as opposed to the common conception that mos def is a miscast, i believe martin freeman is the actual sleeper miscast here. he doesnt radiate the same joy for life that arthur dent does in the books, despite being a whiny miserable c**t.
I was so disappointed, the first book was read by Stephen Fry and he did great, then Martin Freeman takes over for book 2 onwards and just fricks it up
I didn't know the radio play came first, I thought the books did, and BBC adaptations of things have been of wildly varying quality and accuracy in the past, so I thought I would use my existing audible subscription to listen to the book
2 years ago
Anonymous
According to Adams, they're all accurate because it was never his intention for them all to be the same.
>doesnt radiate the same joy for life that arthur dent does in the books
I don't feel he really does radiate a joy for life until the later books though, in the first one he's mostly massively depressed about Earth being blown up and everything being totally alien to him and that he can't even get a proper cup of tea
It was poorly received and didn't make much money after having been in development hell forever. Everyone involved was ready to move on to other things and forget about it. Also the fanbase for it was geeky Gen-Xers from the anglosphere. Why bother with a niche when you can make more superhero movies with global appeal across generations?
The movie sucked a lot of the life out of the story from the book by trying to adopt it to contemporary humor. Can't imagine what a shitshow it would be if made today.
the humour is mostly based on verbose descriptions of things, which is funny in a book where the concept of comic timing is different, but longwinded and cringeworthy on tv. like terry pratchett, ben elton etc.
This. I think the radio show works ok but live-action film and tv has never been the ideal medium for it. The movie tries but is still nowhere near as funny as the radio/books, and I don't think the tv show captures the humour well at all.
Disagree personally, not even racist - I like Mos Def as an artist.
Literally makes no sense for an American to play a character called Ford Prefect though - if they made a joke out of him being American due to him assuming that, based on western media, being American would make him more inconspicuous. Literally doesn't make sense for him to have chosen the name Ford Prefect if he's American
the whole reason he is called Ford Prefect was because that was a super common model of car in England in the 70s, so he thought it would be 'nicely inconspicuous' - if he's going around with a American accent he sticks out like a sore thumb in 70s England though
Most people in England don't get the joke now either. It worked well when the radio show was first written but now falls into the same category as the 'Pepsi Free' joke in 'Back to the Future'.
Yeah, but the point being he'd chosen that name because it was extremely common in England (even if it was referring to a model of car) for him then to adopt an American accent just doesn't fit with that joke at all
the joke is that he misjudged what was "common" on earth. that's the joke. his accent even adds to his misconception. total moron.
someone having an american accent in the bongland countryside even adds to his persona of being an outsider pretending to fit in.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>the joke is that he misjudged what was "common" on earth
No, he misjudged what was "common" in England, where Ford Prefects were made. The joke only makes sense in the context of him researching England, so it doesn't make sense for him to decide to mimic an American accent
2 years ago
Anonymous
he was researching earth
his conclusion was that it was mostly harmless
why are you so obsessed
2 years ago
Anonymous
he concluded that after he already arrived though and it was heavily implied he was England the whole time given how long he says he was stranded and how long he'd known Arthur
2 years ago
Anonymous
the anon is right and the movie sucks
2 years ago
Anonymous
Wasn't that his editor's conclusion? Ford wrote huge amounts of material about Earth and an editor cut it down to just "Mostly Harmless".
The whole point of the character is that he disguises his weird alien qualities by pretending to be a rural middle-class English eccentric. Why would he be a black american man?
>he's an alien and not good at being inconspicuous
That's not true though, other than the name if he wasn't good at being inconspicuous he wouldn't have been able to convince Arthur that he was a 6'2 ape-descendent from Guildford for six years
The gag is that he's fricking weird but the locals write it off because he's ostensibly an eccentric middle-class English person and in the UK we let those types get away with all sorts of strange behaviour. It's Douglas Adams making a joke about how those sorts of people may as well literally be aliens.
