Hitchhikers Guide Movie

If you are at all familiar with Douglas Adam's original books, radio plays, TV series or anything else connected to H2G2 you could well be very disappointed with this movie.

To say that it strays far from the original plot/concept/story line would be an understatement. For someone who has never read the books it may be an OK film but apparently whole sections have been totally ignored or changed beyond recognition, whole new scenes and characters have been created and Adam's greatest gift, that of the biting dialogue between characters, has been butchered to the point where you get lead lines with no punch line or punch lines with no lead line.

As for Marvin (the robot - metal content), instead of a manic depressive humanoid we get something that looks like a mechanized salt cellar/shaker from the 60's that says the right words but in a tone of voice that implies all is well with his existence. Where is the misery and angst when he speaks, he gives the impression he popped a case of 'uppers' just prior to filming!

For a review written by someone who has been closely involved with H2G2 for more than 20 years (and who was one of only a handful of journalists allowed to visit the set) check the link below......

I was really looking forward to this long awaited movie and I may go to see it even after reading the above. However I will 'rewire' my brain before entering the theatre so that I do not expect it to be anything like what I remember of the radio plays and TV shows and will endeavour to experience it as a singular item not in any way connected to whatever went before.

Blame DNA himself - he wrote the screenplay. His work, his choice.

When is the last time a movie of a book you enjoyed was anywhere near as good? Gone With the Wind, maybe? Movies about books are good for spending a bit of enjoyable time (at best), nothing more.

The Return of the King was quite good.

Before that, I'd have to way back to Slaughterhouse 5. No, maybe not that far - Fight Club was excellent.

Generally, I agree with you. Movies are rarely as good as the book.

Sounds like it must have been adapted by the same despicable twits who butchered Heinlein's Starship Trooper.

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Yes I know.........and all the variations on the theme were just that.......variations. It just strikes me that this is more like a 'giant leap' rather than a 'small step' ;-).

Hmmmmmm........a long time ago but......the animation of 'Watership Down' was pretty close to the book.

Gone With the Wind, maybe?

IMHO that has to rank as one of the biggest wastes of celluloid ever. The last line of the movie sums it all up for me. Gone with the wind......who gives a damn!

Movies about books are good for spending

Well I must admit I do prefer a good read to a movie any day. I haven't been to a movie theatre/cinema in over 12 years and I rarely watch them at home either (or much TV come to that) despite there being literally dozens of movies on VHS and DVD here (three females in this house means TV is on 14+ hours a day!)

Starship Troopers was never intended to be a Heinlein book adaptation.

It was originally called Bug Hunt and had nothing whatsoever to do with Heinlein.

They realized that they could buy the film rights to Starship Troopers for cheap and just adjust the story line enough that it could vaguely be called that.

Hollywierd is a very odd place to get any project carried through to the big screen.

Haven't seen it yet. I didn't know it had opened yet ;)

Yes.

It's interesting. Over in the Harry Potter group, people get all surprised that a 1.5 hour movie doesn't represent the subtle plot and character elements of a 700 page book very well.

Well, the original radio series was 6 hours over 12 episodes. Putting all that in a 1.5 or 2 hour movie just ain't gonna happen.

Some of us are still unhappy about how the radio series got translated into the book, or about the changed Marvin humming Pink Floyd :-)

Tim.

HEY! The unisex shower room scenes were MUCH better in the movie than the book! Other than that, a waste of celluloid. Do they still use celluloid, BTW?

Lord of the Rings was very good, as were The Dead Zone, A Boy and his Dog & Blade Runner.

David

Id love to see a full fledged movie made on the book ARMOUR.

ANTS!!!!!!!!!

Gunner

Sounds kind of like the Delaurentis Dune movie. Fantastic visually, but the only thing that remained of the story was the characters' names.

Steve M

The HHG as raw material has been put into two (now three) distinclty different radio productions, a TV serial, and several books. Each of these had some unique characters and plot elements. I believe DNA had material written that didn't make it into any of the above.

The result is there isn't a single work to serve as an "accurate" movie script. Watch it and let it stand on it's own.

Dr. Zhivago.

Jim

OK, that's three then.

I missed the staff meeting but the minutes show Gunner wrote back on Sat, 16 Apr 2005 05:38:51 GMT in misc.survivalism :

Has anyone ever read the book "Casino Royale" and compared it to the movie of the same name? About all they have in common is the title and main character is called "James Bond."

>

While we're on the subject, could anyone tell me what the 1930 movie "Moby Dick" had in common with the book, other than the title?

True..very true.

Im currently reading the Full version of The Stand for the first time. King prefaced the novel with the fact he was required to pull 50,000 words out of the first published books due to constraint of size by his publisher.

Lots of changes, lots of background, lots more charector development in this one.

So its not only the movies that suffers from this sort of thing.

Gunner

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosphy of sniveling brats." -- P.J. O'Rourke

Ernie, weren't you involved in _The_Postman_?

I still haven't forgiven Costner for that one.

Jim

This is because Fleming had already sold the rights to "Casino Royale" when Saltzmann & Broccoli came to call. There was an American TV production of CR in the early 50's, with Bond ("Jimmy") a US spy and Felix Leiter was British. Le Chiffre was played by Peter Lorre, the only decent performance on the show.

David