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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) (1 Viewer)

John Doran

Screenwriter
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saw it last night and laughed my ass off. i loved it, faithfulness to the source material be damned.

actually, i'm glad i didn't read the books again before going in, since the ten years or so between now and the last time i read them made me blissfully ignorant of whatever butchery may (or may not) have been being committed before my very eyes.

last time i re-read a book before i went into a movie was return of the king, and that was one of the worst movie-experiences of my entire life precisely because i was so painfully, excruciatingly aware of what, to me, was an unmitigated massacre of a text i loved so dearly.

but whatever. sam rockwell needs to do more comedy. fuck, he's funny. pardon my french.
 

Raasean Asaad

Supporting Actor
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Sep 23, 2002
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I loved Sam Rockwell:

"Are you wearing my underwear because I'm wearing yours and they aren't cutting it !"

I do wish that a Guide explanation for towels was in the movie because a few friends of mine that haven't read the books were a bit confused.
 

Paul_Stachniak

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Actually, yes it could. Both the radio series and the TV series covered all the action of the first book (everything - though mind you the radio series came first) in 4, 30min episode. So a running time of what? 2 hours!

Did they have to stick to the text exactly? No, but if it ain't broke why fix it - especially when you have no idea about the source material.

Some of you may want to check out this review by a long time Douglas biographer and Hitchhiker fan. It pretty much sums up why the movie is a terrible adaptation: http://www.planetmagrathea.com/longreview1.html

Trust this could have been done 'A LOT' better
 

JoSAN

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I understand what you're saying, Seth, but I think it only hurt the credibility character. To me, Zaphod will always be the old, British ex-hippie kind of "cool and froody" guy. Once George W. is replaced as Prez, people will one day be stratching their heads at the Texan accent for Zaphod in this movie.

One thing I hoped this movie would do, by way of updating, is to take the Guide's line:

"...whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

And replace it with...

"...whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think cellular phones are a pretty neat idea."

I would have really liked that. But, of course, they didn't do it. Mainly because Nokia had so much product placement in the movie. Of course, if they were smart, they could have advertsied their phones in tune with the Hitchhiker's slant on things and it would have been better for them (humans are so taken by reverse psychology and all that).

Again, as it is, the movie-makers haven't proven to me that they truly "got" what the Hitchhiker's Guide is all about. It's about no-compromise social criticism wrapped in Oscar Wilde-level wit. It's not about commericalism and neatly tied-up happy endings.

The "For Douglas" at the end of the movie had me wincing. How do they know this is something Douglas would have approved of? It reminds me of the "For Gene" remark at the end of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I guess they didn't want to use Roddenberry's real comment that he said to his wife, Majel, in the car coming back from an advanced screening of this movie. Something akin to "Those bastards have destoryed my vision of Star Trek completely...!" Shortly after this, Gene died. I agree with Star Trek's creator on this; Star Trek VI was the complete antithesis of what Star Trek is all about. It was an excessively violent, dark and pessimistic mess. I cried after seeing it, that's how offensive I thought it was. Star Trek was long dead and its creator has joined it.

And now Douglas Adams is dead. And this movie is no legacy or tribute, in my opinion. To see this movie and not read the books is to insult the man's writing genius.

So, read the books, if you haven't. And if you have, read them again. :)
 

Anthony Hom

Supporting Actor
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I noticed that everyone left the theater during the credits and did not wait for the additional entry from the guide. That brings the point of the original book and Tv series, the guide tended to stray from the subject at hand on a tangent and then bring you back to the situation. It was not done much in this film.
 

andrew markworthy

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Well, it was his script. What amuses me in reading the comments from all the experts who 'know' what this movie 'should' have been is that the script was Adams's - the extra writers were brought in simply to flesh out bits of the script, but substantially this is the script that Douglas Adams wrote. Let's face facts - the early books had some brilliant ideas (and they are still amongst my favourite light reading), but frankly his later work was indifferent. Can anyone *honestly* say that Mostly Harmless would have been published if the author wasn't already famous?