This. It's not the greatest gag in the world and Mos Def's performance is fine but it's still a miscasting, and I don't get why they had to make all the main cast American except Arthur.
What works as the ending to a book might not work as the ending to a 1hr 30 min film. It's got to provide some sort of resolution, I dunno I really liked the film and it had Douglas Adams's blessing so it's the best you'll get.
The production design for everything was on point too, loved the Vogons.
This was the early-mid 2000s; Hollywood wasn't adapting anything unless they gave it a conventional Hollywood movie structure. All things considered we should be grateful that the movie ended up as weird/offbeat as it did.
There was supposed to be a series coming to Hulu last year but it was 'postponed' to this year - there is literally no info about casting or anything though.
Honestly don't think it will come off - it's one of those things that could be considered 'unfilmable' due to the variety of locations and scenes, the way the narrative flows and the amount of dialogue given to the book.
it's a matter of time before some shit streaming service picks it up again and totally destroys it. look at all the other lessor known IP's that got greenlit and cratered
The biggest mistake was changing Zaphod's 2 heads. We could have had Sam Rockwell agreeing/arguing with himself, like Moon only more so. Instead he was more of a background character, barely more than Marvin.
they did not have the money to do it properly
the second head was removed so it could be reattached properly for the sequel that never happened and im glad because the humor and big ideas from the book were condensed down until they became zany and shallow
Zaphod is difficult because in the books, though he has two heads, most of the time he speaks as one person and the second head isn't even mentioned. Having the two be semi-independent but still disagree sometimes could work. Something along the lines of how the conjoined teachers talk, finishing each other's sentences and being mostly in agreement but with some individiuality expressed.
the second head is characterized frequently as basically dazed and looking around with a disinterested moronic expression, except occasionally it takes control and springs into action and the prime head just has to go with it. rockwell's characterization of the second taking over was spot-on. they just thought having the head pop out of his chest was either a good idea or cheaper than modeling the second head full time.
there was also the bit about how zaphod had some sort of secret plan printed between both brain and set to trigger in response to specific shit, but he didn't know the plan and no one could extract it from him, so the only solution was to just let him do what he programmed himself to do and then try to stop him as he's doing it.
>ford prefect >Supposed to be a gingerly bearded manlet with the personality of rick sanchez >it's an unfunny Black rapper in a trenchcoat
So fricking tired of this. Also martin freeman is a coon loving cuck
You're an Alien researching a backwater planet. Therefore you pick the look of one of the most populous races as your disguise; Asian or African. You pick the language and accent that has has been broadcast most often into space via radio waves; American. You land in a country that has, for better or worse, had the most influence on recent human history; England. You call yourself the name of a popular item; unfortunately a car from the 70s.
It all makes absolute logical sense. The trouble is when added together it makes him stick out like a sore thumb. I think Mos Def was great for that illusion.
I liked both versions of Dirk Gently. The poor Dirk of the first version was better but the Max Landis one had more time and money to tell its story. The gay stuff was tacked on by Max because he's a rump ranger and it's a bit of a distraction that adds nothing unless you too are an ass archer.
i liked the max version. i liked his sister. i liked thinking about cuddling and kissing with her and her beating me up a little bit inside that rowdy boys van and driving around with the rowdy boys and beating up all the kids who were mean to me in high school
This movie gave me Fifth Element vibes in hindsight, which is one of my favorite films so I can't hate it. It has a similar kind of ensemble cast and the Vogons are like Mondoshawans mixed with Mangalores.
Ha ha. But seriously the creature effects were done by the same people and it's all euro sci fi. They came out quite close together too. Obviously the book predates both Fifth Element and The Incal by a large margin though.
I watched pic related the other day and it felt like it was heavily inspired by Douglas Adams and Hitchhikers.
The way the narrative unfolds and how humour and abdsurdity is used to engage with complex ideas in a simple way felt very similar.
