I went with friends to see the first showing of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Friday (complete with towel, which I didn’t want to bring because it would be embarrassing, which caused me to bring it, because I don’t want to be the kind of guy who thinks it’s beneath him to climb a tree or, say, carry a towel to a movie opening; also, I’m a hoopy frood, and the kind of guy who really knows where his towel is). I’m still mulling the movie over.
My primary observation is that, while very entertaining, it was not, in fact, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a movie that cleverly employed some plot elements from the book (mentally insert “/radio series” when I write “book”) and some of the characters from the book to create a new story altogether. It contained a number of references to the book and borrowed a number of plot elements, but was basically a whole new story.
There were lots of frustrating bits — things that were borrowed from the book and then twisted, for no particularly good reason. At no time, for example, did Marvin point out the terrible pain in all of the diodes down his left side. And Ford Prefect only saved Arthur Dent’s life because he owed him a favor? What ever happened to friendship? And I appreciate the need to keep things moving along, particularly prior to the demolition of Earth, I really do, but to have Ford inexplicably show up with a shopping cart full of beer and give it to the construction workers, rather than convince the foreman to lie down in front of the bulldozer? That just got things off on the wrong foot for me.
In a purely movie sense — ignoring the roots in the book — the second head effect for Zaphod Beeblebrox was just annoying, the Zaphod/Arthur/Trillian love triangle was bothersome, and the fight between Arthur and Zaphod was just bizarre. The Vogon poetry failed to make me scream in pain, and that should have just been left out. Arthur’s constant longing for Trillian was lame. And the Humma Kavula thing just didn’t fit in — he holds Zaphod’s second head hostage so that Zaphod will go to Magrathea (where Zaphod was already going) to retrieve a gun that Humma Kavula wants. So Zaphod goes to Magrathea, gets the gun, and never gives it to the guy, and Marvin ends up using it to save the day and halt the Vogons. Despite, by the end of the movie, Zaphod is back to normal — his personality has balanced out, despite his presumably still-missing head that contains the more presidential elements of his mind. I don’t know what the point of the whole gun-quest thing was.
Highlights include: The casting of Martin Freeman, Mos Def and Zooey Deschanel. Alan Rickman’s absolutely perfect voicing of Marvin. Preserving the goofy theme song. The great original music. The fantastic planet-making scene.
I’m hoping that there will not be a sequel. I think that it would be best to leave it at this. If it had been possible — and I think it may not be — to make the movie more true to the book (witness the Harry Potter and LOTR series), I’d be happy with carrying on. But I’d like for this to be a one-off, rather than see it sadly slouch through a series that inevitably becomes worse as it goes along.
What I’m really looking forward to is the BBC’s ongoing radio dramatization of the rest of the series. I quite enjoy what I’ve heard so far.