Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... hopes? fears?

Ok, for years and years I really wanted them to come out with a movie adaptation of what would have to be at the top of the list of works that created my worldview.

But now that they have, I'm really worried they've created a pile of garbage.

I think the fact that Mr Adams is dead, and that Zaphod seems to have only one head only reinforce this fear.

They've made Marvin cute. Heck he has an ewok inside of him. Well a guy who played an ewok is inside of the suit.

I really wish Peter Jackson had been the director. I think his sensiblities would have lent themselves to this work.

So, any H2G2 fans have any feelings on this?

Yep,

I'm a little worried too, but I'm not gonna stress out too much.

I really loved the HGTTG books. They're great reading. But my experience has always been that movie adaptations rarely live up to the book. Although I did think Kubrick did a great job with Clockwork Orange...oh and Cat in the Hat was great..(yes that last one's a joke).

I'm just gonna go in with low expectations and feel good when they actually get a few things right.

The radio plays will always be "the original" to me. I remember tuning in every sunday on the local PBS radio station. And being yelled at becuase I wouldn't start mowing the lawn when I was supposed to.

The sound effects, and the overall pacing of the radio plays was perfect.

Not even the records were quite right, as they were re-recorde versions, with plot changes due to copyright laws.

The radio dramas predate the first two books.

Early reviews of the movie on some of the film-geek news sites are not encouraging, sadly.

But-
Zaphod does have two heads; I have seen footage of how they handled this in the film. It is an intersting approach, but I will have to see how it plays out over the course of the film to decide if it works for me.

Did the radio plays ever get released for public consumption? I seem to remember there being a cassette set being released by BBC.

I'd love to get the ORIGINAL radio plays on audio media ( tapes, cd, 8-track, wax cylander ).

The books, as good as they were, never quite lived up to the radio plays.

I don't remember who did them, but when I was young I had all the 'books on tape' versions. They were soooo good! I suppose it's like hearing a radio play, with all the voices and sound effects. My friends and I would have tears running down our faces from laughing so hard. After I heard them on tape I read the books and didn't like them nearly as much.

Well, let's start with the positives:

Martin Freeman, based on his work in The Office, is PERFECT to play Arthur. I think he'll do well in the footsteps of Simon Jones. So I'm stoked about that.

Bill Nighy will make a great Slartibartfast.
Alan Rickman is a great choice to voice Marvin.
Stephen Fry as the Voice of the Guide is perfect as well.

Then, sadly, the rest of the cast is full of Americans, which does not bode well.

I really liked the 1981 TV version, even if the special effects made Dr. Who look like Empire Strikes Back.

So fingers crossed- let's call it cautious optimism.

I have the same fears. When I heard they were making a movie I cringed.

I just cant see anyone making a movie that would live up to the insanity and humor of the books. The storie and characters are just to far out to translate into a movie.

I'm a huge fan and have been wanting to read them again.

I too was concerned, but i'm not going to let it stress me. But when I saw the first preview, it reminded me of the "Lost in Space" movie. Looks like alot of flashy graphics. But i'll see it anyways.

LOL for a long time (before I read the books I saw the Britsh TV version on PBS) I thought when they said "Slartibartfast", I thought his name was "Sweatyfartblast"

I dunno - I have high hopes for this one (and Zaphod does have two heads - it's just in a place you wouldn't expect!) And I think Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin is a pretty good choice....

Tiki Gardener - I'm pretty sure I have the first book radio play off the BBC on cassette somewhere - just gotta find it... If I do, it's yours!

I had the BBC tv series on tape for years and pretty much memorized it, along with Monty Python movies and Caddyshack. Test screening reviews have been all over the board, but that's typical with a movie made from such beloved material. It certainly looks "quirky", which may be a good thing. At least they had the sense to avoid Americanizing it. I agree that some of the casting choices are great, some are "wait and see". It will be almost impossible not to compare whichever version we love with the new movie, though. Personally, I'm most interested to see how they crammed it all down to 2 hours.

First of all DON'T PANIC (hey, someone had to say it!), whatever they do to H2G2 it won't be the Radio plays, Books, or TV series, it'll be H2G2 the Movie. Even if they completely hack it up, someone else can do a remake later (for better or worse. Even if they make the perfect movie version this time someone else can do a complete hack job of a remake later, too). No matter how good or bad the movie is it'll have it's fans & detractors, and that's just the way it is. All you can do is make sure you have your towel handy & plan to enjoy the trip.

hopefully they won't redo the INFOCOM game...

Buncha Hoopy froods around here.

Tangoroa, thanks for the offer, but I found this
http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/hitchph1&bklist=icat,3,,101

Looks very cool, and I never heard the tertiary phase. Looks like they got a bunch of the original cast back together.

As to Mr Rickman, well I guess, but Stephen Moore is still I alive ( I think ). The one and only voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Here's a review by the stage Marvin, David Learner:

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=19946

Sounds like it may be OK.....!

The previews have not excited me but I am very interested to see the movie anyway.
I will take a bag of swedish fish, wear my robe, tote my towel and if it is truly awful I figure it is their form of Vogon Poetry.

I am really worried at this movie being really popular, yet sucking for those of us who fondly remember all of its previous iterations. Just think about how long ago the books, the radio plays etc were popular and how old the original fans are (THATS US!. The way I see it, they have to be marketing it to the movie-going masses, kids with both time and money on their hands. (which, frankly, is something I and my peers then never seemed to have simultaneously and by the way, have you tried lately to find a kid to mow your lawn or babysit your kid(s) for a few hours? Just hire a lawn service and nanny and be done with it!)But, I digress into a rant as I usually do.
At least this movie does not have a "big star" such as Eminem or J-Lo in it so we can hope they got it right.