Up until recently things had to be made into movies or they wouldn't get made at all. It's starting to become the inverse honestly and soon things that would have benefited being a short condensed film or 2 are being stretched out painfully over several seasons of a show.
because they actually spent the budget on making movies instead of dumping 90% of it into shell companies and hiring a bunch of third worlders to do it for nothing.
Too much Zooey would cause diabeetus.
but they did
Superior Tricia McMillan
Superior 2 headed Zaphod
Superior Marvin
Hotblack Desiato
Ark Fleet Ship B
What A Wonderful World outro
Can’t believe some people haven’t seen this SOVL kino.
I don't know why I didn't enjoy this movie. I just felt kind of meh about it
as opposed to the common conception that mos def is a miscast, i believe martin freeman is the actual sleeper miscast here. he doesnt radiate the same joy for life that arthur dent does in the books, despite being a whiny miserable c**t.
YES! Freeman's Dent was a whiny b***h.
He was terrible at the audiobook reading too. He gave the captain guy a brooklyn accent for some reason
I was so disappointed, the first book was read by Stephen Fry and he did great, then Martin Freeman takes over for book 2 onwards and just fricks it up
why would you listen to the audiobook when you can just listen to the far superior radioplay
I didn't know the radio play came first, I thought the books did, and BBC adaptations of things have been of wildly varying quality and accuracy in the past, so I thought I would use my existing audible subscription to listen to the book
According to Adams, they're all accurate because it was never his intention for them all to be the same.
>doesnt radiate the same joy for life that arthur dent does in the books
I don't feel he really does radiate a joy for life until the later books though, in the first one he's mostly massively depressed about Earth being blown up and everything being totally alien to him and that he can't even get a proper cup of tea
It was poorly received and didn't make much money after having been in development hell forever. Everyone involved was ready to move on to other things and forget about it. Also the fanbase for it was geeky Gen-Xers from the anglosphere. Why bother with a niche when you can make more superhero movies with global appeal across generations?
isn't the source material reddit incarnate?
It's a product of its time, but it's lolsrandumb humour certainly hasn't aged well
Everything Everywhere All At Once certainly didn't seem to have any trouble adapting its style of humor for a current year audience.
The movie sucked a lot of the life out of the story from the book by trying to adopt it to contemporary humor. Can't imagine what a shitshow it would be if made today.
The books are great and reddit is gay
the humour is mostly based on verbose descriptions of things, which is funny in a book where the concept of comic timing is different, but longwinded and cringeworthy on tv. like terry pratchett, ben elton etc.
This. I think the radio show works ok but live-action film and tv has never been the ideal medium for it. The movie tries but is still nowhere near as funny as the radio/books, and I don't think the tv show captures the humour well at all.
this made me cry
One of the few instances of blackwashing that probably improved the character.
Disagree personally, not even racist - I like Mos Def as an artist.
Literally makes no sense for an American to play a character called Ford Prefect though - if they made a joke out of him being American due to him assuming that, based on western media, being American would make him more inconspicuous. Literally doesn't make sense for him to have chosen the name Ford Prefect if he's American
you moron
the whole joke behind the name of his character doesn't make sense in that context though
He's an alien, you do know that right?
the whole reason he is called Ford Prefect was because that was a super common model of car in England in the 70s, so he thought it would be 'nicely inconspicuous' - if he's going around with a American accent he sticks out like a sore thumb in 70s England though
Most people in England don't get the joke now either. It worked well when the radio show was first written but now falls into the same category as the 'Pepsi Free' joke in 'Back to the Future'.
>being American would make him more inconspicuous
one of the memes in the book is the fact that he WASN'T INCONSPICUOUS
he was a weirdo alien on earth
Yeah, but the point being he'd chosen that name because it was extremely common in England (even if it was referring to a model of car) for him then to adopt an American accent just doesn't fit with that joke at all
the joke is that he misjudged what was "common" on earth. that's the joke. his accent even adds to his misconception. total moron.
someone having an american accent in the bongland countryside even adds to his persona of being an outsider pretending to fit in.
