and their leader John Malkovich, who also has a second head, and Zaphod's unwillingness to sneeze.'"

Comments

42

[Killjoy_NL]

42nd post

(Sorry, couldn't resist, gotta read that book though)

Don't complain about changes

[Chris_Jefferson]

Just a couple of points before anyone says "X isn't like the book".

a) The book and radio shows were quite different in a number of ways.
b) Douglas Adams actually wrote quite a bit of the script to this film. He said that it would be different to the books and the radio show.

Re:Don't complain about changes

[GozzoMan]

b) Douglas Adams actually wrote quite a bit of the script to this film. He said that it would be different to the books and the radio show.

Interesting references about it can be found in "The Salmon Of Doubt", a collection of various texts by DNA, both published and not, recovered from his computers after his departure (including a few chapters of his never-finished novel, another adventure of Dirk Gently). An absolutely suggested reading.

Re:Don't complain about changes

[eidolons]

You know what is a positive sign? While the reviewer hadn't read or listened to Hitchhiker's in the past, his writing reflects he caught Adam's sardonic, existentialist British humor:

For those of you who don't know this is your basic boy meets girl, boy loses girl to president of the galaxy, boy's planet is destroyed, boy finds girl and travels through the galaxy in search of the ultimate question. You know, the usual.

Looks like the spirit of the books is present in the movies, for the author to obviously have caught the "bug" - that's the most important thing.

Re:Don't complain about changes

[Finuvir]

I think you'll find that all of the material in that book has been published...

Heads in nostrils

[Jugalator]

That's funny, since the news page on Douglas Adams Continuum where the picture link goes to, has this to say:

THE NATURE OF ZAPHODS SECOND HEAD REVEALED?

"In an additon to his test screen review on Ainitcool.com news earlier this week, "Cracker Thompson" makes an effort to set the reckord straight within the confusion his report caused, and to which a spoof news site added with stating that Zaphods head was located in his nostril:

"1) I was worried about Mos Def because the only thing I had ever see him do was General Cornrow Wallace on the Chappelle Show. Not because I didn't think he would screw up the character seeing as I haven't read the books.

2) Mos Def DOES NOT do a British accent in the movie.

3) Zaphod does have his third arm, and his second head DOES NOT come out of his nose, rather it comes from underneath his already existing head."

If this person has really seen the test screening, then this is the shit. Further speculation would in that case be rendered obsolete."

That's yesterday news, posted 21 dec.

I would be disappointed.

[interactive_civilian]

I personally would be very disappointed if it WERE completely like the book. If there is anything that is consistant about the evolution of the Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy, it is its inconsistancy from one version to the next.

I would be very disappointed if the movie failed to achieve the level of inconsistancy that we have all come to expect.

;)

Several factual errors in article..

[jridley]

I think there is some confusion here.

The great green Arkelseizure was the creature who's nose the universe was sneezed out of. It is worshipped by the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI, which lives in fear of the time of the coming of the great white hankerchief.

It is in fact the Jatravartids that developed deodorant before the wheel, but it's because they had more than 50 ARMS each, not noses.

Re:Several factual errors in article..

[Wordsmith]

There aren't a whole lot of stories where a post like this could get modded informative, but it works here.

Karma whoring video mirror

[EvilCabbage]

do your worst...

Nose-deo?

[koi88]

a race with fifty noses, and the first to develop the aerosol deodorant before the wheel

Wouldn't that be fifty arms? Seems like a much more logical solution... (and the correct one, if I correctly remember the book...

There's a problem. Expect a call from CamTim

[interactive_civilian]

I have noticed a severe problem in the timing of your post. You say that it is the 42nd post while in fact it is among to first 10 posts to this story. There is only one explanation, and we are not amused.

It is quite clearly this kind of senseless mucking about in the space time continuim that has caused so many problems in the universe today (and yesterday and tomorrow). We at the Campaign for Real Time will not stand for this blatant disregard for historical preservation, by which we mean actually preserving history itself and not only its relics.

You sir may expect a call for our lawyers. I certainly hope you had the foresight during your forrays into the past to deposit a few cents in a high interest bank account because you will need that money.

Have a nice diurnal anomoly.

And don't panic.

Re:There's a problem. Expect a call from CamTim

[ThaReetLad]

Blatant karma whoring, but still...

Lallafa had lived in the forests of the Long Lands of Effa. He lived there, and he wrote his poems there. He wrote them on pages made of dried habra leaves, without the benefit of education or correcting fluid. He wrote about the light in the forest, and what he thought about that. He wrote about the darkness in the forest and what he thought about that. He wrote about the girl who had left him and precisely what he thought about that. ...

Then, shortly after the invention of time travel, some major correcting fluid manufacturers wondered whether his poems might have been better still if he had access to some high-quality correcting fluid, and whether he might be persuaded to say a few words to that effect.

