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Telegraph Reviews Hitchhiker Movie, Approves
LPetrazickis writes "The Telegraph has reviewed the movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The review notes that the film is every bit as much a loving tribute to Douglas Adams as it is a joyous comedy. American actors acquit themselves well, and the sense of intelligent wonder transfers well to the technicolour screen. The many incarnations of The Guide are summarized at the end."
(And no, I'm not going to drop $9 to find out - I'll let everyone else do that)
LOL.
ME TOO!
I forecast 42 million dollars in the first day. :P
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
I don't have a choice, I must see it to either enjoy it or to hack it to pieces in person with my friends. Not watching it is not an option, no matter how bad it is.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
If a book trilogy can consistent of 5 books, why can't a movie trilogy consist of 1 movie?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Wonder how much money was floated to make a suck up article to Hollywood.
the movie contains no references to the pan galactic gargleblaster, and ignores the towel.
the mouse bit at the end is teh suck.
I'll go back and watch the 6 bbc episodes instead.
So long, and I'll laugh at all the fish who go see it in the theater. (Dumb fish)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
tripe of this sort will warp your mind. It will turn you into the automatons your capitalist masters demand. It is the means whereby your individuality is sucked out through your nose and bottled up by capitalists, who then turn it into bourgeois French perfume. It is an opium. Except you don't smoke it. Or inject it. Or stick it up your nose.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy might seem like a million wonders, like stars speckling the night sky. It is not. It is a dangerous weapon to sap you of your humanity and dignity. When walking into the theater your first thought will be: Do I want popcorn or JuJuBes with my Coke? And upon walking out you will feel a strange desire to kiss a woman. Resist this temptation!!! Join the mass of thinking men who will avoid this capitalist propaganda and SAAAAAAVE YOURSELVES!!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't smoke dope and post at /. at the same time.
10th April 2005
Gargleblaster makes final cut
I have now spoken with Kevin Jon Davies and he confirms that the Guide entry on the Pan Galactic Gargleblaster is in the finished version which he saw this morning. Stephen Fry's narration plays over the scene of Zaphod mixing drinks for himself and Ford (using his third hand) which was briefly seen in the trailer. This narration was not in the version that I saw.
-Planet Magrathea ( MJ Simpson)
Thanks for the link. The whale falling monologue seems to have been reproduced faithfully (slightly cut and rushed, but it was there), which gives me some renewed faith in the film.
I, for one, look forward to the movie. I have confidence that it will incredibly funny, while still staying true to the spirit of the books. I ask all those who demand a carbon copy to please bellyache out of my earshot.
Sounds rather bought-and-paid-for to me. Puff piece. Astroturf, even.
And what's with nonsense like:
Zooey Deschanel as Trillian, a minor character in Adams's book
or
and a towel, a manic-depressive android and a whale falling from the sky all make important appearances.
I'm sorry, Trillian is a "minor character"? Marvin is lumped in with the whale as a character who makes "important appearances"? Important appearances? The reviewer doesn't even give his name? If the movie slashes his role that much, there is serious trouble.
My Joo Janta peril-sensitive sunglasses are strangely opaque. I suspect this movie will suck, and will only do slightly better than if every theater showing it was blanketed in an SEP field.
Drugs are yet another way for the capitalist pigs to suck you dry of your precious fluids; to make bourgeois French perfume. King Loius XVI said it best, "It's good to be the King!" Therefore, be your own king. Resist the capitalists, join our worker paradise, and just say NO!!!
Has it gotten to the point where we don't even watch a movie to figure out if we like it? How often are critics wrong? Watch the movie for yourself and make up your own mind.
So put that in your pipe and grep it
Great, now there's a smoking hole where Maxim's web server used to be. Anybody manage to snag a copy of the video? :)
Marshall McLuhan's message: ""The Medium is the Message" is now about 4 decades old. McLuhan is thought by many to be one of the fathers of the age of technology yet posters on /. seem unable to distinguish between two mediums/metaphors as visibly distinguishable as film and book. The experiences are distinctly different enjoy each according to its merits. If you can't distinguish between two diverse experinces perhaps you're too egocentic and tribal, read primitive.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
REUTERS:
In financial news today expert industry anylists report that the once popular, geeky, tech news site slashdot.com's ad revenue is in sharp decline.
Economists assert that Slashdots's new diet of endless lame news items about Google, municipal WIFI and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are putting off hungry consumers who are going elsewhere.
