My hero!

[ChrisM]

It is a good thing for my son that I had not seen HGTTG before he was born or he may very well have been named Zaphod.

-Chris

"Presidential fame is temporary.  I find the ultimate question, that's permanent, It sticks.  Plus everyone thinks you're deep. Win-win!"

[Evil-Devil]

Who is that guy?

[Matzon]

Zaphod Beeblebrox
The books are WAY better than the movie tho

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Evil-Devil]

Ah. Haven't read the book neither seen the movie. Am I out now?

[Ask_Hjorth_Larsen]

I liked the movie. But still the movie isn't quite like the books. You should read the remaining stories as well, for the sake of Zarquon!

And yes, Evil-Devil, you are, like, totally out

[ChrisM]

Zaphod Beeblebrox
The books are WAY better than the movie tho

I agree and is the case with most movie adaptations.  However, Sam Rockwell is BRILLIANT as Zaphod in this movie

Here is his campaign video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGqWwxPpz5I

-Chris

[princec]

You ought to get hold of the original BBC radio series. And the BBC TV series. The original and best Arthur Dent and Zaphod in that

Cas

[kevglass]

Don't forget the original Ford - he was far superior.

Kev Dent.

[beowulf03809]

The movie was fun and ( IMHO) a good intro for people that are only vaguely familiar with the story.  However...the depth of character building you get in the books just can't be touched in a 2 hour movie.  The BBC radio broadcasts ( which I believe you can find online too ) are probaby the best adaptation and the original BBC tv is really close as well. 

I got hooked on HHGTG watching the BBC shows on PBS ( right there with Dr. Who, Blakes 7 and Tripods ) and then discovered the books.   if the movie got you interrested in the Zaphod character then you too should grab the book.  His ego is even bigger if you can possibly imagine that!   

 
  ^^ 
Zaphod's two heads.     

[kevglass]

Oooooh, Tripods! I'd almost forgotten - wonderful BBC series.

Kev

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[ChrisM]

The movie was fun and ( IMHO) a good intro for people that are only vaguely familiar with the story.  However...the depth of character building you get in the books just can't be touched in a 2 hour movie.  The BBC radio broadcasts ( which I believe you can find online too ) are probaby the best adaptation and the original BBC tv is really close as well. 

I got hooked on HHGTG watching the BBC shows on PBS ( right there with Dr. Who, Blakes 7 and Tripods ) and then discovered the books.   if the movie got you interrested in the Zaphod character then you too should grab the book.  His ego is even bigger if you can possibly imagine that!   

 
  ^^ 
Zaphod's two heads.     

Oh no, I have the books.  Just Sam's performance was fantastic!

-Chris

[Breakfast]

I thought the film was an order of magnitude better than I expected it to be. DNA always changed stuff between formats anyways and so in a way some of the film ideas were pretty much the last of his work to reach us. When the theme kicked in and it was the original one from the radio series I knew it would probably be ok. I didn't think that big-headed Marvin looked great but he was brilliantly dolorous.

You'd have thought it would be more obvious to Arthur that Ford in the movie wasn't from somewhere near Guildford because he couldn't pronounce the town's name, but then I guess being from somewhere near Guildford I would really notice that...

[nonnus29]

HGTG and Monty Python - geek humor classics I don't understand. Haven't seen the movie but I read the books back when they first came out.  Even played the infocom text adventure on my c-64, but I just don't see the humor.

 

[Markus_Persson]

I have no idea what's so funny about HGTG, but I love Monty Python.

"The spaceships hung in the air exactly the way like bricks don't" = Not funny. Seriously.

However, THIS is funny:

Brian: You are all individuals!
Crowd: YES, YES, WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!
Brian: You are all different!
Crowd: YES, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT!
Lone Voice: I'm not.
Person next to him: SHH!

:-D

[Evil-Devil]

Hehe, Monty Python is great. I like the scene with the Black Knight in the wood. Its so coooooool ^^

[beowulf03809]

Douglas Adams' writting is one of those things that either strike you right or it doesn't.  Just like Monty Python or perhaps the Far Side comic series.  My wife just does not understand why I find MP funny, but I had no trouble getting her hooked on Far Side.  I think she would like HHGTG but she hasn't given it a shot yet.  It's all just situational.  DA's writting presents things in a way that is so different than you would expect ( like your "ships hanging in the air" quote ) and you either "get it" or you don't ( not meaning you can't understand...simply that it doesn't make sense ).  Where much of Monty Python has me laughing, most of DA's work isn't laugh-out-loud funny, but rather something that amuses me at a differnt level than almost anything else around.

