Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Don't Panic

Don Burr and Pam Gross, two of the friends who came to my birthday party, have posted party reports on their respective blogs. Both blog about the movie I showed at the party, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY -- a must, since the party celebrated my 42nd birthday.

Watching a 2005 HHGG movie was definitely an odd experience. Back in the early '80's, HHGG was initially a British radio show, then a series of books that everyone was reading (my sister, who was definitely not an SF fan, was reading the first book, if that gives you a clue), then a BBC TV miniseries. The miniseries was the first way I enjoyed the story; the books and radio show came later.

So a couple decades after the radio show, the books, the TV show, and even the comic book series, we have a movie that reiterates a lot of the punchlines and bits from the other media. Of course, punchlines that convulsed me with laughter 25 years ago now merely provoke a pleasant glow of nostalgia.

Apart from the recycled bits, the story has changed every time it's been told in a different medium -- even though the same writer, Douglas Adams, was behind every iteration. That's what amuses me about the folks who despised the movie, on the ground that it's not faithful to "the story." To which story should it have been faithful?

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