So now *both* my favourite books have had big-screen adaptations within the space of five years. o_o
Like a large chunk of Perth fandom, I went to see the Swancon fundraiser screening of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last Friday.
A while back, I read The Salmon of Doubt which, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, contains the first few chapters of the book Douglas Adams was working on when he died. Of course, maybe-one-third of a story doesn’t make for much of a read, so the book has also been padded out with a number of other odds and ends Adams has written over the years - mostly non-fiction, editorial or article type pieces - everything from an account of his childhood reactions to Beatles music to a lengthy and fascinating speech on the subject of how ultimately misleading gut feeling can be when it comes to things like the need to believe in god. The portrait it all paints is of an intelligent man with a passionate interest in lot of different subjects, but ultimately a pretty relaxed, friendly outlook on the universe. He’s here to show us how he sees things and why, never to tell us how we see them is wrong.
The really important part, however, were those first few chapters of The Salmon of Doubt itself, which is (or would have been) the third installment in the Dirk Gently series. Now, the Dirk Gently series as a whole is essentially a mystery/detective series - ‘essentially’ being the word as they’re still Adams books first and foremost, and solving said mysteries requires allowance for elements such as time travelers, Norse gods and dimension-hopping electronic monks. Going by those first few chapters, Salmon wasn’t going to be any simpler; but you can just start to see the various and bizarre elements of the story coming together. This is one of those things a lot of really good stories do: they drop all these little hints as to where this is going, leaving you without any doubt that the writer has this all planned out and knows exactly how it all connects up behind the scenes, but at the same time it’s equally clear that no-one but the writer has any hope of guessing exactly how. The only way we can find out it to keep reading.
Only we can’t, because it’s not finished. And it’s never going to be finished. The writer died without leaving us so much as a plot synopsis to work with; and there’s no way anyone else could ever finish this story for him.
It had been a long time since I’d read anything new in that genuine, brilliant Douglas Adams style (the man was famous for never meeting deadlines and only published about eight books in his lifetime), but as much as I was enjoying it, getting to the end was really quite depressing. The final impression of The Salmon of Doubt is to show us just how much we lost when Adams died.
Which brings me, albeit indirectly, to the screening of the new Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.
As someone who’s been a fan of the series since the age of 10, I was one of those people who it was going to be hardest to please, and I came away from the movie with some mixed feelings. The addition of the whole Arthur/Trillian thing was a major down point; partially because I genuinely liked how unimportant that particular non-relationship is in the books, but mostly because it never impresses me to see any movie that feels it needs a romantic subplot to give the story any point. I also found the new material which filled most of the middle section of the movie a bit unimpressive; not because it didn’t manage to keep up the feel of the original (all considered, it did that impressively well) but rather because it just seemed to be trying to cram too much action into too little space. Visits to two planets, an attack by Vogons, a capture, a rescue, a pile of paper work, a major plot revelation, the introduction of an entirely new character and an encounter with a strange, unexplained lifeform which seems to take offense at people thinking is just a little too much to cram into roughly half an hour. To make things worse, just when we needed them the most, the helpful little explanations from the Guide which are through most of the rest of the movie shut down on us. Just exactly why were the characters smacked in the face every time they had an idea on Vogonsphere? The audience will never know.
Excluding those two points, however, the movie was whole lot of fun and did a remarkably good job of adapting the book to the screen. Inevitably, a lot of material was lost; but most of the important plot points survived intact, and a number of jokes were actually even funnier thanks to some new twist or visual feature. The readings from the Guide were fantastic - most of them reproduced almost word for word from the book and with some wonderful animated sequences to accompany them. Beyond my issues with Trillian, I was pretty happy with the casting too. A lot of the characters - Slartibartfast in particularly - were a long way from how I’d pictured them, but worked so well in context it didn’t bother me in the least. Maybe best of all, it did a great job of hitting that balance between pleasing old fans and new ones. You didn’t have to know anything about the original book or radio play to follow most of what was going on, but they still threw in a brief reference to Ford as Ex, the scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs and any number of little in-jokes and references for the old fans to pick up on.
Finally, you could really see the effect of Douglas Adams’ involvement in the script. I’d be very surprised if the maintenance of the Guide feel even through most of the changes to the original weren’t directly thanks to his help. Unlike Salmon, this was a complete finished, Douglas Adams story.
Sadly, this time it really is the last we’ll see from him.
So, what final conclusions did we walk away from the movie with?
1. All movies, good or bad, should be seen with a theater full of other fans.
2. Apparently, I have Arthur/Fenchurch OTP issues I was never previously aware of.
3. The world without a Douglas Adams in it is a much sadder place.
4. harveystoat needs to be made a Zaphod costume ASAP.