Likewise, I can't believe anyone watches most of the game shows, ANY "reality" show, or nearly any talk show that's on the air.  But millions of other American's do. I just don't get it.

I agree that the story's evolution into the movie did have some really interresting and well done concepts.  The way they did the rakes that poped up and smacked you whenever you had an idea just about had me rolling.  I wanted to grab an illegal copy of the film off the internet just to get that scene and send it to some of my coworkers.  But the ending really let me down.  It's a LOT of story to tell in a single short movie.  But I think they did a pretty decent job for the most part.

I still prefer Zaphod having his two heads side by side though. 

[ChrisM]

I have no idea what's so funny about HGTG, but I love Monty Python.

"The spaceships hung in the air exactly the way like bricks don't" = Not funny. Seriously.

Agreed that DA's writing is mostly not laugh out loud funny.  However, I believe that the movie did an excellent job of distilling the main plot points and making them mostly funny.  Again, all of Zaphod's scenes are amazing.  Especially when they land on Planet Vogsphere and Arthur asks him what he thinks...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO9392lSWmk

-Chris

[beowulf03809]

That's it, Chris!   

Of course, now that you made me laugh my co-workers are wondering what I'm doing over here.   

[Matzon]

my favorite quote:

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly
useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see
 it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says
God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not
have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own
arguments, you don't. QED.'
"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a
puff of logic.
"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black
is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

that did actually make me laugh for quite a bit of time!!

[beowulf03809]

There are actually some really funny parts in his work.  I guess I meant more that a lot of his humor is not laugh-out-loud funny ( at least for me ) from end-to-end.  Not to diminish the entertainment value in the slightest by that though.

His concept of a "Somebody Else's Problem" field is still one of my favorite ideas of all times.

[bahuman]

Discworld, anyone ? 

To me, Terry Pratchett is everything Douglas Adams ever wanted to be as a little boy. And he failed miserably. I can read the Discworld series over and over again, but I never bothered to plough my way through hitchhiker's guide 

[kevglass]

Thats just a disgusting comparison

Terry Pratchett is brilliant - but his comedy is like slap stick compared to the beauty of what Adams did. Get the Salmon of Doubt and read Adam's random musing over the world - I was crying with laughter at points.

Though I don't think anything beats the passage in the Light Fantastic (Colour of Magic?) where the thief gets dress in front of mirror - strapping on every gadget in existence - tool for this tool for that - then.. well I suppose I should let those who don't read Pratchett find out on their own.

Two very different authors, both brilliant and both capable of making me cry with laugheter.

Kev

[Ask_Hjorth_Larsen]

Discworld, anyone ?  Grin

To me, Terry Pratchett is everything Douglas Adams ever wanted to be as a little boy. And he failed miserably. I can read the Discworld series over and over again, but I never bothered to plough my way through hitchhiker's guide  Undecided

You can't say that! Somebody do something! He can't say that, can he?

Still - I love Terry Pratchett's work very much, particularly Truckers. I never thought about any similarity between him and Douglas Adams.

The whole idea of the origin of our species is BRILLIANT (that's in one of the other stories commonly packaged with HHGTTG). There are lots of really funny sequences in HHGTTG, although even I find some of it a bit far fetched (what's with all the random teleportation? I mean even when they are NOT using the improbability drive).

[bahuman]

Still - I love Terry Pratchett's work very much, particularly Truckers. I never thought about any similarity between him and Douglas Adams.

I'm genuinly surprised nobody compared the two before!

There are many similarities in their sense of humor: both use wacky, insufferable characters in a world that is much more like ours than the first glance would reveal. And they use those characters to tell us something about our own world. The big difference is: Pratchett loves his characters deeply, and none of them is a cartoon character: they all have real personalities. Heck, for every sidekick ever introduced in any of the Discworld books, there's another book where this character plays the lead 

Zaphod, on the other hand, is so one dimensional, I'm sure it took Adams a lot of WORK to avoid any character development! It feels more like a literary experiment than a story. And call me crazy, but I prefer a story 

PS: Truckers is to Discworld what "the hobbit" is to "the lord of the rings" !

