HHGG, Or, I Don't Like Anything
May. 6th, 2005 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
learnedaxTo summarize the summary: You can't replace Douglas.
I was, first off, surprised at how little happened in the film. I'd been thinking, well, it's a lot to compress down into a two hour movie... but really, the plot was a streamlined version of the first three radio episodes, with many anecdotal diversions left aside. (Yes, it's also roughly the plot of the first book, but it's harder to quantify time of film against length of book.) So they turned 90 minutes of material into 120 by taking some out, and mostly filling in with little emotionally laden scenes that help break down the style of the original.
From a pure film standpoint it was, well, wacky. There were a few bits that were really very funny (the Vogon flyswatter things, for instance), and quite a number that were relatively amusing. It had very little going on plotwise, though, and its ending was abrupt and without any particular conclusion. It felt like a thin romantic plot trying to hold together a collection of bits that they wanted to fit in.
In terms of authenticity to the original material, I don't care so much about the plot. There are already three or five different versions, depending on how you count, so going in a totally different direction is fine... but as with so many adaptations, the reworking preserves lots of individual bits, but pretty much falls down utterly at the fundamentals of the original. On a specific level the characters were not terribly well represented: Arthur was passable, Ford and Zaphod were both generic weird guys oblivious to their surroundings, rather than uncaring and hyper-self-interested, Trillian was dumbed down, and Marvin was personality perfect (Go Go Alan Rickman) but visually entirely wrong. He was kind of a chibi-Marvin. Ugh. The personalities of the characters are very important to the social commentary and general feel of HH as a whole, and in particular Ford and Zaphod are almost completely obliterated. They make them goofy, which is something almost no one in Adams's world should be. They are sarcastic, bizarre, sometimes absurdly self-involved, but always played straight. The generic goofy weirdo seems to be a major modern cinematic trope, and it's almost always grossly misplaced.
On a more general level, practically all of Adams's work is a quirky British view of the absurdity of humanity, through the lens of whatever he's writing about (Vogons, Norse gods, endangered species), and the universal Englishness of the universe is not represented at all in the film. Further, the specific story of HH, in whatever version, has been about a fairly haphazard, opportunistic, lackadaisical journey to the ends of time and space, whereas the film is about a determined, intentional Quest, with several intentional sidetrips. I feel that both of these losses combine to gut the film of the elusive panache of the original, making it, as I thought when the opening song began, more of a revue of Adams's work than a translation of it.
(Speaking of the music, the new version of Journey of the Sorcerer was odd. I'm not sure why they picked it, since it was close to the original, just a bit off. I could see doing a symphonic version, or techno, or really any number of things to be intentionally distinct, but if you're going to be that similar, just use the original.)
Nonetheless, despite my complaints with it I think the film was reasonably worth seeing, as it is overall entertaining, and I'm happy that they did add some new material. In fact, the entire Vogon subplot was very well done. I like it better than the new radio series, certainly.
I was, first off, surprised at how little happened in the film. I'd been thinking, well, it's a lot to compress down into a two hour movie... but really, the plot was a streamlined version of the first three radio episodes, with many anecdotal diversions left aside. (Yes, it's also roughly the plot of the first book, but it's harder to quantify time of film against length of book.) So they turned 90 minutes of material into 120 by taking some out, and mostly filling in with little emotionally laden scenes that help break down the style of the original.
From a pure film standpoint it was, well, wacky. There were a few bits that were really very funny (the Vogon flyswatter things, for instance), and quite a number that were relatively amusing. It had very little going on plotwise, though, and its ending was abrupt and without any particular conclusion. It felt like a thin romantic plot trying to hold together a collection of bits that they wanted to fit in.
In terms of authenticity to the original material, I don't care so much about the plot. There are already three or five different versions, depending on how you count, so going in a totally different direction is fine... but as with so many adaptations, the reworking preserves lots of individual bits, but pretty much falls down utterly at the fundamentals of the original. On a specific level the characters were not terribly well represented: Arthur was passable, Ford and Zaphod were both generic weird guys oblivious to their surroundings, rather than uncaring and hyper-self-interested, Trillian was dumbed down, and Marvin was personality perfect (Go Go Alan Rickman) but visually entirely wrong. He was kind of a chibi-Marvin. Ugh. The personalities of the characters are very important to the social commentary and general feel of HH as a whole, and in particular Ford and Zaphod are almost completely obliterated. They make them goofy, which is something almost no one in Adams's world should be. They are sarcastic, bizarre, sometimes absurdly self-involved, but always played straight. The generic goofy weirdo seems to be a major modern cinematic trope, and it's almost always grossly misplaced.
On a more general level, practically all of Adams's work is a quirky British view of the absurdity of humanity, through the lens of whatever he's writing about (Vogons, Norse gods, endangered species), and the universal Englishness of the universe is not represented at all in the film. Further, the specific story of HH, in whatever version, has been about a fairly haphazard, opportunistic, lackadaisical journey to the ends of time and space, whereas the film is about a determined, intentional Quest, with several intentional sidetrips. I feel that both of these losses combine to gut the film of the elusive panache of the original, making it, as I thought when the opening song began, more of a revue of Adams's work than a translation of it.
(Speaking of the music, the new version of Journey of the Sorcerer was odd. I'm not sure why they picked it, since it was close to the original, just a bit off. I could see doing a symphonic version, or techno, or really any number of things to be intentionally distinct, but if you're going to be that similar, just use the original.)
Nonetheless, despite my complaints with it I think the film was reasonably worth seeing, as it is overall entertaining, and I'm happy that they did add some new material. In fact, the entire Vogon subplot was very well done. I like it better than the new radio series, certainly.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 01:25 am (UTC)[Still haven't seen the movie, and am in no great rush to...]
no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 02:48 am (UTC)But, basically, there are just two major versions, radio and book. I have a thing for the original forms of things, plus I had heard the radio series many many times before I read the books (which I should really read again, it's been at least ten years...), so it's pretty obvious which one I consider canonical. Nonetheless, while I consider the radio definitive, I'm not actually sure that it's better. The books have an awful lot of really good writing, much of it considerably better than similar parts of the radio show. So it's sort of a near thing.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 01:02 am (UTC)Yes, yes, that's it exactly. I gave up on the movie the first time I saw that, a good six months ago in publicity stills...