>the joke is that he misjudged what was "common" on earth
No, he misjudged what was "common" in England, where Ford Prefects were made. The joke only makes sense in the context of him researching England, so it doesn't make sense for him to decide to mimic an American accent
he was researching earth
his conclusion was that it was mostly harmless
why are you so obsessed
he concluded that after he already arrived though and it was heavily implied he was England the whole time given how long he says he was stranded and how long he'd known Arthur
the anon is right and the movie sucks
Wasn't that his editor's conclusion? Ford wrote huge amounts of material about Earth and an editor cut it down to just "Mostly Harmless".
The whole point of the character is that he disguises his weird alien qualities by pretending to be a rural middle-class English eccentric. Why would he be a black american man?
That's the point, he's an alien and not good at being inconspicuous.
>he's an alien and not good at being inconspicuous
That's not true though, other than the name if he wasn't good at being inconspicuous he wouldn't have been able to convince Arthur that he was a 6'2 ape-descendent from Guildford for six years
oh wait it's actually Arthur whose height is described, my bad
The gag is that he's fricking weird but the locals write it off because he's ostensibly an eccentric middle-class English person and in the UK we let those types get away with all sorts of strange behaviour. It's Douglas Adams making a joke about how those sorts of people may as well literally be aliens.
This. It's not the greatest gag in the world and Mos Def's performance is fine but it's still a miscasting, and I don't get why they had to make all the main cast American except Arthur.
Because you were like "please just stick to making music" right?
If they kept making movies, who should have been cast as Fenchurch?
Shame she bogged herself
They did in the 80s but it only lasted a few episodes and was obviously low budget but really good.
the 80s show actually goes beyond HHGTG and covers restaurant at the end of the universe too. I think it was more than a few episodes, I had it on VHS
It's one of those series that remains underexploited, and that's a good thing. I consider the 4th book to be the true ending.
which one has volume 2 of the guide erasing all of existence?
5th book
Time is an illusion. Lunch Time? Doubly so
Film missed the point of the books entirely by having a gay Hollywood ending. Otherwise it was pretty decent. Casting was good.
What works as the ending to a book might not work as the ending to a 1hr 30 min film. It's got to provide some sort of resolution, I dunno I really liked the film and it had Douglas Adams's blessing so it's the best you'll get.
The production design for everything was on point too, loved the Vogons.
>it had Douglas Adams's blessing
Well I guess to the point he died before the script was even finished...
This was the early-mid 2000s; Hollywood wasn't adapting anything unless they gave it a conventional Hollywood movie structure. All things considered we should be grateful that the movie ended up as weird/offbeat as it did.
There was supposed to be a series coming to Hulu last year but it was 'postponed' to this year - there is literally no info about casting or anything though.
Honestly don't think it will come off - it's one of those things that could be considered 'unfilmable' due to the variety of locations and scenes, the way the narrative flows and the amount of dialogue given to the book.
it's a matter of time before some shit streaming service picks it up again and totally destroys it. look at all the other lessor known IP's that got greenlit and cratered
The biggest mistake was changing Zaphod's 2 heads. We could have had Sam Rockwell agreeing/arguing with himself, like Moon only more so. Instead he was more of a background character, barely more than Marvin.
>We could have had Sam Rockwell agreeing/arguing with himself
That was exactly what happened, though.
The 5 second segment where the dumb head hit the button? That was pretty much it.