"I just can't take it anymore" said one long time Slashdot afficionado. "It's just Google, HitchHiker's, and WIFI"
Experts predict that of the remaining 12.5 visitors slashdot gets daily, 98.3% use the adblock feature of the controversial "Firefox" browser.
"It's a bleak situation"
Moviefone? Don't tell me. Every article is written by Kramer, right?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
A positive review, now we can all go see the movie...
Please, as if we weren't going to see it anyway.
I've yet to find a movie critic with whom I agree with often enough to actually avoid a movie based on their review.
See the damn movie, make up your own mind 'eh.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
If they can survive being linked when they had Morgan Webb photos, they can survive anything.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
(And if you have any idea what a flying whale has to do with anything, let us know. A guess even...)
These guys are pretty retarded though, since they could easily find out what the sperm whale has to do with anything if they read the book- or, you know, listened to the narration of the clip.
Username taken, please choose another one.
If no one noticed yet the UK newspapers are doing loads of promos for this (One of the Sunday papers is offering the second book free). No one here is going to insult it, infact I think they'll all plug it majorly and we'll see some HHGG happy meals pretty soon.
I like muppets.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy is not a book that was adored and loved by all. i know many people that hate it and dont understand why it is so popular. so it is to be expected that some people would like the movie more than others. I personaly am a big fan of hitchhikers and hope that there is enough positive support for them to continue the series with more movies
godlike
The point is to not pay for bad movies. If you go to a movie such as this, and it turns out to be bad, well now you know it stinks but they have your $9 now so what do they care?
This is why so many bad movies get churned out over and over again. If you continue to front the cash for them then it's basically the same as saying "shove anything in my face hollywood, because I never learn and I'll continue to pay for whatever trash you deem worthy entertainment" (in my opinion).
So most people rely on movie reviews to make sure their dollars go to supporting entertainment they want to support.
This is a typical studio puff piece. I hope the movie is good, but this article is not close to raising my expectations.
42.
Let's face it - whoever made this movie, whoever produced it, whoever starred in it - it was always, *always* going to be either loved or hated. Such is the sentiment and legacy towards DNA.
As is made clear in just about every item one reads about Douglas (including TFA), he saw each incarnation of H2G2 as a different entity in its own right and felt no compunction to translate perfectly between mediums.
The sad fact is that Douglas is dead. So we can either have no movie ever, or hand it over to someone else. The latter was always the best idea, IMO. Let's stop whining and celebrate the fact that the geek's favourite book has finally made it to film. Films are practically never as good as the books they follow (one or two exceptions like 2001 and, for me, Fear & Loathing (thanks to Johnny Depp, but I digress) spring to mind). H2G2 is the best example of this as it fires the imagination like nothing else.
I, for one, am all too happy to see both negative and positive reviews.
It's indifference I don't like.
I write books in the comic SF genre, so you'd better believe I want to see a good film made out of one. My expectations weren't high, especially as I have such fond memories of the TV series. Sounds like they exceeded them.
Anyway, Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin will be worth the admission price alone.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Just reading about how this movie was made would make me think that a "making of..." documentary about this movie would be almost as entertaining as the movie itself.
In short, DNA could very likely be a character in his own book. Or conversely, his own life was so bizzare that in many ways the books (not just the Hitchhiker trilogy) mirror his own life. The more I read about DNA's life experiences, the more facinating I find him to be.
I found this bit to be almost priceless from the Telegraph story: (to pharaphrase) The producers of this movie are "two men working from a barge named Polly, moored on the Regent's Canal in an unfashionable part of Islington, north London."
I don't think DNA could have done better for a new book opening scene.
[blockquote]the film is every bit as much a loving tribute to Douglas Adams as it is a joyous comedy.[/blockquote]
so, it's as funny as a funeral and bears no resemblance to the book then?
Nevermind.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Was Fear and Loathing good? I still haven't seen it, but my 69-year-old father, of all people, told me it was awesome.. he said Johnny Depp is single-handedly saving cinema..
He is a bright light, but every time I see him, I think "21 Jump Street"... (and, in another OT note, I didn't know Depp was in "Platoon".. thanks IMDB)
I'll go for the special effects. That way if it it's bad, and my friends make fun of me, I can say I went to see it for the special effects. If the special effects are bad, I'll tell my friends that I went to see it because of them and that it's their fault. -- ro
Robert Oschler - RobotsRule.com
I'm not going to see the movie. They replaced Tom Bombadil with some stupid robot, and I hear Trillian is going to be fighting at Helm's Deep. Isn't anything sacred anymore?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
So do you trust everything you see in print? I'm not dissing the Telegraph per se, just print media in general. Nothing like trusting the BBC in toto.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
"Ghost in the Shell and Sincity weren't bad adaptations, and both held quite true to the spirit of the books."
Ah, so what you're saying is the books suck too?
"I've had every other favorite book of mine trashed - Lord of the Rings, Dune, I, Robot and a quintillion others."
.hack series on the PS2.
I, Robot does have a tendency to break up one's sentences. just like that
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Unless you're a teenager, there's not too much you can do these days that's not at home and doesn't cost a lot more then that.
Sure, $9 isn't exactly cheap but it's not like you have to save up for it or anything, and chances are you've all spent a lot more then $9 on dumb shit.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Uh, I dunno ... is that one of those glottal stop words? Here in this country we use vowels.
"Lo-tor!"
"Lot-rrr"
"Lort!"
I think I hurt my glottis *and* my epiglottis. It's definitely bed time.
1 head!!!11
To me, it just seemed more like Jackson than Tolkien. A lot has been changed, some quite important things, and some things for no apparent reason. For example, in the movie, when Gandalf enters the Shire with fireworks he lets some off for the children. In the book he just doesn't do that.
I'm not a big fan of the books, but the movies just didn't quite seem to fit to me.
Were they paid for the review?
I recall watching in 60 minutes this old man saying how certain reviewers were invited to buffettes and such so they would give favorable reviews of movies that frankly, sucked.
I'd like to know if this was the case, too.
Where do you meet these friends with whom you can discuss Hitchhiker's Guide without being laughed at? I need to find me some of those to go to the movie with.
I saw the Sign, and it opened up my eyes
Anyone know if the game is still available somewhere? I'd love to play it again...
Well it depends of course on what you want the movie to be. LoTR is generally considered to be a good/okay adapation of the books yet some hardcore fans complain that important elements were left out or changed. Most book to movie adaptations do not go well. I robot and the sound of thunder have people who love the original book (or short story) version crying foul about the movie adapatation.
What I am getting from the Telegraph review is that this reviewer is a lot less critical then the previous one. The Telegraph review seems to be glad there is a towel in the movie, never mind that it is never explained, any real fan surely doesn't need it to be explained once again, while the other reviewer wants the towel to be in the movie exactly as it was in the book/radioplay.
You can look at the LoTR movies and be glad they didn't disney it by making the characters do a little dance number OR you can complain about elves at helmsdeep.
It seems clear that this movie is not a carbon copy of the movie. They changed the story, or for that matter ADDED a storyline, removed classic bits of dialogue and added new bits. Yet they kept enough for you to regonize the original.
Is it any good? Depends, it reminds me of the doom movie but slightly less of a mess. I just wish that someday we will get a movie adapatation where the movie people do not consider themselves better then the original author.
For that is the fundamental problem here, wether it is LoTR, Doom or Hitchhiker Guide, all these movie makers seem to believe that they could improve on the original. Real fans of the original will be outraged by that.
I haven't seen the guide yet but it looks from all the reviews so far that they did a real hollywood on it. Not that hollywood can't do comedy but the guide never was hollywood comedy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
When I came out of the first Lord Of The Rings screening, I actually heard a pack of hardcore nerdlingers arguing over the way some of the characters sat down to eat and how it wasn't portrayed in the film.
If you're that tied up that you cannot live with a story being adapted as best possible to suit the film media, please don't ever leave your house again. The rest of us cinema-goers don't want you there.
The story may not follow the book to the letter, but can't you see a little beyond that and maybe judge it on its own merits? For fucks sake...
These guys are pretty retarded though, since they could easily find out what the sperm whale has to do with anything if they read the book-
That's what they want you to think- they've got an image to uphold.
Maxim's popularity (and thus profit) is based on projecting an aura of exaggerated masculinity. Amoung other effects, that means they must eschew any nerd-like tendencies, such as remembering the plot or backstory to a sci-fi feature.
Understand HGttG = nerd = no girls = no sales.
Such writers can admit to watching something like Matrix or Star Wars only for spectacular stunts and explosions, not for admiring the fictional world or its techno-social implications.
And let's not forget the gratuitous dwarf-tossing jokes in the first two films. Then again, the director of "Dead Alive" and "Meet The Feebles" not adding a little sophomoric humor to LOTR? Did you expect him to hold back? I didn't and wasn't offended.
