History Headscratchers / TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy

** Similar themes: a busy interstellar culture that humans know nothing about. The Earth and the human race are primitive and unimportant. An alien race that is about to destroy the Earth for its own reasons, and sees the human race as irrelevant.

* I know it's a joke but how could Ford be so stupid as to think ''cars'' where the "dominant life forms" on Earth? He is familiar with technological transportation and sentient life resembling humans (sometimes very closely) seems to abound throughout the galaxy.

** Fridge Logic actually. Ford points out that because of the possibility Arthur is descended from the Golgifrinchans (spelling?) and the project ended right before completion, that the question may be distorted. Hence the wrong number.

*** [[MadeOfWin You Win]]. Her name would be [[spoiler:Random Axi Dent (Random Accident)]] in case you missed it.

** This Troper couldn't have said it better. [[UnpleasableFanbase First they complained how different the books are compared to the radio series, then they complained how the TV series was rubbish compared to the books, and now they're bashing the film, as well.]] [[LoveItOrHateIt Either love it all or hate it all; make your pick.]]

** I don't believe its ever stated that they're the same species only that they're childhood friends and tangentially related. But I think it's said in the film that he had to have the extra head added to become a president. As far as I'm aware it's always been established that adding a second head was Zaphod's choice for one reason or another...although only Zaphod before the procedure really knew why.

* Ford and Zaphod are meant to be the same species, right? But only one of them has two heads. Nothing wrong with that, but I've always wondered why it doesn't get addressed. Did Ford used to have two heads and got one of them lopped off so he could blend in better on planets with [[RubberForeheadAliens low special-effects budgets]], or is having one or two heads just a normal physical variation among their species like hair or skin color among humans? Or maybe they're not ''really'' the same species? Or who knows?

** There are two ways to interpret the phrase "it's rubbish compared to the Radio version". It's certainly possible when people say this they mean "it's rubbish because it was ''different'' from the radio version", but most people probably simply mean "the radio version and the film version aimed to tell the same broad story with the same characters and tone, and the radio version was good and the film version wasn't." To be fair, people do often act as if adherence to the letter of the source material is a prerequisite of a good adaptation, but equally people are generally pretyforgiving of wild deviation if the adaptation still adheres or the spirit of the book, or at least produces something new but of equal quality (e.g. Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep? / BladeRunner, HowlsMovingCastle, TheBourneIdentity etc). With Hitchhiker's I would think it's a fanbase more forgivving than most about adaptational changes - as the OP points out, there really is no definitive version of these stories. I certainly don't think people were eager for the plot to remain the same as in the books. But the point of Hitchhiker's lies not in the events but the funny dialogue and monologues. As the above-linked hot take review points out, the movie largely disappointed existing fans by carelessly tampering with Adams' exquisitely crafted comic dialogue for no particular reason, replacing funny lines with its own sub-par inventions. For example, the film takes away most of Marvin's radio-originating lines top give him more generic stuff like 'oh for god's sake'. The idea of a depressed robot is pretty funny in itself, of course, but Adam's never expected that joke to keep people going for the run-time, he gave Marvin dialogue that made the joke funny every time he spoke. I suppose the best analogy I can come up with is Shakespeare. You can adapt Shakespeare into modern English but you'll be losing a massive part of the reason the plays are so beloved in the first place. As the artivle points out, it's not the changing itself that is the problem, it's changing without any apparent understadning of why the text took the form it did in the first place. Humour is possibly the hardest thing of all to adapt, and Hitchhiker's is one of those things that is more than the sum of its parts: individual moment or lines might be funny in isolation, but it;s the general tone and the ideas behind it that make the text ''so'' funny. The film didn't relfect the tone or ideas of earlier incarnations, and though there are others tones and ideas that the movie-makers might have successfully replaced them with and averted TheyChangedItNowItSucks, most fans seem to feel that their changes were to the detriment. [[WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick Lindsay Ellis]] did a very good video once on the similar issues in the Franchise/MenInBlack franchise, which may shed light for those confused on the similar response to the H2G2 adaptation. Adams was right, I think, to compare ''Franchise/MenInBlack'' to his own work (it also relies on a pretty sophisticated, startling and finely balanced worldview to support the internal humour) and like Hitchhiker's, it suffered from a studio-pleasing later iteration that managed to misunderstand why the original was popular. To summarise the summary of the summary: it's not bad because they changed it, it's bad because they changed it badly.

* If Marvin is so horribly depressed about anything and everything constantly, why doesn't he just kill himself/shutdown permanently or whatever?