That and pretty much every other 5 second segment he appeared in.
they did not have the money to do it properly
the second head was removed so it could be reattached properly for the sequel that never happened and im glad because the humor and big ideas from the book were condensed down until they became zany and shallow
Zaphod is difficult because in the books, though he has two heads, most of the time he speaks as one person and the second head isn't even mentioned. Having the two be semi-independent but still disagree sometimes could work. Something along the lines of how the conjoined teachers talk, finishing each other's sentences and being mostly in agreement but with some individiuality expressed.
the second head is characterized frequently as basically dazed and looking around with a disinterested moronic expression, except occasionally it takes control and springs into action and the prime head just has to go with it. rockwell's characterization of the second taking over was spot-on. they just thought having the head pop out of his chest was either a good idea or cheaper than modeling the second head full time.
there was also the bit about how zaphod had some sort of secret plan printed between both brain and set to trigger in response to specific shit, but he didn't know the plan and no one could extract it from him, so the only solution was to just let him do what he programmed himself to do and then try to stop him as he's doing it.
bros, trillian in the books basically proves you need to money/personality/statusmax
mos def was dogshit as ford. they took the zaniest character in the entire story and made him utterly deadpan. the casting in general was atrocious.
I just watched 16 blocks same nig right?
>ford prefect
>Supposed to be a gingerly bearded manlet with the personality of rick sanchez
>it's an unfunny Black rapper in a trenchcoat
So fricking tired of this. Also martin freeman is a coon loving cuck
You're an Alien researching a backwater planet. Therefore you pick the look of one of the most populous races as your disguise; Asian or African. You pick the language and accent that has has been broadcast most often into space via radio waves; American. You land in a country that has, for better or worse, had the most influence on recent human history; England. You call yourself the name of a popular item; unfortunately a car from the 70s.
It all makes absolute logical sense. The trouble is when added together it makes him stick out like a sore thumb. I think Mos Def was great for that illusion.
sad they made that character a jogger but still a fun flick
I'm probably the only person on earth who did but I really liked the Dirk Gently tv show.
(the Max Landis)
I liked both versions of Dirk Gently. The poor Dirk of the first version was better but the Max Landis one had more time and money to tell its story. The gay stuff was tacked on by Max because he's a rump ranger and it's a bit of a distraction that adds nothing unless you too are an ass archer.
Been thinking about rewatching that.
i liked the max version. i liked his sister. i liked thinking about cuddling and kissing with her and her beating me up a little bit inside that rowdy boys van and driving around with the rowdy boys and beating up all the kids who were mean to me in high school
The Rowdy Boy would have beat you up and then made you watch them gang bang the sister.
The romance in the movie was awful. Zero chemistry and it dragged the movie every time it took focus over the alien adventures.
omg he's literally me <3
The puppets and practical FX in this movie were fricking great and they don't get nearly enough credit.
>no third arm
the third one is hidden under the scarf
I really want the toasting breadknife she used. That would be awesome.
I jacked off to this scene repeatedly when this movie came out.
I think the film is decent and better than both the radio and the tv series.
Rick & Morty stole all their ideas.
This movie gave me Fifth Element vibes in hindsight, which is one of my favorite films so I can't hate it. It has a similar kind of ensemble cast and the Vogons are like Mondoshawans mixed with Mangalores.
>This movie gave me Fifth Element vibes in hindsight
Luc Besson was a very influential filmmaker: I got a LOT of Fifth Element vibes watching Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
Ha ha. But seriously the creature effects were done by the same people and it's all euro sci fi. They came out quite close together too. Obviously the book predates both Fifth Element and The Incal by a large margin though.
>They came out quite close together too.
Fifth Element - 1997
HGTTG - 2005
I watched pic related the other day and it felt like it was heavily inspired by Douglas Adams and Hitchhikers.
The way the narrative unfolds and how humour and abdsurdity is used to engage with complex ideas in a simple way felt very similar.
SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE
I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle
I attack everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it's often difficult to tell which is which.
Up until recently things had to be made into movies or they wouldn't get made at all. It's starting to become the inverse honestly and soon things that would have benefited being a short condensed film or 2 are being stretched out painfully over several seasons of a show.
why is it that the CGI looked so good in this movie but movies made almost 20 years later look ridiculous?
because they actually spent the budget on making movies instead of dumping 90% of it into shell companies and hiring a bunch of third worlders to do it for nothing.