April 27, 2005
Time to Panic
The introduction to The Restaraunt at the End of the Universe, the second book of the Hitchhiker's trilogy, begins thus:
The story so far:In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad
move.Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact
sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside
Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought.
That's it for the Jatravartids and Viltvodle VI in the books - a funny little throw-away gag. They never make another appearance. But for reasons completely incomprehensible to me, the THHGTTG movie makes this planet the center, as it were, of its Universe and chooses for the driving force of its story a bizarre character living there (played by John Malkovich) who simply doesn't exist in the books.
In fact, as I read the movie synopsis, I couldn't even figure out what the hell was going on at first. I knew it had been a long while since I read the books, but I was horrified at the idea that my memory had got that bad. It was only after a bit that I realized that the fault (at least this particular fault) was with the movie's story line, not my brain.
I've ranted before about Vogon screenplay adaptations on many occasions. It seems almost ironic that the worst example of this sort of thing may very well be THHGTTG itself.
Posted by Robert at April 27, 2005 11:00 AMIf they needed Douglas Adams villains, why not simply use the Krikkit-ers? Or even the Vogons?
While Adams does present certain difficulties from the point of view of a screenwriter (his books have no plots per se, they are really just a series of amusing incidents), certainly they could build up either a Vogon-who-is-trying-to-take-over-the-universe plot or a Krikkit-robots-have-John-Malkovich-as-an-evil-king plot and do less violence to the spirit of the books than this.
Posted by: The Colossus at April 27, 2005 11:34 AMBefore passing judgment, be sure to read the comments of executive producer Robbie Stamp on Slashdot.
In particular the following snippet:
Which changes were Adams' decisions?
by ygor
Consider: Every "incarnation" of tHHGttG has had variations such that no two are alike. Not including this one, Douglas Adams had a direct hand from start to finish of each version, so one cannot make remarks about accuracy or authenticity. While DNA started this one, he was taken from us before its completion. So, my question is: Which "divergences" in this version were done (under the guidance of) Douglas Adams and which (if any) were done by other folks after his passing. FWIW, I plan to ignore the critics and go see this film with a child-at-Christmas expectation. It should be great Eye Candy if nothing else.
RS: The script we shot was very much based on the last draft that Douglas wrote. I was also able to make available to Jay Roach and Karey Kirkpatrick many back story notes and ideas from Douglas' hard drive and Karey also had of course the book and the radio series to work with. All the substantive new ideas in the movie, Humma, the Point of View Gun and the "paddle slapping sequence" on Vogsphere are brand new Douglas ideas written especially for the movie by him. Karey came to be in awe of Douglas' genius and saw his role as primarily structural. Even the enhanced relationship between Arthur and Trillian (in which people seem to have detected the hand of the Studio) was something that Douglas was working on as well. As you yourself recognise in your question, Douglas was always up for reinventing HHGG in each of its different incarnations and he knew that working harder on some character development and some of the key relationships was an integral part of turning HHGG into a movie.
