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Hitchhikers Guide Movie Might Become a Trilogy
Noiser writes "The BBC reports that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie could be turned into a trilogy. I wonder if they mean that it might turn into a trilogy in five parts, just like the book? I wish it did - unlike some people, I liked all of them..."
I just can't see mostly harmless as making a very good movie. 'Restaurant At the End of the Universe', 'Life the Universe and Everything' and 'So Long and Thanks for All the Fish' could be very easily made into two movies... they have a kind of natural flow.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
I actually thought it was very true to the book, except for a few minor things. I saw it on Saturday and reread the book today. As far as movie adaptations go, I was impressed, several passages were taken word for word from the novel
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Yes, but the thing about the movie was that it was bad. I went into it with low expectation, but it blew away even those. I have loved the tv show, the radio shows (both the original and the new one) and the books, but the movie conveyed none of the greatness that filled the productions of the other mediums. By essentially removing all of the humor and corrupting all of the characters, what the viewer was left with was a non-sensical storyline and some cheap CG. I'm not saying that it has to be exactly like the book. I wouldn't have minded all of the new subplots they added, if they had been humorous. Instead, they became a laundry list of places to go to, at which some item had to be for no very good reason.
I didn't mind LoTR; sure the movie changed some things but I accepted that those changes probably helped it in the new medium. However, the H2G2 movie, irregaurdless of whether there had been a book before, was just bad.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Wow, that would be interesting. But does Terry actually like HHGTTG? I would imagine definitely YES, but it is hard to be sure about these things.
Seriously, the movie feels like bureaucratic Vogons produced, directed and finished the screenplay. There was no understanding of the humor of Douglas Adams.
... locked file cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on it saying 'beware of the leopard'"
I know people have poo-poo'd the often repeated criticism of the change in an early line where Arthur Dent is telling the head of the (human) demoltion team about the trouble of finding the plans for the bypass. But that change says a lot about the movie.
Line from book/tv series:
"It was in the basement
Line in the movie:
"It was in a cellar"
The book showed the level of absurdity that bureaucracy causes. This basis of the joke in the book then continues when the Vogons use similar bureaucracy when telling humans where the plans for the hyperspace bypass are. But with the movie killing the basis of the bureaucracy joke, the Vogon part is far less funny as that joke is no longer built on anything previous.
I am not a "fanboy" wanting an exact word for word duplication of the book. The ridiculousness of bureaucracy could have been shown or stated in several ways in that eary scene, without quoting the book. But the fact that there was no emphasis on ridiculous bureaucracy shows a total lack of understanding of the whole scene. Unfortunately, the entire movie is the same lack of "getting it".
I want a coherent cohesive story that carries jokes forward and understands that humor relies heavily on context. No context means no humor. And the people/Vogons who made this movie clearly had no understanding of the context of Douglas Adams jokes. I hope to god that these same people have nothing to do with any further Hitchhikers movies.
One of the things I really liked about the movie was that it was nice and cheery unlike the last book in the series. The magic of HG2G is in the lighthearted humor and fun style if they try and copy the depressing last book it would ruin the movies even more than it did the books.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I actually liked the movie and the next night watched part of the TV series and thought the movie was better.
I thought Trillian's character was more true to how I remembered the books (smart, not idiotic) and it felt a lot less like a school play with the principals still reading from a script.
My only real complaint from the movie is that they killed the mice instead of sending them back with how many roads must a man walk down (which is my memmory from the book, but it's been a while).
The movie could of benifitted from the towel not being left as an inside joke too, but whatever.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
"I don't see this as being a big money maker like the Lotr or Matrix series."
It doesn't need to be. It only needs to make a profit. It had a budget of $45 million and in 3 days it made half that. That's ONLY in the US.
"Derp de derp."
I thought that Mos Def nailed Ford Prefect in about ten seconds. I liked Zaphod as well. Arthur was great, and Trillian was, well, around way too much. I could really have done without the love story, although Zooey Deschanel is easy to look at.