The beauty of the LOTR movies was that even though they were not faithful to the letter of the book, they were faithful to the spirit of the book. I was not disappointed.
Of course, I would have rather seen Bjork as Arwen. She *looks* like an elf. She wouldn't have even had to play with a different accent...her Icelandic/British accent is pretty damn close to the way they did Elvish anyway.
Also I would have rather heard what Jimmy Page would have done on the soundtrack instead of Howard Shore. I'm a child of the '70s. Reading LOTR with Led Zeppelin on the stereo has inescapably twisted my mind. He's done orchestral scores before...anyone remember the "Death Wish" movies? Yeah, I know, bad example.
Of course, H2G2 has similar synaptic connections in my twisted mind. I still have an animated movie starring the voices of Eric Idle (Ford), Michael Palin (Arthur) and Bill Murray (Zaphod) in my mind, probably never to be erased by the actual movie. The deconstruction of the movie by DNA's biographer kinda had me worried, but I think I might just give this a chance.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
enjoy
I met a fella at a party in England once in the seventies. We peed in a field and argued over whether "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Milky Way" was a better title. He thought not... Said I was a telepathic bastard in fact, but that's water out back of the comet now. Point: All I want is a PDA with all the video and movies and radio cross-ref'd with the Texts, with the words "Don't Panic" on its cover. Counterpoint: After all this time, is that too much to ask of Western Civilization? Tesserapoint: Or, at least, of an anonymous yet literate electronics factory in Taiwan?
Oh sure, we all remember that scene where Marvin starts babbling incoherently about how his destiny lies in ruling the world.
I think you're right. They tried to reword an official studio line, hence picking "synonyms" that have nothing to do with the characters.
Fairy cake is for extrapolating the entirety of the universe, and then for eating, if you survive the Total Perspective Vortex and are still feeling a little peckish.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Since from the Article it appears it was made
"Two blokes from down the road."
Welcome to England. Please hand your dictionary in a t customs before leaving the terminal.
And thats why Firecrackers and kittens don't mix.
Heheh! Pay the price! Badmouth Lord of the Rings and be modded to -1!
They're called "geeks"
You can find them at your local tech company. They are kept in the backroom so no one sees them.
I bet you could find a few on opening day, too!
Who do I have to blackmail to get some representation around here!?!?!?!?
The review says Trillian will be a romantic interest of Arthur Dent. If anything, this convinces me they did something seriously wrong with the movie. A romantic interest is for heroes, or at least for guys with something going for them. Arthur Dent is a notorious failure, a complete nobody in the universe, and he is driven, at least in the first three books, mainly by a quest to find a decent cup of tea. Is he going to "save the girl" now? Shocking.
Since your post makes no grammatical sense, I assume you're trying to be ironic.
It turns out the question of life, the universe, and everything is this:
"If life, the universe, and everything were really just a movie, how many millions of dollars would it make the first weekend?"
Answer: 42
Sadly, Deep Thought and Deep Thought's successor were both unable to be reached for comment.
It got a 34% rating on rot tomatoes. That's horrible. Butterfly effect is one of my most enjoyed movies of last year. Even Ashton is fine in the movie, and I wasn't sure if had a performance like this in him.
I read that because of all the bad reviews he cancelled all of his appearances on letterman etc, and it's probably the reason he went right back to stupid comedies.
I practically had to twist a good friends arm to rent this as he saw the rating rotten tomatoes gave this.
But hey, it taught me a lesson, any time I'm interested in seeing a movie but not too sure if it would be good I think of this movie.
What I trust more is imdb user rating which btw gave But. Effect 7.6/10 from 23,000 votes.
Ya, you could argue that imdb votes are more likely people who liked the film, but I'll take that over a bunch of pretentious crtics any day.
I don't know what kind of proxy you're sitting behind, but I assure you that maximonline.com stopped working for me shortly after this story went live. Still doesn't work, as a matter of fact. But maybe that's Comcast fucking up again.
OH NO THEY ARE RAPING DOUGLAS ADAMS' CORPSE111111 **** OK, if you say that but also say how good the BBC TV series was...well...jeeze, people. Just...jeeze.
***
I've noticed at least a few changes between the UK and US prints of the books.
Examples include:
UK : US
Mindbuggering : Mindboggling - in description of the Vogon Fleet
Fuck : Belgium - the most gratuitous use of the word **** in a serious screenplay
Does anyone know of a full list of these changes? I'd be interested to know just how many alterations were made.