A while back, I read The Salmon of Doubt which, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, contains the first few chapters of the book Douglas Adams was working on when he died. Of course, maybe-one-third of a story doesn’t make for much of a read, so the book has also been padded out with a number of other odds and ends Adams has written over the years - mostly non-fiction, editorial or article type pieces - everything from an account of his childhood reactions to Beatles music to a lengthy and fascinating speech on the subject of how ultimately misleading gut feeling can be when it comes to things like the need to believe in god. The portrait it all paints is of an intelligent man with a passionate interest in lot of different subjects, but ultimately a pretty relaxed, friendly outlook on the universe. He’s here to show us how he sees things and why, never to tell us how we see them is wrong.
The really important part, however, were those first few chapters of The Salmon of Doubt itself, which is (or would have been) the third installment in the Dirk Gently series. Now, the Dirk Gently series as a whole is essentially a mystery/detective series - ‘essentially’ being the word as they’re still Adams books first and foremost, and solving said mysteries requires allowance for elements such as time travelers, Norse gods and dimension-hopping electronic monks. Going by those first few chapters, Salmon wasn’t going to be any simpler; but you can just start to see the various and bizarre elements of the story coming together. This is one of those things a lot of really good stories do: they drop all these little hints as to where this is going, leaving you without any doubt that the writer has this all planned out and knows exactly how it all connects up behind the scenes, but at the same time it’s equally clear that no-one but the writer has any hope of guessing exactly how. The only way we can find out it to keep reading.
Only we can’t, because it’s not finished. And it’s never going to be finished. The writer died without leaving us so much as a plot synopsis to work with; and there’s no way anyone else could ever finish this story for him.
It had been a long time since I’d read anything new in that genuine, brilliant Douglas Adams style (the man was famous for never meeting deadlines and only published about eight books in his lifetime), but as much as I was enjoying it, getting to the end was really quite depressing. The final impression of The Salmon of Doubt is to show us just how much we lost when Adams died.
Which brings me, albeit indirectly, to the screening of the new Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.
As someone who’s been a fan of the series since the age of 10, I was one of those people who it was going to be hardest to please, and I came away from the movie with some mixed feelings. The addition of the whole Arthur/Trillian thing was a major down point; partially because I genuinely liked how unimportant that particular non-relationship is in the books, but mostly because it never impresses me to see any movie that feels it needs a romantic subplot to give the story any point. I also found the new material which filled most of the middle section of the movie a bit unimpressive; not because it didn’t manage to keep up the feel of the original (all considered, it did that impressively well) but rather because it just seemed to be trying to cram too much action into too little space. Visits to two planets, an attack by Vogons, a capture, a rescue, a pile of paper work, a major plot revelation, the introduction of an entirely new character and an encounter with a strange, unexplained lifeform which seems to take offense at people thinking is just a little too much to cram into roughly half an hour. To make things worse, just when we needed them the most, the helpful little explanations from the Guide which are through most of the rest of the movie shut down on us. Just exactly why were the characters smacked in the face every time they had an idea on Vogonsphere? The audience will never know.
Excluding those two points, however, the movie was whole lot of fun and did a remarkably good job of adapting the book to the screen. Inevitably, a lot of material was lost; but most of the important plot points survived intact, and a number of jokes were actually even funnier thanks to some new twist or visual feature. The readings from the Guide were fantastic - most of them reproduced almost word for word from the book and with some wonderful animated sequences to accompany them. Beyond my issues with Trillian, I was pretty happy with the casting too. A lot of the characters - Slartibartfast in particularly - were a long way from how I’d pictured them, but worked so well in context it didn’t bother me in the least. Maybe best of all, it did a great job of hitting that balance between pleasing old fans and new ones. You didn’t have to know anything about the original book or radio play to follow most of what was going on, but they still threw in a brief reference to Ford as Ex, the scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs and any number of little in-jokes and references for the old fans to pick up on.
Finally, you could really see the effect of Douglas Adams’ involvement in the script. I’d be very surprised if the maintenance of the Guide feel even through most of the changes to the original weren’t directly thanks to his help. Unlike Salmon, this was a complete finished, Douglas Adams story.
Sadly, this time it really is the last we’ll see from him.
So, what final conclusions did we walk away from the movie with?
1. All movies, good or bad, should be seen with a theater full of other fans.
2. Apparently, I have Arthur/Fenchurch OTP issues I was never previously aware of.
3. The world without a Douglas Adams in it is a much sadder place.
4. harveystoat needs to be made a Zaphod costume ASAP.