I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. I didn't think for a moment that they'd do the sperm whale joke, but they did. I was happy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
*********SPOILERS***************
:D
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They left the earth intact at the end of the movie. This, to mean, implies that they've given themselves a perfect opportunity to take after the original radio show and destroy the earth in every single installation of the movie trilogy, in a different way. I hope they take it
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The way I read grandparent's comment was that the romantic "arc" tack-welded on top of the story was the 'shit smeared' on the movie. I'd agree with him in that, and your assertion that Douglas Adams himself was responsible for that is at least somewhat contradicted by the following, quoted from ccn.com's review of the film:
"After Adams' death, screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick was called in to tighten up the script's structure, bolstering the romance and streamlining the plot." (italics mine)
Sounds an awful lot like the romance was troweled on after DA was no longer around to object. What with it being totally non-witty and not really fitting with anything else, I'd have to say that chances are good that Douglas Adams did not and would not have tarted up the romance like that.
It also sounds to me like all the subtle stuff that Americans wouldn't get anyway (yes, I'm being sarcastic and kind of pissy about it) was smoothed over, by Karey Kirkpatrick, to make it more shallow and easily digested for the Hollywood audience. I won't go into my rant about how streamlining and simplifying LOTR for the big screen reduced it to an FX extravaganza whose plot and characterization were no more exciting than any one of hundreds of thousands of games of AD&D played out in basements and bedrooms all around the world... oops, I guess I did. Sorry.
But that's how I feel about HHGTTG on the big screen, too. The genius is in the details, and Hollywood doesn't want genius - Hollywood has no desire to leave cash in the pockets of morons, and would rather dumb it down than take a chance on not getting money from everyone.
As an example: I think that when you skip the entire dialog about the plans being in the basement, where the lights had gone out, in a locked cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Tiger" or however the phrasing went, you also lose a great deal of the whimsy that made HHGTTG so brilliant. And the parallel between the bureaucrats in charge of destroying Arthur's house and those destroying Arthur's planet is damn near lost altogether.
Fortunately, I was already prepared for this movie to miss the point, so it didn't hit me too hard. YMMV.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Hmmm, a very clever idiosyncratic individual (Dirk) with an assistant (Richard) investigates a very old man (Urban Chronotis) living in a room in a university with a console that enables the whole room to travel in time and space, whereby they meet a character from history (Samuel Taylor Coleridge). I wonder why it reminds you in some way of a Dr Who script?
FYI, speaking as a total DNA fan and (less) DW fanboy, you're bang on. It was originally conveived as a DW adventure in the Tom Baker era, but there was a strike on set which cut short the series on which DNA was script editor (another story, 'Shada', was only half completed) and DNA stopped writing for DW. He noodled around with the plot for aver ten years before finding a way to re-use it without it being *too* damn obvious.
The idea was that a Time Lord had retired to Cambridge to live a long and peaceful last regeneration, knowing that no-one would ever bother him. The Cambridge colleges are notoriously unenquiring of human oddity! Supposedly, he had been there a very *very* long time and had forgotten everything that came before.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
When I saw that the vogon ships were not yellow. I almost ran out of the theater. I was SO pissed off. IT RUINED THE MOVIE FOR ME!!!
Flamebait + 1.
I know what you are saying. I agree with you on some accounts. From dicussions with the director which I've read on slashdot, and other places, they kept on saying that things were edited for pacing issues. This was one of the things that I noticed in the beginning of the movie. The pace was fast, really fast. When the vogons were reading the poetry, it went by so fast, that the joke was lost. That is where the pace should have slowed down to halt to show just how bad the vogon poetry is. It's supposed to make the audience cringe, and then pick up the pace again. It seemed like everything was just flying by. So yes, I see what you are saying. Then again, on the other hand. The opening credits with the Dolphins singing a broadway musical about thanks for all the fish was brilliant. I absolutely loved it.
Even though some of the classical jokes from before were glossed over, I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Also the field of slapping shovel creatures was great. That is something that wouldn't work at all in the book, or radio series, but worked really well in the movie.
Also remember that lots of the changes where douglas' idea.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros