Hitchhiking to the movies
May. 6th, 2005 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI first heard of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in an apa, from a member who was an American temporarily living in Germany. She wrote of this fabulous SF show she'd been hearing on BBC radio, but gave no specifics. Then it got a Hugo nomination, very rare for a drama without visuals, but I still knew little of it until the Worldcon, which happened to be in Britain that year and to which I happened to go. One of the program items was a playing of the tapes, for the benefit of those who'd happened to miss it. (It still hadn't appeared in any other form: book or recording.) The person in charge had a set of off-the-air tapes. He played us the first episode. Then he asked us if we wanted to hear the second one. Loud affirmatives. I think we got through 3 or 4 episodes before running out of time.
I can't quite imagine the same enthusiasm having welled up if the subject had been the new HHGG film, which curiosity drove me to see today. It was ... OK, but not much more than that. I liked the casting, the opening scene with the dolphins, the look of the Guide and of the Magrathea factory floor, Stephen Fry's voice and Alan Rickman's too. The totally new material was pretty good, especially the religious service. But the cuts were awkward and the pacing clumsy, a lot of the jokes were trimmed into losing the point or into pure incomprehensibility, and the plot was rejiggered to make it warmer. The distinctive character of HHGG is the complete coldness and indifference of the universe and just about everyone in it; the theme is the hopelessness of Arthur's reasonable desires. The insertion of a completely conventional love story between Arthur and Trillian, the expansion of Ford's casual helpfulness into a genuine affection for Arthur (though the "do you want a hug?" line was good), the emphasis on Zaphod's plight which puts everyone on the spaceship in the same dilemma and thus buddies in adversity, and the turning of the reconstruction of Earth into a simple reversal of everything that'd gone bad (including reviving all the dead) were like adding vast quantities of sugar to a deliberately sour drink.
No doubt some will say you have to make movies warm and fuzzy, or they won't sell. But please bear in mind that if the original radio show had been warm and fuzzy, it'd now be long forgotten. A HHGG film that stuck to the spirit of the original would have been something worthwhile. This film will shrug off and become a forgotten spinoff.
Before the show, a trailer for Revenge of the Sith in the form of a two-minute precis of the film. Even at two minutes it looked mind-bogglingly boring, full of stiff political dialogue. You can type this stuff, George, but you can't make me go see it.
I can't quite imagine the same enthusiasm having welled up if the subject had been the new HHGG film, which curiosity drove me to see today. It was ... OK, but not much more than that. I liked the casting, the opening scene with the dolphins, the look of the Guide and of the Magrathea factory floor, Stephen Fry's voice and Alan Rickman's too. The totally new material was pretty good, especially the religious service. But the cuts were awkward and the pacing clumsy, a lot of the jokes were trimmed into losing the point or into pure incomprehensibility, and the plot was rejiggered to make it warmer. The distinctive character of HHGG is the complete coldness and indifference of the universe and just about everyone in it; the theme is the hopelessness of Arthur's reasonable desires. The insertion of a completely conventional love story between Arthur and Trillian, the expansion of Ford's casual helpfulness into a genuine affection for Arthur (though the "do you want a hug?" line was good), the emphasis on Zaphod's plight which puts everyone on the spaceship in the same dilemma and thus buddies in adversity, and the turning of the reconstruction of Earth into a simple reversal of everything that'd gone bad (including reviving all the dead) were like adding vast quantities of sugar to a deliberately sour drink.
No doubt some will say you have to make movies warm and fuzzy, or they won't sell. But please bear in mind that if the original radio show had been warm and fuzzy, it'd now be long forgotten. A HHGG film that stuck to the spirit of the original would have been something worthwhile. This film will shrug off and become a forgotten spinoff.
Before the show, a trailer for Revenge of the Sith in the form of a two-minute precis of the film. Even at two minutes it looked mind-bogglingly boring, full of stiff political dialogue. You can type this stuff, George, but you can't make me go see it.
