Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Not So Good

Sunday, Apr. 10 2005 | Author: Scrivs

If this review is any indication of what the movie will be like when it’s released then we are all in trouble.

Its bad on a big scale because enormous swathes of the story have been dispensed with - most of the Guide entries, whole scenes - or changed beyond all recognition. And it is bad on a small scale because many, many wonderful lines have been cut or in some cases actually rewritten to make them less funny. Whatever your favourite line from Hitchhikers, theres a good chance that it wont be in the film. Even if its really well-known, widely-quoted, much-loved, very funny - it will probably be absent from the movie. Or if it is there, it might have been changed.

Movies reviews from folks that are familiar with the work are essential, but can also be dangerous since most of the time you will find the reviewer has a love for the original work and therefore can be biased either for or against the movie. That’s what makes Sin City and Spiderman so good because most of the people who love the comic books, love those movies (at least in my experience).

In any case hopefully this movie really isn’t as bad as the review makes it out to be because I was looking forward to seeing it. Even more so after I saw the trailer before Sin City.

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6 Responses for "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Not So Good"

AkaXakA

April 10th, 2005 at 11:30 am
1

It’s bad on a big scale because enormous swathes of the story have been dispensed with - most of the Guide entries, whole scenes - or changed beyond all recognition.

This is GOOD otherwise the film would have been much, much s l o w e r. You _need_ to rewrite all the story to give it pace, and heck, many things just don’t _work_ on the screen as they do in a book.

And it is bad on a small scale because many, many wonderful lines have been cut

Same goes for dialogs really, you need to cut a lot of them, or they’ll slow down the movie inmensely. Just listen to the Hitchhiker’s Radio Show version, it’s very different from the book, because it wouldn’t _work_ any other way.

PS. Scrivs, you’ve forgotten to style the comment preview form! (Again :P)
Matt Burris

April 10th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
2

Not suprrising, Hollywood loves to botch up stories for the sake of “pace”.

Look at the Doom movie; it doesn’t take place on Mars, nor features zombies, like the game does, which the movie is based off of. You can’t tell me they had to make it more exciting for the movie, in the name of pace, and other reasons. Mars + zombies worked well when Doom first came out, and is the reason the game became what it is today.

What Hollywood needs is more people like Quentin Tarantino, who respects original works, and has faith in the audience to not be nitpicky about pace and attention-spans. Hollywood wanted to change many foreign movies, but Tarantino steps in and said leave it alone. Take Iron Monkey for example, which was a superb movie that was fun to watch. I can’t begin to imagine how horrible it’d be if Hollywood put their cold death-like hands on it.
Jack

April 11th, 2005 at 10:43 am
3

Surely this is part of the H2G2 tradition, and one of the things that makes it such a compelling multifaceted multimedia thingy? The original radio series (still far and away my favourite incarnation) was built upon and changed for the books, and the TV series drew on both its predecessors, and with each versioning, the fans took umbrage.

Admittedly, the film doesn’t have Adams making the changes, but I still think it’s good that the film-makers have chosen to continue the changing and updating that’s been part of the H2G2 universe. (I’m even half glad the Guide entries have gone AWOL, to be honest - without Peter Jones reading them, they’d sound plain wrong!)
John

April 11th, 2005 at 11:57 am
4

One little thing, the radio program came first.

it was, if I remember correctly:

Radio
Books
TV
Retelling on Radio
More Books

And yes each one of these has been slightly diffrent.
Matt H

April 11th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
5

Still can’t wait to see it even if they do take some stuff out.
John

April 11th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
6

You and me both Matt…

Even if all of my friends are gonna be big babies about it.