Please by all means say you don't like the movie, but don't suppose that you can speak for Douglas Adams or that somehow the makers of this movie have 'betrayed' his legacy or some such nonsense. The author with the deftness of touch to write the first two books had long since disappeared, and imagining that if he was alive today that the movie would be of a higher quality, is, I fear, wishful rhinking.
 

JoSAN

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Again, I never said it would be. And you know my opinion of Mostly Harmless. I can blame Adams for a bad novel because he wrote it. I'm not blaming Adams for this bad movie because he didn't write the final screenplay. And even if he had - which he obviously didn't and couldn't - other factors would have a strong influence on the final product -- the choice of director being equally vital. And let's just say that promoting a rock video director to a big budget Hollywood film isn't a step in the right direction.

If you liked the film, great. Conversely, I just happen to place my opinion of it alongside those who also found it to be a complete waste of time (and $50 million dollars), devoid of any humor and the intangible quality that makes something at all interesting.
 

TheLongshot

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Personally, I don't think the script was a problem. In general, I thought the storyline was acceptable. It is the execution that is problematic. The timing doesn't work, characters disappear, some subplots don't work, etc. This goes some on the writers, but mostly on the director. It is too bad that we didn't get a director who could figure out comic timing, and maybe get something out of the actors. It is too bad that the only way they could figure out how to deal with some of the characters was to remove them. It is too bad character development took a back seat to snazzy effects.

That being said, I don't think the movie sucks. It has some moments here and there which were pretty good. Every time Marvin is on the screen, he steals the movie. What little we get of the guide is brilliant. The casting is mostly spot on (Mos Def is a little questionable, but he isn't given much to do, so it is hard to say.). I didn't think it was a waste of my time. I won't be owning it on DVD, but I didn't think it was awful.

Jason
 

Will_B

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I'd have started the film out with Arthur making sandwiches on an alien world, briefly happy.

The slavish dedication to the storyline of the first book was the films' undoing, IMO. There was SO MUCH material spread across the five books that could have inspired an original narrative.

Maybe this is like Dune, and someone will try again in 20 years.
 

Paul_Stachniak

Screenwriter
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Sorry for how awful my grammar is – I’m brutally tired but feel obligated to defend the original material form this “adaptation”.
 

Mike Wilk

Stunt Coordinator
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Jun 12, 2003
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If memory serves, the Restaurant was on Magrathea. As I recall from the BBC Radio series, the group was hiding behind a computer bank that was taking a lot of hits from lasers ... time travel. Marvin, who had been left on the surface of the planet, waited for them for several millions of years and had gone into a bit of a decline. He called the group (while they were at supper) from the car park, where he had been ... parking cars. Let's not forget Zaphod's line, "It's the robot. He just called to wash his head at me."

YMMV
 

MatthewLouwrens

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In the radio series the Restaurant was on Magrathea. In the book, it was on Frogstar World B. In any case,you can at least defend the "other end of the universe" as not strictly being incorrect if the direction they were going took them away from the physical planet where the restaurant was situated.

Just a thought.
 

nolesrule

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Why are we getting so technical about the location of the Restaurant? The line was in there strictly to get a laugh, and I think it worked.
 

Jeff Cooper

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OK, there's one thing that I didn't get, and that was when Trillian steps out of the shower, after Arthur leaves, we see someone walking up to her, just out of frame so you can only see the back and side of her. It looks like a duplicate of Trillian from the back.

Then the scene cuts to the next scene, and this is never followed up on or mentioned again.

Did I miss something here? Was it just Trillian walking up to a mirror, or something?
 

ThomasC

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:laugh: She walked out of the shower and went to a mirror. You must have blanked out for a second.
 

Kain_C

Screenwriter
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Nov 17, 2002
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Not me. I don't care what some posters say, it does betray the novel and completely misses the charm of them. I guess I'll wait a couple of decades for them to try and do it again. I'll just go and read the novels for the fourth time.
 

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