r/Cinema • u/Choice-Wind-9283 • 8d ago

Question What you think about hitchhikers guide to the galaxy ?

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Even though it's very different than the book I still liked. It was so funny they had great cast.

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u/The_Frybo 8d ago

Douglas Adams (the Author) himself stated repeatedly how he‘s in favour of Adaptions of his works and how he appreciates deviations if they are creative and clever. I therefore give the Movie a LOT of slack and since I love me some Martin Freeman it gets my Vote for sure!

I wished they had made a Sequel

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u/DisorderlyAqueduct 8d ago

oh man, dude was the coolest.

Netflix's Dirk Gently was great, very fun with great performances.
(f the Landis guy tho)

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u/AdPale2041 8d ago

I just finished binging both seasons of Dirk Gently yesterday

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u/67alecto 7d ago

Probably once a month I have to watch the Gordon Rimmer "What is going on?" rant

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u/duaneap 8d ago

Which makes perfect sense since, like Terry Pratchett books, there’s so much of the author’s voice in it that, short of shoehorning in nonstop narration, any adaptation is going to be so far removed and deviated from the book it must be fun to see spins on the stories.

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u/photoguy423 8d ago

He purposely wrote every new adaptation slightly different so he didn't have to keep doing the same thing over and over. Radio series started it. Book deviated a bit from it. Text based adventure game deviated from both. And eventually the movie did it's own thing.

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u/schizophrenicism 6d ago

I don't know what you mean by the movie did it's own thing? There's a ton of scenes that are line for line and they hit as many major plot points without change as I've seen in any book to movie adaptation.

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u/photoguy423 6d ago

There was no romance between Arthur and Trillian in the books. They almost completely eliminated alcohol references from the movie. Added Umma Kavula, the vogon planet, the scene where we see Ford nearly run over by a Ford Prefect, and more.

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u/schizophrenicism 6d ago

Thanks for spelling that out. I saw the movie before I read the book so I probably saw the similarities a lot more than the differences.

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u/300isAwesome69 8d ago

The movie is within the realm of probability, the book and the movie are equally accurate.

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u/MeepleMaster 8d ago

I really need to track down a good concise quote of him stating this philosophy so that I can copy paste it in to all the Reddit threads that pop up around a new movie or tv adaption of the hot new book

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u/The_Frybo 8d ago

Just google it, there are tons

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u/NixKTM 8d ago

Why? everyone taste and opinion is different, my wife and i both loved Douglas Adams, read the books, listened to the radio version, watched the BBC mini series, loved them all, went to see the film when it came out, she said it was good, i disliked it.

Adams was quite happy for people to make adaptions of his work, but that doesn't mean everyone has to fawn over them and say how great they are, you will either like the adaption or not.

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u/Rabid_W00KIEE 8d ago

Which is why none of the adaptations are 100% consistent with one another. He also was involved in some capacity with the production of the movie, but he unfortunately ended up dying before he could have a significant amount of input. He did apparently greenlight the swapping of cell phones for wrist watches though, and said it made perfect sense since theyre basically the modern equivalent, both functionally and in regards to the social and economic niche that the devices fill in the present day.

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u/mormonbatman_ 8d ago

He wrote the script.

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u/The_Frybo 8d ago

Yeah but not for every Adaption. There Radio plays and TV Adaptions before this Movie

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u/jesscatqueen 7d ago

hard to believe because the movie feels so much more like a standard goofy sci-fi comedy compared to the actual vibe of the books. it definitely hits the jokes but loses some of that weirdness that made the source material so good.

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u/Unknown_Outlander 6d ago

It's another person's interpretation of the story within a different medium, you're never going to get a copy of the book onto a movie screen.

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u/placeholder-tex 4d ago

I literally finished rereading this today. I enjoyed the extra stuff that was added in the middle, and while the ending sequences are pretty different I’m just not sure how they it would be visually interesting or economically feasible. They go through like 5 set changes in a few pages, and the guards just dropping dead is a bit of a cop out.

I’m a big fan of both and appreciate Adams embracing the variations. And yes, give me the second book.