Slashdot Mirror
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."
Nice movie, thanks for the fish!
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...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Good to know some studio exec didn't decide that the answer should be 43.
For those interested the BBC radio version is available on various p2p systems. Pretty good I think.
Here's a linky to the toys and office products from the movie. Marvin looks too cute and I want one of those mugs!
Speak truth to power.
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
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.
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).
"Excellence in Mediocrity"
"not a complete bastardization of Adams' work" -- Doctor Monkey ... wonder if they'll use that one in the TV commercials.
In other news, the BBC series is available on Netflix.
Here's one: "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (adapted from "Who Censored Roger Rabbit")
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It's 42
Soundproofing Warning do no
There's also a fairly good Q&A with the film-makers at Coming Soon!. 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.
AICN is like the epitome of craptacular, JeffK-style web "design".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How long until the cries of "Garth Jennings raped my childhood" begin?
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.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
Hitchhickers guide was originally a radio program. The books are derived from the radio scripts.
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.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
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.
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...
since when did Marvin have a gun????
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I wonder how this will turn out: movie worse than book like jurassic park or movie better than book like forrest gump?
Ran across this the other day.
t =2 288
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?
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
How do you convey vogon ships hanging in the air much like a brick doesn't on the big screen?
Thank you.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
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.
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.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
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.
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.
[insert witty quote here]
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.
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).
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.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.