One other comment - the books that were based on the radio dramas that started it all ended up being very different. Then the TV series was different from the books. Then the LP record dramas (differnt from the radio dramas - although those were released as well!), were different again, and then the TV series had more further variations. Let's not even go into the video game. "get towel"

So, the point is: the movie is going to be different from any other incarnation of these stories, just as every previous incarnation of these stories were different from each other.

That doesn't nescessarily say the movie will or won't suck, but Adams did pen the scipt before he died...

I just read an article by the guys who made the film.
Apparently this is their first ever movie, they had previously just made a few music videos for the likes of fatboy Slim
Apparently the Hollywood Studio involved let them do it their way.
Apparently it was made the way Douglas Adams would have liked it ,even his mums got a role in it
Apparently they didn't use flashy effects
And remember after all it's an English comedy

On 2005-04-20 15:31, Johnny Dollar wrote:
hopefully they won't redo the INFOCOM game...

I still remember how to get the bable fish..... You had to put the robe on the hook, then the case in front of the slot THEN the mail on top of the case and push the button.....

Dam! I really am a geek!

On 2005-04-27 20:20, Chip and Andy wrote:

On 2005-04-20 15:31, Johnny Dollar wrote:
hopefully they won't redo the INFOCOM game...

I still remember how to get the bable fish..... You had to put the robe on the hook, then the case in front of the slot THEN the mail on top of the case and push the button.....

Dam! I really am a geek!

I loved that stupid game! Kids of today can't really understand a video game with no graphic or sound!
Here's a link to an on-line recreation of it:
http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

Just got back from seeing it. I'd give it a solid B grade. I won't say more until a fair amount of time has passed so those wishing to see it have done so.

But I was glad they worked in the Original theme.

I just saw it last night as well, and I was very pleased. There's definitely narrative changes to make the film a little more compact and try to provide a more traditional structure, i.e. a story arc, character development.

However, I think much of the spirit of the original works is still very present- lots of sly wit, subtle humor, rampant absurdism. There's some good inside stuff for the fanboys in there, too. The trailer really makes it out to be an action & effects packed romp through space, but the effects (which are gorgeous) are really used in the service of the story. I think all the people who came expecting cool space battles were really disappointed.

So let me add these two positive notes:

1. Rebecca, who has never read the books and hates Sci Fi, loved it.

2. We were in a packed movie theatre of ugly fat stupid Novato residents, and they were dead silent for the entire film. They didn't get it at all. That's how I know it was good.

On 2005-05-01 08:36, martiki wrote:

2. We were in a packed movie theatre of ugly fat stupid Novato residents, and they were dead silent for the entire film.

We experienced a similar situation... Whenever quantum mechanics played a role in a joke, my bro-in-law, wife and I were some of the very few who were laughing out loud. You could almost make a game out of watching people enter the theater and guess who would get it and who would not.

On another note, I was VERY happy to see a return to puppets over CGI for characters...

-Z

I saw this film last night and wasn't too blown away. Although some might mistake me for one that has read the book, I never have. I was always interested in checking it out and actually borrowed a copy from a friend but never got down to giving a good read.

So from an outsider's point of view I'd say that the film was visually amazing and really entertaining on that level. Amazing creativity and set design. Not too much CGI and some real puppet characters. I thought Marvin was really cool and had tons of potential, but it didn't seem like they used him in the story as much as I would have like to have seen.

The story itself on film seemed like it was geared toward those that have already read the book. There were a few people in the theater that were really into it. I was just assuming they were fans of the book. For an outsider like me who never read the book, aside from picking up on the philisophical life messages, which were really cool, I didn't know what the hell they were doing or what they were talking about.

Some of these Sci-Fi/philosophy of life books don't always translate well on screen. Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughter House Five' is another one like this that comes to mind. That book was amazing, but the movie like "Hitchhiker's", was a creative attempt at putting a very abstract story on screen and falling short. Some books just shouldn't be made into films.

Great, and surprising performance by Mos Def. Zooey Deschanel is easy on the eyes too. She really does have a unique sort fo beauty which wasn't really given the attention it deserved considering she was the love interest and all that.

The theater I saw it in, The Ziegfeld in NYC, one of the last great movie palaces, screened it in Digital Projection which I must say was pretty amazing.

[ Edited by: donhonyc on 2005-05-03 10:30 ]

Just saw it.

Good, not great.

Neither mind blowing nor disapointing.

There were a few elements that I really liked, such as how Slartibartfast was played as this shy, sort of socially inept character - there was no reason to play him that way, but it added an interesting dimension to him. The guy who played Zaphod was a hoot too. I dug all the in-jokes, such as having the television Marvin robot suit make a cameo, as well as cameos by the TV Arthur Dent and, briefly, the face of Douglas Adams. The Vogons looked really great. Very nice puppet work. The inside of Magrathea was very cool.

But I can also see how newcomers might not get it, especially if old-time hardcore fans are only feeling lukewarm about the whole thing.

Nice set-up for the sequel at the end...

[ Edited by: Chip and Andy 2012-05-01 20:26 ]

Very Minor Spoiler Alert, don't read if ya haven't seen the movie, and don;t want to know things that aren't the same as in at least one of the versions of HHGTG

There were points where it was absolutley spot on. I have a problem with about the last 20 minutes of the film. I was hoping for the two space cops, the overheating computer bank, etc

Hopefully not too much of a spoiler there

I left the theater and had to suck on the other end of my towel.