hitchhikers guide to the galaxy trailer
polycounter lvl 18
http://wooderson.aintitcool.com/Hitchhikersguide.mov
could be VERY good or VERY shit depending on the luck of the draw.
could be VERY good or VERY shit depending on the luck of the draw.
Replies
Bill Bailey as the whale
My concern is that there is a lot to cram into the length of a movie... I want plent of extracts from the 'guide'
Frank the Avenger
still, i'm not sure about it either. The trailer couldn't get me excited in the least.
give them some credit for the 2 head solution on Zaphod, it's not like you really wanted to see a horrible second head grafted onto every scene, killing the dramatic energy and sucking money out of the CG budget needed elsewhere. also for marvin--he could have been CG, but i'm happy they didn't do it.
i'm just really blown over by the choice of casting. martin freeman, while he is indeed Tim from the office, is also the perfect everyman casting. i've always liked mos def and i think he's a welcome addition, zoey is darling, and sam rockwell brings all the smarm and charm needed for Zaphod. really looking forward to seeing this especially since i really haven't been paying attention to its development... nice get a surprise every once in a while
So I guess if you don't agree with Gauss, you're whining and bitching...
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, if its any help, I think people are whining a bit much too. Its just a movie based on a book that has been adapted tons of different ways in different mediums as has been pointed out here. How freakin' upset can fans really get at this latest iteration? I'd think you be used to it changing by now.
I'm not really crazy about how the new Fantastic Four movie looks, since I was a big fan of the comics. Casting isn't right for me, story changes, etc. But, whatever. I'll watch it and probably a large part of me will enjoy it anyway.
i just get a little tired about rampant fanboyism about particulars or holding a movie's productions versus what you'd personally imagined them to be. put yourself in the director's seat, how would you be handling zaphod's 2 heads? make every single scene with him in it a special effects shot?
like angry old comic book shop owner guy in my town, who insisted he would not even consider seeing the spiderman movie because parker didn't make mechanical web slingers. "the movie is fine for other people, but that's just not the same character i grew up with." OK, angry comic book shop owner guy. i'm sure next time we'll beg sam raimi to do a 5-part epic that sticks religiously to the original chronology. mechanical web slingers!!! honestly, is that an integral part of Peter Parker's character? no.
anyway, back to HHGTTG--it'd be one thing if the book in question were, in fact, something of the kind of LOTR. Tolkien was so measured about every little detail about the world that ommiting those particulars would have been a sizeable error. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, on the other hand, which still quite venerable in its own right, isn't that kind of book. to juggle and adapt the smaller particulars i would argue do not effect the quality of the adaptation, and are often necessary changes to adapt it successfully to the film medium.
the AICN report does say that there has been some muddling between the relationship between arthur/zaphod/trillian, which does bother me, and they most certainly should get the 'guide' excerpts spot-on, but it sounds like they will. i don't think it'll be perfect, but it looks to be the first A-list quality proper adaptation and i'm looking forward to it.
What I don't like is that it looks so americanized but that might be the trailer effect.
Though honestly, I doubt anyone outside of Monty Python could get the Hitchhiker right.
come on verm
[/ QUOTE ]
I was the only person in the thread to say things didn't look as I had "imagined", as you quoted, so it seemed you were pointing that at me. Anyway...
In general, I prefer adaptations that don't follow the source material in ironclad fashion. Frankly, I don't see the point in it - if I've already read a story one way, I don't think there's a lot of fun in seeing it regurgitated on screen verbatim. I mean, I've already been there and done that, so show me something different. However, this only really only extends to the peripheral bits. Like 'updating' the X-Men movies so they aren't dashing about in four-color spandex, and changing the origin story or team roster, etc. The important bits about the characters are still intact, and the changed details aren't terribly relevant.
I expect you don't agree, but the things I've seen from HHGTTG don't sit quite as well with me. Adams's humor is based on a lot of sight gags, depending on the reader's imagination to do the seeing. Think of the good gimmicks with Zaphod's two heads. He meets Trillian at a costume party while wearing a birdcage on one head as a 'disguise'. The part in which he's throwing drinks down both throats at once. Even small bits in which his heads get knocked together or yell at people independent of each other, etc. Not a big deal to you, perhaps, but I wanted to see that part of the character. And yes, I *did* want some sort of visual trickery used in every scene to accomplish that, just as I wanted and received some sort of visual trickery through 10 hours of the LOTR fils to convince me Sean Astin and Elijah Wood are three feet tall.
It's annoying that most special effects today are used for gratuitous slow-motion explosion effects or extraneous digital characters that are implemented just to show off a large movie effects budget, but when the chance to perfectly realize on film a cult fiction character as people have always imagined when reading him, it's not done...
Why, Frank? Seeing as Douglas penned many of them himself. Hitchhikers never has been exactly the same in it's previous forms.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm specifically worried about the changes that were added after Douglas died; from what I've read some 'typical' stuff was added for people that hadn't read the books, romance, action, etc. Reportedly not a lot, but like Verm has said, pretty important changes to the characters IMHO.
Frank the Avenger
Which would explain where all the laser fire in the trailer came from because I didn't remember any major space combat in the Hitchhiker.
but i still think that the totem pole heads for zaphod was the right solution, so that all the scenes with him (which i would imagine would comprise a considerable portion of the film) don't get bogged down with effects production. no doubt with today's compositing effects and whatnot they could do a great 2 headed zaphod--i would bet they at least did some screen tests to at least try it out. to me it would be more important to have zaphod act like zaphod and get funny/memorable scenes, rather than look completely like zaphod and have the acting quality suffer as a result. i dunno. maybe it would have been possible to have both, but probably would have required a bigger budget. in any case it's nice to have a movie to be looking forward to in a few months
Why can't Ford be black? Douglas Adams made it clear the only person who had to be a white brit was Arthur.