--------
All Your Fish Are Belong To Us
We'll see if the movie does a better job in the limited time budget it has to work with.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hey, seriously, bringing a towel seems like a good idea. Except it only leads to 2 possibilities:
:(
1) I'm the only one who does it and look like a total dork
2) Lots of people do it and I look like an unoriginal hack
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Some geeks are friends with other geeks!
(Though it always surprises that geeks have friends at all, given that most of us are meant to have Asperger's Syndrome. Gotta love stereotypes.)
The lord of the rings films were primarily made by fans. unfortunatly expecting that kind of zeal from the makers of hitchkhikers is never going oto happen.
A pretty poor comparison, not to mention that it was the small aspects of the book that made it so funny in context.
Damn got by troll bait, oh well...
Primary Phase
By the way, there is a complete set available from amazon.com (the US version) but based on the reviews, the audio quality is not so great. I got the CDs from Amazon UK a few years ago (I am in the US) and they are great.
This bit worries me more than anything else.
Why on earth would anybody need to guess at ANYTHING related to this? I mean, the books have been around for years. If they wanted to know, all they had to do was read them.
I'm not getting my hopes up for this to be true to the books.
Nope, not going to do it.
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
I fully expect a report from Douglas Adams's butler's cousin's gardener. We mst know who approves and who doesn't approve of this movie.
You'd rush too if you were falling rapidly towards the ground :)
about the difference between fantasy and conventional literature. It has to do about how they model psychology.
The conventional literary complaint about fantasy is that it doesn't hany any model of psychology at all -- that characters are flat and have no internal life. Therefore fantasy is mere entertainment, and can't have any kind of relevance other than escapism.
The key to understanding how this works, in my opinion, is that there is truly only one character in fantasy -- each character represent a different part of the reader, and as such have no internal structure. Psychological struggles are uncovered in fantasy and myth, by making the forces behind those struggles manifest, then playing out the results of each decision before our eyes, as it were. In the fairy tale, the impulse of pride is represented by the elder brothers who pass strange little man on the road and treat him with contempt, and the impulse of compassion is represented by the virtuous younger brother who stops and aid the little man, and in turn is aided. No more psychological machinery is required, this is perfect in itself. These are impulses which arise in ourselves and do battle on a daily basis; we don't know where they come from.
Very few fantasy works have the scope to demonstrate this fully, but LotR does. Every signficant character has his opposite: Gandalf/Sarauman, Theoden/Denethor, and Frodo/Gollum. Boromir is paird both with Faramier and Aragorn, who are in many ways the same character. So I would disagree that characterization is a weakness for Tolkien. He just uses what for literary critics are unfamiliar devices.
In any case, the reason the movie Faramir character was so unsuccessful is that he clearly doesn't belong here. The script writers had a major task in converting a mythological book into the dramatic medium. This involved a great deal of difficult compromise, and by in large they were sucessful by giving the archetypal characters dramatic shadings, if you will. They succeeded for the most part in keeping their drama instincts in check. Faramir is the one instance where they felt free to completely recast a Tolkien character to fit more of a theatrical/conventional literary mold. Probably the only one they dared to, as he is relatively minor. It isn't that one is ill-inclined to this character, he's just a melodramatic fish out of water..
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes -- and no.
It's true that the different versions showed different events; they had different chronologies and plotlines; they introduced new characters and situations; they used different devices and features of each medium.
But they were largely consistent. Where characters appeared in different versions, they behaved in the same sorts of ways, had the same manner of speaking and the same outlook on life. Where situations were copied, they generally went the same way, with very similar dialogue, setting, and outcome.
And even more important than this is consistency of tone. Each version has the same slightly twisted, cynical, alienated [sic] outlook on life. Each displays a certain intelligence, a fascination with wordplay and a tendency to go off at tangents. Each has characters being caught up in bizarre events beyond their control, with The Guide as a smug but knowledgeable companion. Each has an undefineable but quintessential English sensibility.
It was these things that bound all the different versions together. They may not all have mentioned towels, Disaster Area or junk mail, but they were undeniably different aspects of the same entity, whether you listened to them, watched them, read them, dried yourself off with them, or typed at them in increasing frustration.
So while the movie will undoubtedly be different from all the other version, it should also be the same on some fundamental level. I've avoided seeing the trailer and the more revealing reviews, but the feeling I get from all that I've heard is that, while the movie may feature the same names and events as the others, and while DNA may have been involved in some way as a writer, it doesn't feel like Hitch-Hiker's. And that, more than any inclusion or exclusion of favourite events or lines, is what will depress me most.
