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[Sebatianos]

I saw it last night and :blink: :eeeeeh:

I mean the movie isn't the worse I've ever seen, but if anybody has a chance to see the old series (there were 6 made) they should rather watch that instead.
The old series are not so technically suffisticated, but at least they build on the humor of the book and do it rather nicely. The movie just takes the edge of the Adam's wit and does even worse.

I mean - for crying out loud: Zaphod becomes a brainless show-off, Ford is nothing but a goodball, Trillian is in love with Arthur ever since the party and Arthur is the main hero! It's Arthur that leads most of the action ever since they leave the storage room aboard the Vogon ship.
there are also many things in the movie that never apeared in the book and a lot of things are taken away.
Don't get me wrong - the movie is still fun and I'd give it a rating of 3 (out of 5), but if you really liked the book this movie will be a dissapointment.

Darn Hollywood.

[Stroggy]

No surprise there, The humour in Hitchhiker's Guide is impossible to translate into a movie. Most of the humour in the book is not found in dialogues but in the descriptions and the mindless banter about pink interstellar hippos.
Another reason i hate the movie is this: a few months ago I started reading the books and I spent a lot of money on all those small (tiny) books (some not 200 pages long) and each one with a pricetag of €12,40 (compared to Pratchett books which cost around €9 and the J.R.R. Martin books which cost around €14 and are about 800 pages thick each)
And now, suddenly, with the launch of the movie I see these amazing hardcover books with a flashy design, containing all the Hichhiker's Guide books for just €14.
I felt ripped off.

[plague]

Originally posted by Stroggy@Jul 26 2005, 11:00 AM
No surprise there, The humour in Hitchhiker's Guide is impossible to translate into a movie.

Right you are.

[Sebatianos]

I don't think it's impossible. As I said the old series was quite succesfull at doing just that - of course with lot of animated sequences being accompanied by a narrator. This workd just fine, because the Guide was made as a Radio show at first (nothing but narrative speach and dialogs). The thing in the movie is that they still have narration, but they simply leave out many things.
For instence when the describe the Vogons they say that a Vogon wouldn't help his grandmother if she was chased by that beast (forgot the name Trall or something), but they leave out that the best way to annoy a Vogon is to feed his grandmother to such a beast. They simply take the edge off :not_ok:

[Stroggy]

The only way a movie could be succesful is if they paused the movie and started explaining things like in the show and the books... but then it would be the radioshow.

[Sebatianos]

The worst part is - they actually try to do just that - but fail miserably.

Every now and again you get a wierd blue background and some lame animation with a narrator explaining things (but only half way).

[Havell]

I quite liked the way the guide sequences were done. You're right though, they didn't follow through with any jokes right to their end (like the babelfish all the way to God disappearing in a puff of logic).

[omg]

its like they got rid off all that in order to make room for vogons firing flashy laser beams.
one thing to (maybe) take comfort from is that in "the salmon of doubt" douglas admas said he was writing the script of the movie to contradict the book a bit, he always enjoyed enraging uberfans by making the book and the radio show do things a bit differently. maybe he wanted vogons shooting laser beams all over the place. however its hard to tell how much of the script is his and how much is that womens who shares the writing credit.
i think something like this happened tho

disney exec1: i dont think americans get long jokes
disney exec2: hey man i know what you mean. im terrified this movie aint gonna appeal to the 9 - 21 age bracket
de1: what the hell are we gonna do?
(they look at each other)
de3: gentlemen i have the anser. what we need is loads of pointlessly long sequances involving laser beams!
de1: yeah the kids love lasers!
(they go out for takeaway food to celebrate there inginuoity. de1 gets crushed by a pink intersteller hippo.)

adams desrved better. it annoyed me the way they started with the dolphins. (was in the fourth book) it annoyed me the way they bought earth back at the end of it
(again fourth book)
damn those execs!!

disney exec2: hey man this is 2 depressing. what with the world destroyed and all
what a shame executive assistant 1 got squashed by that hippo. he was always the master at happy endings.
disney exec3: i know what you mean
de2: hang on a minute ive got it! lets bring the earth back at the end, and evryone who was on the earth back to life!! and you know whats cute...
de3: kittens?
de2: yes yes but also dolphins are cute. lets have the dolphins do a huge song and dance number at the beggining, take up maybe 10 minutes with loads of stuff about dolphins!
de3: awesome! (they hi five then go out to score cocaine)

adams hated the t.v show which is a shame becuse it translated his humour onto screen a lot more effictivly.

[Reup]

Originally posted by Stroggy@Jul 26 2005, 10:00 AM
No surprise there, The humour in Hitchhiker's Guide is impossible to translate into a movie. Most of the humour in the book is not found in dialogues but in the descriptions and the mindless banter about pink interstellar hippos.
Another reason i hate the movie is this: a few months ago I started reading the books and I spent a lot of money on all those small (tiny) books (some not 200 pages long) and each one with a pricetag of €12,40 (compared to Pratchett books which cost around €9 and the J.R.R. Martin books which cost around €14 and are about 800 pages thick each)
And now, suddenly, with the launch of the movie I see these amazing hardcover books with a flashy design, containing all the Hichhiker's Guide books for just €14.
I felt ripped off.

There always was an omnibus available. I bought it for € 17,50 or somehting a couple of years ago. It was published in 1996 according to Amazon so you could have saved some money earlier :P
And the movie... I'm really hesitant to go and see it... it looks evil :angry:

[Stroggy]

Originally posted by Reup@Jul 26 2005, 12:15 PM

There always was an omnibus available. I bought it for € 17,50 or somehting a couple of years ago. It was published in 1996 according to Amazon so you could have saved some money earlier :P

I know, I asked around for it but none of the stores had it.