“It must be Thursday…”

Posted: April 28th, 2005 | 5 Comments »

Yoz: let me see if I’ve got this straight in my head
Yoz: The company that made Tomb Raider has been bought by a company named after a song written for the Tomb Raider movie by the guy who’s on the board of said company
Yoz: have I got it?
Tim: oh, pharmacist there I don’t know
Tim: all I know is
Tim: it’s annoying because it looks like it’s annoying because it’s yoz.
Yoz: Thim.
Tim: Npoz.

Despite there having been several positive reviews of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy movie before his, more about MJ Simpson’s vitriolic slamming has been getting more linkage than all the rest combined. This is mainly because, for sale as someone who wrote a book about Douglas Adams, capsule it’s generally considered that he should know what he’s talking about. (Oh, and also because it fulfils all the “I knew they’d screw it up!” paranoia which so many fans seem to treasure.)

To redress the balance somewhat from the only negative review that’s appeared, here are some slightly-more-positive ones:

From Kevin Davies, probably the best-known Hitchhiker’s fan after MJ Simpson (whose long Hitchhiker’s-related career is listed here):

I loved it. (I clearly saw a different film to Mike Simpson!) Douglas’s family were there and everyone was delighted with the outcome. Imagine you’ve never heard / read / seen any other version of HHGG. You’re all in for a treat – so long as you keep an open mind.

From Moriarty of Ain’t It Cool News:

[…] I can tell you that I thought the film was a glorious shambling tribute to the work of Adams, a beautifully realized vision filled to the brim with quirky performances and hilarious details. It’s almost shockingly eccentric and manages to stay very faithful to the spirit of all the previous incarnations of the story while also contributing some fascinating new ideas to the overall mythos.

From Nicholas Botti, webmaster of h2g2movie.com:

I would have difficulties to understand someone who says that he’s a Hitchhiker’s fan and hates the movie. This is certainly the best movie we could hope for.
From now on, I’m a great fan of Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith. They really deserve all our respect.

From Jenz Kjellberg, webmaster of douglasadams.se:

Bearing in mind all the way that this was a rough cut of the movie, with not all the FX finished and the music score not all there, I have never seen anything quite like it, and nothing springs to mind to compare it with. Did I like it? Yes I did, very much. Did I laugh? Oh, yes indeed I did. Very much so.

From Jim Lynn, the technical lead on h2g2.com:

What some people might be expecting is a version of the radio or TV series with better effects, and those people will be disappointed if that’s all they want. What we do get is a film which still contains a large amount of Douglas’ words but which, more importantly, recognises that film is a visual medium and not radio with pictures. It somehow manages to do the kinds of things with pictures that Douglas did with words in the Radio series and books.

From Tim Browse, lead developer on Starship Titanic and producer of h2g2.com:

Today I saw the movie for the second time, and once again I find myself coming to the conclusion that I must have been shown a different movie to the one that MJ Simpson saw. Having twice been in a cinema full of people who were laughing all the way through at the movie (and these are British people, for crying out loud!), and then reading that the movie is “staggeringly unfunny” leaves me somewhat confused. Partly because I heard all those people laughing myself with my own ears, but mainly because I loved the film.

From Sean Sollé, who also worked on Starship Titanic and h2g2.com, as well as the new mobile adventure game of the film:

If you want a damn fine Hitchhiker’s movie, something that you as a fan (and hence contributor to the original success of Hitchhiker) can be bloody proud of, and something that your non-fan friends will enjoy and finally understand what you’ve been going on about for the last twenty-something years, then this is it.

(Disclaimer: Sean, Tim, Jim and I have been tangentially involved in various stages of the movie’s production and publicity. We’ve also been massive Hitchhiker’s fans since we were young, and have worshipped practically everything Douglas ever wrote. So our perceptions are somewhat coloured.)

And me? Take a wild guess. But in order to redress the balance somewhat the other way, I’m going to make an effort to be as critical as I can:

1. A couple of the gags are corny.
2. While the four main stars are great, a couple of the other performances don’t work quite as well.
3. A couple of bits are rather rushed.
4. A couple of my favourite lines are missing.
5. Er…
6. That’s it.

(And until I get the chance to think things through and write a proper review, that’s about all you’re getting from me.)

If you’re the kind of Hitchhiker’s fan who’s going to turn up with a checklist and base your opinion on a final total at the bottom then you might not enjoy it. On the other hand, if you’re a fan who realises how different each version of the story has been and who wants to see Hitchhiker’s performed with the kind of visuals (and more importantly, the kind of utterly stunning production design) it deserves, and who, most importantly, wants to see a good new movie, I think you’ll love it too.

To finish, a favourite old quote:

I loved the film of 2001, saw it six times and read the book twice. And then I read a book called The Lost Worlds of 2001
in which Clarke chronicles the disagreements between himself and
Kubrick – he goes through all the ideas left by the wayside, “Look at
this idea he left out, and this idea!”, and at the end of the book one
has an intense admiration for Kubrick.