I'd be very happy to be proved wrong. But I'm not optimistic.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Dude...the decisions Ashton's character made each time he went back in time were so frigging idiotic that the only way you can explain them is that it was one of his stupid comedies. Everything he did was designed to get a cheap laugh later.
The movie actually had the potential for being good if the writers had been smart enough to have the main character make choices that made freaking sense when he went back in time, only to realize that it caused what initially appeared to be completely unrelated consequences later on which could be traced back to his decision later in a not-so-obvious way.
Especially when you have to first figure out toward what you are rapidly falling.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
I heard that you are going to have an online WAP version of the game for mobile phones before the game goes live. I think that it is going to be great fun to play it again.
10 first turns are free, direct your mobile phones to: http://h2g2.t-mp2.com/Game
You and every other slashdot poster that keeps giving this excuse for when movies based on books look nothing like the book need to realize one thing: if you're going to make a different story, don't claim it's a movie version of the book.
Understandably, most of the time the movie can't be exactly like the book. More attention need to be paid to the visuals, the visuals represent the director's view of the images in the book so they might not match yours, there are time limitations, etc. So you get lord of the rings. There are a few changes, a few characters have been left out, but it does follow the books closely enough.
Now, people may complain about the absence of Tom Bombadil all they want, but I haven't met a lotr novel fan that doesn't like the movies. So what we're afraid of isn't that the movie won't be exactly like the book. We're afraid of bastardizations like "The Count of Monte Cristo". The very moral of the story in the book was replaced by a hollywood happy ending...what happened there?
This deviation from expectations has nothing to do with the medium. It has to do with the idea we formed of the universe, and it can't, I repeat...can't be violated. A few facts and experiences may be changed, but you can't change them if they will change the very message they're intended to convey. You don't have to change mediums to see that happen, all you need to do is look at Star Wars. When Lucas made Greedo shoot first, Han Solo went from the badass scoundral we all pictured him as to an incredibly lucky individual who managed not to get shot from across a frigging small table.
Changes are inevitable. Changes in the very nature of the story are inexcusable, and I don't care that DNA himself believed that there should be a different story for every medium. I'm the one that's going to see the movie, and if it doesn't match my expectations for that story, I won't enjoy th movie. In the end, all that matters to *me* is that *I* enjoy the movie regardless of whatever you, Lucas, Adams, or McLuhan tells me I'm supposed to like.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Slashdot's not dying until Netcraft reports Slashdot is dying.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
> Such writers can admit to watching something like Matrix or Star Wars only for
> spectacular stunts and explosions, not for admiring the fictional world or its
> techno-social implications.
So it's not just me who sits up half the night wondering just what the government would do were it to discover that the world is actually a computer program run by killer robots from the future? Girls just don't understand this sort of problem.
The Hitchhikker's Guide has always been a multi-format story, all incarnations of which differ from each other in very unique ways. First came the radio show, then the print trilogy, then the BBC TV Series, then the fourth book, then the Infocom game, and finally the last book. I enjoy all of the formats, and I'd be bored with the series by now if all of these were direct adaptations. I think judging this movie (particularly before you have seen it) is completely against the spirit of the series. The main reason I'll go see it is for the casting. I love Martin Freeman, and I love Mos Def. I've been re-reading the books, and I can already picture these two in the roles. And to those who expect the film to be bad: see it, but don't forget your towel.
oh yeah.....I forgot about that one... (I always forget to grab the towel out of the house and the bit of lint from my pocket, and that thing with the string that my aunt gave me, but I don't know what it was. "What do you get when you multiplyy 6 by 9?" "42" "I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
From the review, it is evident that the director never read HHGG before the script landed his head. He read the script, liked it, and then decided to direct the movie.
How many HHGG fans would even pause to pull that rabbit bone out of their beard before agreeing to do the movie?
The movie was directed and produced by people who weren't HHGG fans in the first place - they never appreciated it the way you and I did. So they have no compunction in scything through the work of Adams.
I am gonna keep an open mind, and just watch the movie.
But it rankles that "surrealism" was left out...
The full quote is:
"It's funny. He'd gone all the way to California to get this film made. And it ended up being made by two blokes from down the road."
In England instead of saying dude they say "bloke". Now I can see how at first glance it might seem they meant to say. "Two blocks down the road." I had to do a double-take myself.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Just as a note, for all those that want to complain about the movie being different from the books: The *books* aren't even the original work in this case, so get over it. Adams was doing the radio series long before the books ever came out.