They traveled the time waves; they found him, and did indeed persuade him. In fact they persuaded him to such effect that he became extremely rich at their hands, and the girl about whom he was otherwise destined to write with such precision never got around to leaving him, and in fact they moved out of the forest to a rather nice pad in town and he frequently commuted to the future to do talk shows, on which he sparkled wittily.

He never got around to writing the poems, of course, which was a problem but an easily solved one. The manufacturers of correcting fluid simply packed him off for a week somewhere with a copy of a later edition of his book and stacks of dried habra leaves to copy them out onto, making the odd deliberate mistake and correction on the way.

Many people now say that the poems are suddenly worthless. Others argue that they are exactly the same as they always were, so what's changed? The first people say that that isn't the point. They aren't quite certain what the point is, but they are quite sure that that isn't it. They set up the Campaign for Real Time to try to stop this sort of thing going on. Their case was considerably strengthened by the fact that a week after they had set themselves up, news broke that not only had the great Cathedral of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery, but that construction of the refinery had taken so long, and had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion production to start on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable."

Re:h2g2

[Timesprout]

Just a quick story. Several years ago I had the misfortune to work for a rather a large but crap european company. A fellow contractor reached his limit and decided to quit. Just before leaving the building, he mailed the _entire_ and I mean entire company mailing lists, staff, clients, suppliers, everyone with the message "So long and thanks for all the fish".

Shortly afterwards the mailservers melted under all the "Fish? what fish?" responses. Nice.

Re:Marvin's Head

[CdXiminez]

But he does look depressed! See the sad little triangles he has on the lower half of his droopy head!

Proof that H2G2 has taken way too long to create..

[macz]

1. Douglas Adams died
2. Zooey DesChanel's web domain name expired due to non payment. Zooey plays Trillian.
3. I was initially excited, 2 YEARS AGO. Now I don't give a F**K.

That last one at least isn't entirely true, I really hope that this movie is as great as the book(s). Even the BBC Radio and television series were all well done, and entertaining, and I remember fondly comparing (heatedly) the differences in all of them with my friends like bible scholars compare the different gospels

But with DA gone, I wonder if the spark went with him. I hope not.

I saw a trailer for this at the beginning of "National Treasure" this last weekend. It showed the earth in space, while Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" played in the background. Then the earth blows up... and they say the tagline "The greatest adventure in the unverse begins when the world ends." Enter H2G2 logo, cut, print.

Re:Radio Series Downloads?

[Tony Hoyle]

You can buy them from the BBC shop.

The newest one is pretty lame, as it DNA didn't write it - stick to the original ones (primary/secondary phases).

Re:wtf is up with the two heads again?

[harrkev]

Somehow, I doubt that there are any money problems.

Computer animation has gotten to the point where even cheesy "B" movies can afford some decent (although not entirely realistic) animation. And I saw the "Disney" logo on the preview -- they have a few bucks to burn. This is a sci-fi movie where special effects are par for the course. If they can have plummeting whales, strange planets, and spaceships, then there is no reason that they can't have a 2nd head.

I fully expect a 2nd head to be in the final release of the movie, and I shall hold my breath until I turn blue if it is not there.

Re:Black Man (Mos Def) the hip hop thug RUINS it !

[joeslice]

Let's see.... Aliens from other galaxies, folks with random numbers of body parts growing from who knows where. Rich characters that have been killed innumerable times by the same other character. A depressed robot. A cow suggesting what portion of him is the best to eat....

All this, and I would have to agree with you; Douglas Adams would never have had the imagination to include anyone but whites....

It isn't the script changes that I object to...

[AthenianGadfly]

I know that Douglas Adams changed elements of the plot himself - inconsistency is fine (welcome, in fact). It's just that I can't quite see a chronically depressed robot as cute and adorable. We're talking about a robot who who caused a computer to commit suicide by telling it his view on life, and all the while I can't help comparing the costume design to a mechanized teletubby. It just doesn't seem to fit somehow.

The only reservations I have (from what I know so far) are issues of production design rather than plot. As far as I know (and I may well be wrong) Douglas Adams wasn't involved in costume or set design for the production.

Re:Proof that H2G2 has taken way too long to creat

[CreatureComfort]

Any story that begins with the destruction of the Earth, almost has to be good.

Some petimeter tidbits

[dukedunstable]

Hey guys. Thought I'd pop by and offer some info. Douglas wrote the entire script. It was modified by Karey Kirkpatrick, director Garth Jennings and exec producer Robbie Stamp, who was friend and collegue of Douglas. Zaphod does not have a second head. It's a second face. It nests under his chin, and he brings it out by tilting his head back. The red flying bubble is the Heart of Gold rescue pod. The story will be losely, losely, based on the first novel. Every version of Hichhikers has been different, and the movie is no different. Ok, thanks. Dukey http://www.douglasadams.se

Re:Marvin's Head

[dledeaux]

I always imagined that the inside of his head was a dimensional pocket similar to the Tardis in Dr Who.