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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.""

16 of 773 comments (clear)

  1. Humma Kavula by LittleGuernica · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Where does this Humma Kavula charachter come from?, played by Malkovich.. Was it created especially for the movie? I like the trailer tho, I think Martin Freeman is great as Arthur, the look on his face when he hears that Zaphod and Prefect are related is brilliant.

    1. Re:Humma Kavula by mikey_boy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      this is actually one of those movies where trying to be a purist is going to be nigh on impossible - what do you consider to be the original source material, the books, or the radio plays?! Given that DNA is also credited with the bulk of what has made it into the movie, so I don't think it can be dismissed in the same way.

      and the trailer looks pretty damn cool ...

  2. Leave it to Disney... by Moryath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    to screw the fans over by forcing a site like Aint-It-Cool to shut down their download of the trailer just so that Amazon can have non-downloadable, lower resolution, crappier version up "exclusively."

    Bite me, Eisner.

  3. Re:complete? by porcupine8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I sure hope not. Generally trying to force even one novel into a movie results in lots being cut (See also: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), trying to fit a whole series would be disastrous.

    --
    Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
  4. Re:Ford's Thumb? by TrippTDF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember seeing something on the making of X-Men, and one of the designers said yellow spandex looks great in a comic book, but it looks stupid on screen.

    If you stick to the original at every instance, your final product might follow the rules perfectly, but not work as well. That's why they did the thumb thing... it looks good (IMO) and drives the story quickly. Anyone watching that will know that the thumb is a communication tool for hitchhicking, even if they don't know the books. It's an OK addition in my book.

    I await fanboy flames.

  5. Re:Sheesh. by TimeZone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, opening on April 2 would have been more appropriate. (Think for a minute.)
    TZ

  6. Mos Def by eseiat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mos Def is an extremely gifted musician and skilled actor. He was recently nominated for an Emmy as a lead actor in a mini-series for his work on Something the Lord Made on HBO. He has also been in numerous other films which you can look at here.

  7. Re:Erm by ptlis · · Score: 4, Insightful
    That trailer alone has put me off...
    I have to say the same - I know that the original Radioplay, Books, TV-series & now the film are all distint variations on the same plot but this does not seem to gel with the whole... It is, I hate to say it, painfully Americanised and looks to be heading towards being a Men In Black clone :(.
    --
    There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
  8. A few thoughts by sprocketbox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Douglas Adams, on a number of occasions, said that he never intended the film to be a direct adaptation of the book. And, in the introduction of at least one of the books, he talked about how the books were different from the TV show which was different from the radio play. I wasn't all that impressed with the trailer. It looks like the story, which was always for me very cerebral, has been dumbed down into an action flick. I like action flicks as much as the next guy, but not every movie has to be one. The trailer does make it come across as very, MIBish. A fun movie, but nothing to write home about. Right now, I'm thinking that Sideways is going to turn out to be a lot funnier than Hitchhiker.

    1. Re:A few thoughts by Moofie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, a cerebral book with a sperm whale talking with a bowl of gladiolas (?) running into a planet.

      The books were FUNNY. If the movie is funny, it is good. If it's not, it's bad.

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
  9. Re:Do they mention 42 in the movie? by dreadpiratemark · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You might look at the time on Dent's alarm clock in the preview for an answer to your question...

    I suspect that won't be the only place you see 42.

  10. Generic Fanboy Reaction by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Blah blah blah - it's different from the book. I don't care if Douglas Adams himself penned the screenplay and intended all versions to be different. I'm going to bitch and moan about a scene taken out of context from the trailer without knowing how it fits into the story!

    This is a piece of entertainment from my childhood! I somehow believe that I have "rights" as a fan to influence creative decisions by the studio and that this version might erase all love I had for the original, because appearently I can't hold two things in my brain at once. Blah blah blah!

  11. MOD PARENT DOWN: UNTRUTH by Scrameustache · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Adams himself wrote the screenplay. [..]
    Everything in the movie has Adams' sanction,


    NO HE DIDN'T! NO IT DOESN'T!

    Every fucking /. article about this movie has one of you out-of-the-loop guys repeating this and getting modded up.

    He wrote A screenplay, not this screenplay. He wrote what HE considered the final draft. And then, he died.
    He had been fighting the studio for years to have a screenplay that he liked, and he managed to finally write one that had compromises from both parties, then, he died. And THEN the studio had "changes" made. We can't know what those are, but wanna bet that their compromises suddenly went away?

    I'm so fucking tired of seeing your delusion about this being his words modded up. I used to reply with links to the statements of the parties invilved detailing the chronology of the rewrites, but my rebuttals went unnoticed and your wishfull thinking stays modded up. Shit!

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  12. Re:Looks sucktastic- by ReadbackMonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  13. Re:Direct link to the movie by NanoGator · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "It is still a bit disappointing that Zaphod does not have his 2nd head on the movie."

    After watching the BBC HitchHiker's Guide movie, I can forgive them for that.

    "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..."

    Well.. I'm not sure what you're expecting, really. It's perfectly okay to have a guy in a 'robot suit'. Not sure if you're aware of this, but the actor who played Willow is inside that suit. I imagine once we see Marvin in relation to the characters, his dimensions will be a little more robote-esque. And, if that's not enough, eh well I just don't know what to tell ya. It's not like a real robot meant to interact with humans wouldn't look like somebody in a robot suit.

    As for his big head... Man this is a symptom of a bigger problem. Movies are a visual medium, books aren't. 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?

    I spotted something else with the trailer. Arther stuck his thumb out and a beam came from it. It didn't appear as though he was holding the special sub-etha device for that purpose. I was going to whine about it until I realized what that would look like on screen. It's one thing to say in a book "Thumb shaped device for Hitchhiking...", but then imagine the problem of communicating that exact same idea in a movie during a suspenseful event. I can see why they made that choice.

    I think we're going to run into a LOT of issues like this. My advice is: Don't let it bother you. I don't think these are the choices of blasphemers, but rather the choices of somebody trying to solve a really really tough problem. In other words, don't get your expectations high that you're going to see a scene-by-scene reenactment of the book.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  14. Dirk Gently by CyberDruid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I always thought that although HHGTTG was a damned good series of books, the two Dirk Gently books were slightly more intelligent and more fun for grown-ups.

    It seems to me that "Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency" and "The long dark tea time of the soul" would be more suitable for a movie. More dialogue, less need for a narrator, better developed characters. Not a MIB-type Hollywood action movie, but a nice film nonetheless.

    --

    Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati