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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.""
Direct link to SWF and a download?
AmazonFilms.swf
broken link to mov file
According to the IMDB entry for the movie, this character was added specifically for the movie by Adams, who has credits as the screenwriter. So, any changes to the story line are most likely of his own doing.
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No, the book (or radio series, or tv, or any combination of the above) says they're distant cousins, and IIRC share several of the same mothers...
Phil
It's a little hard to believe, but the movie is actually one of Douglous Adam's last works.
One thing the movie wont be is an adaption of the books and radio play all over again, it's something fresh new and different in the Hitchhiker universe. I'm looking forward to it very much.
If you're curious about what the plans for the movie were, and the process heading up to it you might want to check out "A Salmon of Doubt" which compiles Adam's final works, along with several letters and coorespondencies leading up to this movie amoung other things
I'm going to be forever wondering what the story behind half a cat and the rhino will be though...
Also worth remembering that there are already different versions of the tale - the differences between the radio play scripts and the novel are fairly significant.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Actually, Adams wrote an earlier draft of the screenplay a couple of years before his death. The final shooting script was completed by another screenwriter, Karey Kirkpatrick (best known for his work on Chicken Run). Kirkpatrick has said on the official movie site that he mostly embroidered on Adams' draft, adding a bit here and subtracting a bit there while leaving the bulk of the script intact. Apparently, he even added a few things directly from the books that Adams had left out of the script. So really the screenplay is more of a collaboration between Adams (the text) and Kirkpatrick (the tweaking of said text). I'm curious to see how it turns out.
-- StrangeInterlude
Go back and watch the trailer again. His second head appears briefly in like the last 10 seconds of the trailer, popping up from underneath his regular head.
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For the zillionth time, no:
You can't take the sky from me...
He wrote A screenplay, not this screenplay. He wrote what HE considered the final draft. And then, he died.
You should read the rather funny self-interview conducted by the guy who wrote the final screenplay. It's apparent from that interview--without being explicitly stated--that Adams's final draft was never going to be filmed without further modification. That's just the way the movie business works. Even the "final" approved script gets changed during filming because of (A) inspiration of the director to expand a scene, add a new scene, etc., or (B) the discovery that a scene that reads brilliantly on the page just doesn't work when filmed.
Douglas Adams wrote a lot of great stuff, but he couldn't figure out how to structure it to make it work as brilliantly in movie form as it had in book and radio play form. The eventual screenplay consisted largely of reorganizing Adams's own material into a shootable script. Where changes deviating from Adams's own writings had to be made, they deferred to his intentions as much as possible, by referring to his notes, unfinished musings, half-written scenes, etc.
Is there some stuff in the script that wasn't written by Douglas Adams himself? Definitely. Did they likely cut out stuff Adams would have kept? Probably. Did they put back in stuff that Adams had cut? Definitely.
Unfortunately, due to his untimely death, we'll never know what Douglas Adams himself would have thought of this movie. If you'd asked me five years ago if a movie of HHGG could ever be anything other than horrible, I'd have answered with an unequivocal NO. But Peter Jackson's version of The Lord of the Rings has made me change my mind. I think it can be good. Will it? I don't know, but I'll withhold my judgement until I actually see it.
It's not Ford's thumb.
Because of the crappy quality of the trailer, you can hardly see the electronic thumb he's wearing. Looks like a ring with an antenna.
To see it clearly, look here: http://www.h2g2movie.com/pages/february04.html and scroll down to the picture of the survival kit (with Towel, Babel Fish and Thumb).
I recently purchased the DVD version of the BBC's television production of HHGTTG. I would say to anyone who loved the books and intends to see this new film, be prepared for changes. Adams liked to tweak things, and according to what I saw on the DVD, the books have been revised and changed over time as Adams fiddled with bits here and there to refine them.
The background information about the making of the series, and about Douglas Adams is fascinating. It reveals some of Adams' manic-depressive personality. It talks about how Adams was not one to write a book and then want to translate that 100% to another format; he welcomed change and refinement with the TV series, and based on what I saw in the interviews, I think he enjoyed the opportunity to revise and rewrite HHGTTG yet again on the big screen.
Adams' only problem, according to the interviews and behind the scenes information, was an awful writer's block at the start of any project. The infamous line about loving deadlines, especially the sound they make as they go whooshing by, was very true for Adams personally.
Adams was a performer; he didn't really want to be a writer. He started out performing, acting, doing live comedy. At least with writing, his particular quirky sense of humor reached many thousands of people who revere him for what he accomplished, personal foibles aside.
If you saw the BBC series, Adams was featured in two different spots. One, he was in a suit counting money while walking out of the bank. The other, he was throwing his money away and walking into the water naked.
Yes, but that's not the actual question, remember? Authur and Ford got shipped to earth 2 billion years in the past along with all those B-Class citizens from another planet, who subsequently, caused the actual earth-men to die out, which would have lost the question forever. When Aurthur and Ford conduct an experiment, which basically involved Arthur playing blindfolded scrabble, the question that came out was indeed "what's six times nine", but then again, Arthur wasn't technically descended from creatures created for the actual experiment, so it doesn't really count.
Later, in Life, the Universe, and Everything, the come across Prak, who had too much truth serum and goes on to tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth, most of which has a lot to do with frogs. Later, when he stops laughing at Arthur enough to be able to answer a question, he notes that the answer and the question are mutually exclusive, in that no one person can know both the question and answer at the same time, and doing so would cause the universe to vanish and be replaced by something even stranger, if indeed it hadn't already happened.
Just so happens, I read that part last night. Anyway, 'what's six times nine' is not the actual question.