** There are two ways to interpret the phrase "it's rubbish compared to the Radio version". It's certainly possible when people say this they mean "it's rubbish because it was ''different'' from the radio version", but most people probably simply mean "the radio version and the film version aimed to tell the same broad story with the same characters and tone, and the radio version was good and the film version wasn't." To be fair, people do often act as if adherence to the letter of the source material is a prerequisite of a good adaptation, but equally people are generally pretyforgiving of wild deviation if the adaptation still adheres or the spirit of the book, or at least produces something new but of equal quality (e.g. Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep? / BladeRunner, HowlsMovingCastle, TheBourneIdentity etc). With Hitchhiker's I would think it's a fanbase more forgivving than most about adaptational changes - as the OP points out, there really is no definitive version of these stories. I certainly don't think people were eager for the plot to remain the same as in the books. But the point of Hitchhiker's lies not in the events but the funny dialogue and monologues. As the above-linked hot take review points out, the movie largely disappointed existing fans by carelessly tampering with Adams' exquisitely crafted comic dialogue for no particular reason, replacing funny lines with its own sub-par inventions. For example, the film takes away most of Marvin's radio-originating lines top give him more generic stuff like 'oh for god's sake'. The idea of a depressed robot is pretty funny in itself, of course, but Adam's never expected that joke to keep people going for the run-time, he gave Marvin dialogue that made the joke funny every time he spoke. I suppose the best analogy I can come up with is Shakespeare. You can adapt Shakespeare into modern English but you'll be losing a massive part of the reason the plays are so beloved in the first place. As the artivle points out, it's not the changing itself that is the problem, it's changing without any apparent understadning of why the text took the form it did in the first place. Humour is possibly the hardest thing of all to adapt, and Hitchhiker's is one of those things that is more than the sum of its parts: individual moment or lines might be funny in isolation, but it;s the general tone and the ideas behind it that make the text ''so'' funny. The film didn't relfect the tone or ideas of earlier incarnations, and though there are others tones and ideas that the movie-makers might have successfully replaced them with and averted TheyChangedItNowItSucks, most fans seem to feel that their changes were to the detriment. LindsayEllis did a very good video once on the similar issues in the MenInBlack franchise, which may shed light for those confused on the similar response to the H2G2 adaptation. Adams was right, I think, to compare ''MenInBlack'' to his own work (it also relies on a pretty sophisticated, startling and finely balanced worldview to support the internal humour) and like Hitchhiker's, it suffered from a studio-pleasing later iteration that managed to misunderstand why the original was popular. To summarise the summary of the summary: it's not bad because they changed it, it's bad because they changed it badly.

** It's also just a joke. Not a great joke, admittedly, but probably not worth the anger.

** There are two ways to interpret the phrase "it's rubbish compared to the Radio version". It's certainly possible when people say this they mean "it's rubbish because it was ''different'' from the radio version", but most people probably simply mean "the radio version and the film version aimed to tell the same broad story with the same characters and tone, and the radio version was good and the film version wasn't." To be fair, people do often act as if adherence to the letter of the source material is a prerequisite of a good adaptation, but equally people are generally pretyforgiving of wild deviation if the adaptation still adheres or the spirit of the book, or at least produces something new but of equal quality (e.g. DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep? / BladeRunner, HowlsMovingCastle, TheBourneIdentity etc). With Hitchhiker's I would think it's a fanbase more forgivving than most about adaptational changes - as the OP points out, there really is no definitive version of these stories. I certainly don't think people were eager for the plot to remain the same as in the books. But the point of Hitchhiker's lies not in the events but the funny dialogue and monologues. As the above-linked hot take review points out, the movie largely disappointed existing fans by carelessly tampering with Adams' exquisitely crafted comic dialogue for no particular reason, replacing funny lines with its own sub-par inventions. For example, the film takes away most of Marvin's radio-originating lines top give him more generic stuff like 'oh for god's sake'. The idea of a depressed robot is pretty funny in itself, of course, but Adam's never expected that joke to keep people going for the run-time, he gave Marvin dialogue that made the joke funny every time he spoke. I suppose the best analogy I can come up with is Shakespeare. You can adapt Shakespeare into modern English but you'll be losing a massive part of the reason the plays are so beloved in the first place. As the artivle points out, it's not the changing itself that is the problem, it's changing without any apparent understadning of why the text took the form it did in the first place. Humour is possibly the hardest thing of all to adapt, and Hitchhiker's is one of those things that is more than the sum of its parts: individual moment or lines might be funny in isolation, but it;s the general tone and the ideas behind it that make the text ''so'' funny. The film didn't relfect the tone or ideas of earlier incarnations, and though there are others tones and ideas that the movie-makers might have successfully replaced them with and averted TheyChangedItNowItSucks, most fans seem to feel that their changes were to the detriment. LindsayEllis did a very good video once on the similar issues in the MenInBlack franchise, which may shed light for those confused on the similar response to the H2G2 adaptation. Adams was right, I think, to compare ''MenInBlack'' to his own work (it also relies on a pretty sophisticated, startling and finely balanced worldview to support the internal humour) and like Hitchhiker's, it suffered from a studio-pleasing later iteration that managed to misunderstand why the original was popular. To summarise the summary of the summary: it's not bad because they changed it, it's bad because they changed it badly.

* The Point Of View Gun from the movie: "It won't affect me, I'm already a woman." To that I say, "Oh really, let's test that theory, shall we?" ZAPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!! But seriously, the idea that such a device would only work on men is a load of bullshit.

** Marvin states that with the exception of (i believe) the diodes down his left side, every single part of him has been replaced. It's not that he has lasted that long, it's that he keeps getting rebuilt.