Hitchhiker's Guide Movie Greenlighted

[ambient-whisper]

i soo hope it rocks.

[Agent D]

Whoa! I hope they pull it off right. It will be interesting to see their casting choices.

Douglas Adams was one of my favorite humor writers.

[klingspor]

I'd really love to see this work well, but in all honesty, I won't get my hopes up.

A fact is that most, if not all, of the humour in the books and the radio play comes from the way it's written. Without DNA's particular style of writing, most of the plot is rather dull and rarely funny.
See for example the whale floating about outside that planet - not very funny to see on film I'd suppose, but the writing had me laughing for hours!


Anyway, I'm interested in seeing how they'll pull this off, but I'm just expecting another butchering of a true classic...

[halo]

wonder if it will be an improvement on the existing tv series which worked well in some places or just yet another friggin hollywood remake POS

[Self-Designer]

I agree with stefanminning. Hitchhiker's Guide's humor based on a big mass of brakets notes (like this, but also funny) - In the TV version of the radio play they tried to visualize those jokes and it just looks stupid and so obvious of what they did (visualising notes, like that one). I don't know how ppl looked at this at those times (i think it was in the 70s? i wasn't even bornd)...

Anyway, lets wish them good luck! Maybe they'll suprise us :beer:

[An Erased One]

Oh dear God, please don't let them slaughter it.

Though computer graphics are advanced enough to create the world DNA describes, I doubt the humor can be translated into graphics easily.

[halo]

i think there was a definate "taste" to the TV series that was affected by the fact that it was a TV scifi series in the early 80's, but as a teenager it looked ok. I actually think the hand drawn stuff with the narration kept the flavour of the book well, but i'm doubtful how well it would work in a film or with the hollywood treatment...standby for a cg zaphod :S

[Spankspeople]

I'm just thankful that the script which IGN did a review of a few years back was completely and utterly destroyed... Not only did it change every characters personality drastically(Zaphod an evil genious mastermind?), it also had nothing to do with the original story... and apparently the Vogons dressed in black trench coats and had a giant army of mechanical spiders or something like that... I belive that a few months before he died, Adams said "No no no! For the love of Hod no! I'll shoot you all myself if this is made to exist, I really will!*" or something to that effect and it went away. Far far away. And the world danced for a bit and was better for it.

I figure that as long as that script isn't the one used, it'll at least be better than it would have been if it was, and that's really the only hope I have for the movie.

This reminds me of that time I got a copy of the Star Wars Episode 2 script leaked a few months beforehand... I said to myself "Dear pants this writing is terrible... this is obviously a cheap fan-made ripoff...", but then I saw the movie and it was nearly word for word what the script said... and I cried and cried...

Dunno why it reminds me of that... it just does.

[pgp_protector]

Originally posted by RobertoOrtiz
Quote:

The novel was previously adapted into a cheap-looking BBC series, which you can see on DVD and anticipate slightly better special effects for the new version."

-R

But that's what made the movie so grate, the way they did it. I hope they dont destroy it trying to make it "modern"

[Supervlieg]

Cool. Can't wait to see how this turns out. Ive gotta check out the series by the way

[krisr]

I just picked up the new 800+ page bonus hardcover containing all 5 stories plus a bonus story. I'm already half-way through and its fantastic! I can't see Douglas Adam's extensive imagination materialize on the big screen. Sounds like a great idea but the budget would be astronomical not to mention it would be a very long flick.

[Eldar]

Oh my. This will be quite a challenge.

I've seen a bit of the old series, and frankly, didn't think much of it.

Hitchhiker's Guide is one of those type of books that are borderline impossible to convert to movie format that would live up to the book.

On every other page in the book Adams goes off on a tangent that is neither an action scene, nor spoken by any character.

Best you could do is use a narrator reading the text straight from the book, but since there is so much of it, it is not going to exactly make a great movie material. And that stuff is what gives the book a lot of the charm.

Other than that, what made Adams immortal is the WAY he wrote. Half the stuff wouldn't be nearly as funny if you had no insight into what people were thinking. (Same goes for robots and hyper-intelligent shades of blue.)

I've been a huge fan of Adams for a long time, but I'm afraid this movie is going to just set the fans up for dissapointment.

[Supervlieg]

I smell trilogy...

[lricho]

the only way this movie will be any good is if they keep the froody hairstyles from the original, and zaphod's second head's ultra cool eyepatch ;)
really looking forward to a good adaption of it... so... fingers crossed.

[Self-Designer]

Originally posted by supervlieg
I smell trilogy...

pentalogy... and a half

He died in the middle of a sixth book.... i think it's finished with "the castle of aaaaaaaaaa...." (by the way, it was the castle of antarax, that's the only one starting with a... and robin did see the holy grail, the girls just use it for sex :buttrock: , but that's another story...)

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