… from Neil Gaiman’s Don’t Panic, as spoken by Douglas Adams.

The long-awaited, capsule breathlessly-anticipated, cough much-debated Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy arrives on UK screens today, with the USA following tomorrow.

I recommend that you go see it. After you have done so, please let me know what you think of it.

As I’ve already said, I love it, as do many others among the hardcore Hitchhiker’s fans I’ve encountered recently. (And, like Richard, I’m having terrible trouble with the idea of writing a an actual review, and not just because of the objectivity problems) But that doesn’t mean that you’ll love it too, or that you won’t. If there’s one thing I’ve realised as the reviews have started pouring in, the opinions are all over the place, and for a very obvious reason:

The secret of Hitchhiker’s success is that it means something different to everyone.

That something could be a mood, or a scene, or even a single line. If your particular something is included in the film, you’ll probably love it. If it isn’t, you probably won’t. It’s very much a rollercoaster of a movie, and rollercoasters tend to exaggerate whichever mood you find yourself in. There’s been a lot of work to ensure that as many somethings as possible are in there, but they couldn’t fit them all. Even so, I expect the majority of fan reactions to be positive, as well as the majority of non-fan reviews. (At time of writing, this expectation is being borne out.)

(Plus, as I’ve said elsewhere, the baggage that Hitchhiker’s fans will bring with them into the theatre means that they’ll probably enjoy it a lot more on second viewing, when they can concentrate on what’s there rather than what isn’t. As this excellent, even-handed review shows, I’m not the only one who thinks so.)

Whether you enjoy it or not, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with this one: it looks bloody gorgeous. Fans’ fears of this being throwaway Hollywood trash made by people who didn’t really get it or care could not have been further from reality. The production team on this were not only highly talented, but incredibly committed to getting it right.

Being involved, even tangentially, in the creation of the movie has been both a privilege and a delight. It’s also been astonishing to witness the movie-making process at work.

Imagine that you have a domino topple pyramid set up, so that the first domino knocks into two dominos, which then knock into three dominos, etc. Imagine that it takes ten years of beating at the first domino to get it to fall over, but when it does, suddenly it goes whoosh – and you look up and see that there are way more dominoes there than you expected, and they’re all going down really fast, in perfect order.

(We think Internet-startup-world moves pretty fast. It’s a drug-addled snail compared to Hollywood movie production, let me tell you. Sure, it takes years to get that green light, but once you’ve got it… suddenly there are hundreds of people working on storyboards and sets and costumes and… it’s all rather overwhelming.)

The reason for my involvement, for those who don’t know me, is not just that I’m a huge Hitchhiker’s fan but that I worked at The Digital Village, a company co-founded by Douglas Adams and Robbie Stamp, among others. While there, I worked with a very talented bunch including Tim Browse, Sean Sollé and Jim Lynn on transforming Douglas’s ideas in interesting new ways. Robbie became Executive Producer of the film, and brought the four of us on board in a kind of casual consultancy role.

It was amazing, after all those years at TDV watching the movie’s prospects getting batted back and forth so slowly, to see the dominos go whoosh. The first time we went on set, we were utterly gobsmacked – Sean’s post about the experience sums it up pretty well, though it doesn’t convey how out-of-place we felt, being treated like experts by people who were showing us imaginitive insights into Douglas’s work that were beyond our wildest dreams. Frankly, as we admitted after the first visit, they didn’t need us.

We were occasionally called on for fiddly little details and fun easter eggs (such as Arthur’s BBC pass, the newspaper article about the dolphins and something to do with Lojban) which we had fun with but took far too long over – not only were we part-time but also total slackers, so I’m grateful that we weren’t thrown off. At the same time we helped out with bits of the various websites and spin–offs, as well as various other bits; Tim’s been doing copywriting all over the place, Sean – while winning a BAFTA with the BBC for the 20th Anniversary Infocom game – did a ton of work on the new mobile adventure game. They both did the bulk of the new Guide entries for iTunes, which I also had a hand in (I’m particularly proud of the Chilean monks).

Overall, the experience has been wonderful (though it’s easy for me to say that, since I didn’t do very much of the work). The Disney web team, headed by Susan Lambert, has been great to work with; as have 8Edge, Preloaded and Digial Outlook, who all produced wonderfully varied and delicious work in very short spaces of time. We also got to know those on the core production team, not only Nick and Garth but the quite-disgustingly-talented lead production designer Joel Collins (who I now openly worship) and the similarly-brilliant Anita Dhillon.

So big thanks to all of the above for making this such a memorable and satisfying experience. Big thanks, obviously, to Douglas for coming up with all this stuff in the first place – I believe that the film stands comfortably and proudly among its predecessors as testament to his brilliance. But most of all, thanks to Robbie, who not only got us far more involved than we deserved but kept us there, all the way through to the end. He’s been at the core of the movie project since the beginning, and if it’s possible to point at one person in the whole thing and say that it was that person who got it done, I believe that person is him. Robbie, it’s been a bonkers and brilliant ride resulting in something truly fantastic. Thank you.

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