[ChrisM]

Zaphod, on the other hand, is so one dimensional, I'm sure it took Adams a lot of WORK to avoid any character development! It feels more like a literary experiment than a story. And call me crazy, but I prefer a story 

Angthat is exactly what makes Zaphod work, IMO.  He is one dimensional, and DA does not pretend that he is any more than that. Trying to expand Zaphod's depth would destroy, IMO, the essence of who he is and what the character represents.

-Chris

[swpalmer]

Hitchiker's Guide, the Dirk Gently books, all the funniest stuff I've ever read.  Completely brilliant.   Yes the ship hanging in the air quote is funny.. though I suppose you have to get into the HH mindset before it hits you.  Isolated it isn't quite as funny.

I remember reading the books as a kid and I couldn't stop myself from laughing out loud.

It was soo depressing when DNA died and I knew I would never be able to read another one of his books.  When I got to the end of Salmon of Doubt it was painful to be left hanging after being sucked into another one of DA's twisted adventures.

The Zaphod character was well done in the movie, but overall the movie totally bit.  It was bad.  There just wasn't enough time to fit in all the little details to properly set up the "jokes".  The production quality of the BBC series was so depressingly lame that it sucked the enjoyment out of it as well.  It's funny because I managed to get past that when watching the original Dr. Who series, but with HG I just can't.

[Ask_Hjorth_Larsen]

I'm genuinly surprised nobody compared the two before!

Maybe that's because I have known the Terry Pratchett books since childhood and therefore had a somewhat different relation to those books, seeing as HHGTTG is a relatively new acquaintance for me. But I do see the similarities, at least in the case of Discworld, though I have only read a single Discworld book. I insist that the cute Truckers books are good no matter your age. Rarely have I seen such an absurd yet fitting parody of human society (yes, the first of the Truckers books is the best IMHO).  While Discworld is surely aimed an older audience this is no argument for the inferiority of Truckers.

[Breakfast]

Douglas Adams was much less story driven than Pratchett, but there is a deeply humane intelligence and humour that is common to both authors.

I also suspect that a lot of people, particularly in the US, won't understand all of the stuff that Adams is writing about from a cultural and geographical perspective- he namechecks a lot of places in suburban England, the insane beaurocracy of the Vogons is very much a british thing (actually I suspect france may be worse) and apparently much of the time he was trying to make a movie of Hitchhiker he had movie execs going "why is this Dent guy a hero? Things just happen to him! He keeps going on about wanting a cup of tea! What's heroic about that?" To most of the world maybe it's not heroic, or funny, to most people in britain it's both.

There is a lot that is universal there, but some of his appeal is very much local.

[moogie]

I guess coming from Australia i can appreciate both American and Brittish humor. And yes as a child I had an copy of the first 60 minutes of the Radio adaption of HHG. I can remember laughing so much. Surprisingly the humor didnt get old quickly. That poor casette must have been played a thousand times.

That said, i didnt really enjoy the books as much... I guess it was the voice actors' delivery which made it that much more humorous.

[OverKill]

@OP:
I read the first book a few years ago and while funny was kinda complicated and a little to chaotic.
The movie is only something for people who read the book(s) and the film simply speeds down the plot to fast.

A new (mini-)series would have been a LOT better. Not to mention I am still hoping for a Pratchett series.

Discworld, anyone ? 

To me, Terry Pratchett is everything Douglas Adams ever wanted to be as a little boy. And he failed miserably. I can read the Discworld series over and over again, but I never bothered to plough my way through hitchhiker's guide 

Ramen!
I have more success reading Pratchett then Adams, mostly because names and me don't mix well and Pratchett uses more 'human' names.
Though he does have some slower books, they are still very good.

the insane beaurocracy of the Vogons is very much a british thing (actually I suspect france may be worse)

Nope, germany is the top scorer there.
Though the difficulties of beauracracy is also in one of the famous Asterix comics by a french writer (Asterix in rome or something like that. sorry. clueless on names)