"there are five books, and Adams wrote a few chapters of the sixth before he died young. A real tragedy."
Well, The Salmon of Doubt was actually being written as a Dirk Gently book, but I believe he determined that the reason it wasn't working was because the story he had should really have been a Hitchhiker's Guide book. So, if he had lived, that's probably what it would have ended up being. But, the chapters that exist are about DG.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote: Good to hear about the mice, though the news of the HoG's spherical obsession is a bit saddening, I always pictured it as something sleek and graceful, at least from the description in the books that's what I imagined.
TPTB did experiment with ships that looked like 20-inch-heel shoes or flattened sneakers, but ultimately they decided they wanted a flying porcelain teapot. Which is sort of appropriate, considering the nature of the propulsion mechanism.
I can't believe how spot-on the main casting appears to be! Although I hear they have taken a few liberties with the backstories of both Trillian and Zaphod...
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Trillian's backstory was hardly the most consistent or in-depth anyway though.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
So I ask again, how much of the bloody books are in the movie? Does it go all the way up to the cricket games and Arthur's daughter? Or what?
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
It's just the first book. At the end, they go off looking for something to eat. "I hear there's a restaurant at the end of the universe." So there's actually a lot of things left unanswered, but it still works in my opinion. Gotta leave room for a sequel!
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So is the general consensus that the movie is good or not? It's ranked at 7/10 over at the IMDb, but most of my friends that have seen it have been complaining about it to varying degrees.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
It's a good movie, but it's got the same curse every book made into a movie has - you can't fit everything into two hours, nor will you make everyone happy. I'd still recommend seeing it, though.
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But it wasn't a book made into a movie. It was a radio show made into a book made into a TV show made into a movie made into a towel. Or something.
Panic!
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by B.J.: It's a good movie, but it's got the same curse every book made into a movie has - you can't fit everything into two hours, nor will you make everyone happy. I'd still recommend seeing it, though.
B.J.
Just what I was gonna say! As movies go, it's OK. As HHGTTG (am I the only one that hates H2G2?) it's not as good.
$$ SPOILERS $$ allbeit very mild ones.
The relationship that seems to be bubbling between Trillian and Arthur is rather cringe worthy, but I did lean towards the idea that Douglas Addams always wanted them to have more of a dynamic than we (that is all those who have heard of the Great Ursor Minor Publishing Corporation) have seen thus far.
Watch the movie. Then buy the book. Then throw the book at the neighbours cat as it creaps into your garden looking for somewhere to crap un-noticed, and listen to the radio show on CD. The BBC have now fineshed transforming the books into radio plays (doesn't quite work as well as the other way around) but it's still great.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Haven't seen the movie yet, though I don't hope they go for the full five books. The last two get pretty random and eccentric to the extreme. Isn't at least one of the books technically thrown out of the continuit altogether? It depends on who gets eaten by the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal...
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Go see the movie. Although it was hardly perfect -- as was already stated, they couldn't fit everything into two hours -- I would say that the producers ended up quite faithfully transferring Adams' vision to the cinema format. It's best to approach the movie as more of a "reimagining" by the original author in a different medium rather than a direct transposition of every detail.
For example (mild spoilers unless you've seen the trailers), the scene where the characters are getting slapped in the face by giant fly swatters is hilarious (and one of those scenes that Adams himself wrote specifically for the movie before he died) because it makes effective use of visual (dare I say "slapstick"?) humor, something that almost certainly could not have been accomplished in a textual medium.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Ginger Beacon: The BBC have now fineshed transforming the books into radio plays (doesn't quite work as well as the other way around) but it's still great.
Didn't they finish doing that back in the mid-80s? Or have they done the remaining three books?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
The older shows only handled the first two books. Sorta.
They aired the 6-part radio version of book 3 (or in their words, The Tertiary Phase) last summer and they've aired two episodes of the remaining two books which have been adapted to an 8-part batch, IIRC.
Of course these shows have to fit the continuity of the books a bit better since they don't have Douglas Adams around and they would be harder books to adapt anyways, but I'm still quite enjoying it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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