Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so

Long time no blog...I'll do my best to make up for it.

So lately, I've been re-reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books (three down, two to go) - and while doing so, I've been struck with a realization. There was a movie based on the first book a few years back, and from what I remember of it...it wasn't that good.

Really, when the best parts of a movie are the opening montage (dolphins doing tricks set to a song called "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish") and the trailer for Chicken Little (not really part of the movie)...I think it's safe to say that the movie can be labelled a disappointment.

Now, this isn't just some fanboy complaining "They added stuff that wasn't in the book and took out stuff that was, how could they do something so stupid?!?". Of course they had to do that - a movie containing everything that was in the first book would probably have gone a good six hours. Similarly, there is no way in which the book could be condensed down into a normal-length movie, and still be decent - it doesn't have subplots.

So, Douglas Adams (who did a lot of work on the movie before his death) and the other writers added some subplots - the Arthur/Trillian/Zaphod love triangle, the Galactic police chasing after the heroes, and the appearance by John Malkovich.

And with the addition of those subplots, you had a great book turned into a below-average movie (medicore before the subplots). Not really anybody's fault - the plotline of the first book works terribly as a movie, unlike, say, the second or third books.

I also can't really make any excuses for leaving out the Monty Python-esque scene with the philosophers interrupting Deep Thought - ("I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" "It's all right, that's a fact, you don't need to demand that." "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, it is a fact! What we demand are solid facts!" "No! Facts are precisely what we don't demand!" "We demand a complete absence of fact! I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!" etc.). It's one of my favourite passages in the book, and one that, at least in my opinion, should translate well to film.

However, most of my favourite parts of the book are little asides which add nothing to the plot - the super-intelligent shade of blue, the 'fetchingly redesigned' interior of the Heart of Gold after use of the Infinite Improbability Drive, Ford's argument for Arthur leaving his house (if everybody assumes he'll be laying in front of the bulldozer all day, he doesn't actually need to be doing it), and so on. It would be nearly impossible to throw these into the film without using the narrator - who already seemed to be getting too much screen time - and turning the movie into something of a book on tape, with pictures.

So, yeah, there's my blog for the day. If you haven't read the book, you should. If you haven't seen the movie, you should. If you haven't done either, I'd suggest seeing the movie first, that way it won't seem like a let-down after the book.

And if you know anything about a sequel, a movie based on The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, please pass it along.

--Ryan