Hacker Cinema
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2005 · Film · 109 min
Directed by Garth Jennings
AdventureComedyScience Fiction
Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Script: https://archive.org/stream/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy/Hitchhikers%20Guide%20to%20the%20Galaxy_djvu.txt
- Film (with some differences): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Vli6Fnj1E
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy always make me burst into uncontrollable laughter.
How was that guy SO creative and talented on that? Truly a treasure.
Anyone can recommend books/movies with a similar style?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is British.
Also, I know it, it has been translated in my language (French), the movie made out to the theaters, and we even have a well known school named after it (42). So it is known even to non-English speakers.
I know some tech people who are capable of absorbing difficult material, but who never read for pleasure (and that means especially fiction). I think dyslexia may play a part in it.
If reading is really a chore for you, try looking for movies with more literate scripts. Many good writers have written for film, and in most genres.
If reading itself is not the problem and you are just easily bored, don't try to start with "serious" literature, but look for anything that grabs your attention. Not all of these are to my taste, but they have been broadly popular: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), The Da Vinci Code (2003), The Big Sleep (1939), The Color out of Space (1927) (short), The Hunt for Red October (1984), Hondo (1953), Get Shorty (1990).
"Oh no, not again..." quoted from (not stolen, not infringing any copyright because of fair use) from The hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
This nonsense has to stop. Copying a movie, using internet on someone else's plan is not piracy is not theft.
Quoting from memory from my old Webster's dictionary which I have owned since I was a student a long time ago:
Theft: The act of taking property and removing it so that the rightful owner is no longer in posession of it.
Piracy: the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea.
Equating copyright infringement or violation of terms of service with theft or piracy is completely unwarranted messing with definitions of terms which have served their purpose for centuries.
Worse yet, the abuse of these terms in recent times misdirects people's attention away from the underlying flaws: artificial scarcity and the inability to enforce restrictions on use.
You can't steal an idea, and you can't steal data.
Making unauthorised copies or violating the terms of use of a service may be deemed objectionable but are most certainly neither theft nor piracy.
I asked ChatGPT. It gave me bunch. I got some I've never heard of. I think I'll look into them.
<ChatGPT>
list 50 interesting movies that explore AI.
The Matrix
Ex Machina
Blade Runner
The Terminator
I, Robot
The War of the Worlds
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Transcendence
The Fifth Element
2001: A Space Odyssey
WarGames
Westworld
The Machine
Her
The Iron Giant
Automata
The Truman Show
The Prestige
The Martian
The Fly
The Bicentennial Man
Surrogates
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Limitless
Robocop
Electric Dreams
The Island
The Time Machine
The Circle
The Arrival
The Host
The Stepford Wives
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
Frankenstein
The Invisible Man
Metropolis
The Thing
Jurassic Park
Independence Day
Gravity
Artificial Intelligence: AI
Avatar
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Inception
Interstellar
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Butterfly Effect
The Future.
</ChatGPT>
Agree with all.
> I enjoyed it for what it was, a reimagining.
Akin to the various incarnations of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I LOVED the movie. Perfect romantic story.
The radio play, TV series, books, and then movie were all their own thing. And best enjoyed as such.
The critics (of either) would complain if they were being hung with an old rope. They suck all the oxygen out of the room.
I wanted to love that book. The only bigger sci fi disappointment to me is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the movie.
Finally they came up with the interactive book from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the one from the 2005 movie).
Only thing missing is the LCARS-esque interface to Wikipedia and custom case with the book cover look to it.
If you haven't seen it, the "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" meta-trailer is a real treat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbGNcoB2Y4I
The movie itself was so-so, but the trailer? Outstanding.
I think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a great example that being "faithful" is not entirely important. It was first a radio show, then a book, then a play, then a movie. Each iteration changes the story a bit, but keeps the core humor and ideas. So even when you know the story, each medium provides a different view on the same story.
After delving into the many iterations of Hitchhiker's, "faithfulness" is not as important to me. I see movie adaptations as a creative and different way to retell a story.
There is not a single great movie in your 2005 list. In fact Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
As for the 1980s, this was indeed a much better decade than the current one. The 70s were even better, much better than the 40s.
> is it really surprising that there were a handful of good movies among them?
Not good movies, great movies.
IMDB reports that 2322 movies were released in 1939 alone, is it really surprising that there were a handful of good movies among them?
1980 for comparision, IMDB lists 6007 movies (8000+ if you include TV movies), and contains modern (popular) classics such as Stir Crazy, Superman II, Empire Strikes Back, Airplane!, The Blue Lagoon, Ordinary People, Urban Cowboy. The Shining, Caddyshack, Raging Bull, Friday The 13th, The Fog, The Blues Brothers.
Hmm, looks like 1980 was a much more 'classic' era than the 40s for hollywood, but you wouldn't have heard that from film buffs in the 80s.
Hollywood has always been a great abuser of the 'sling lots of shit at the wall and see what sticks' approach to 'greatness', they're just slinging a lot more shit these days.
Even if we take a really contemporary year and do the same study, we see a pattern of greats no matter what year, take 2005 at random:
Batman Begins, Sin City, V for Vendetta, Revenge of the Sith, King Kong, Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire, Serenity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr & Mrs Smith, Wedding Crashers, Munich, Saw 2, Hostel, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Madagascar, Pride & Prejudice, Land of the Dead.
Ah, but the movie buff will point out that they're not established classics like Gone with the Wind, or Wizard of Oz. Not yet, anyway.
Edit: Btw, for 2005, the number of movies was 28,000+. Is it any wonder that there is a lot of formulaic stuff in there as well?
Agreed 100%. I love the book, but I can't see how it could possible be turned into a good movie. I almost don't want the movie to be made at all...if it's not done well it'll just convince people the book isn't worth reading.
Some things just don't translate well. I also love the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the movie was painfully bad.