The TV version was awesome, low budget and all.
It's one of my late-night staples - when I can't sleep, or just need to unwind, it's one of a hand full that I turn to.

Now, what's this about about new versions of the radio series? I'd check, but stupid work has blocked that site for some unknown reason.

Yes, much love to the BBC version!

I wished that the big budget movie had been more like the tv series [but with better special effects].

Or maybe the cheesy BBC not-so-special effects were part of it's loopy charm... difficult to say.

Oh, and the radio series was good, too!

Dunny0: Back in 2003/4, the BBC and Dirk Maggs got the surviving cast back together, and using Douglas Adams' notes (and voice, for one character) they adapated the final three books into new radio episodes.... 6 eps for "Life, The Universe, and Everything", and 4 eps each for "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" and "Mostly Harmless"... they're *very* well done, and highly recommended...

His pictures are excellent.

I heart the old series too. Zaphod isn't Zaphod without two visible heads.

@TheRealFennShysa: Oh yeah, those. I bought them from iTunes a few months back, greatly enjoyed them.

I really loved the way Mostly Harmless ended in that format - it felt so much more "right" I thought.

@ideaman2020: I was really hoping for a LoTR style adaptation, one that kept true to the spirit of the original, that used the source instead of just gutting it and going it's own way. Granted, every version of The Guide is different from all the other versions, but the movie didn't even seem like it was from the same source.

The animation was good, though. I did really enjoy those bits. Oh, and the creature effects: I loved the Vogons.

> It's extremely different from the
> movie version

You know, I was super skeptical of the new movie and only went to see it because there was NOTHING else showing and my girlfriend REALLY wanted to go see a movie. She paid.

It was pretty entertaining, but I still remained a cynic.

Then I found out that Douglas Adams had written the screenplay: surely it was revised, but fundamentally it's the HHG2G story the way D. Adams wanted it to be on the big screen.

Still some things I didn't like (I thought the "So Long and Thanks for All The Fish" musical bits were tedious, and Humma Kavula was...unappealing) but these were a bit outweighed by things I thought worked...the P.O.V. Gun was great, and the Infinite Improbability Drive was fun. Zooey Deschanel was a great Trillian.

I, for one, liked Zaphod's head in the film too. I thought it leant a zaniness to the guy that walking around with the obvious "second head hanging off the shoulder" wouldn't have captured.

So once I realized that it was an Adams screenplay, I sort of grokked the film as a continuation / extension / revision of the universe. The film is neither better nor worse than the TV series, it's simply...different...and the two can co-exist nicely together.

If it had been some Hollywood crank rewriting the thing, my perspective would have been different for sure. But it wasn't: it was the guy who brought us this phenomenal world in the first place.

@Dunny0: Yes, the Vogons were great. Henson creatures, instead of CGI, and it shows in their onscreen credibility (vs. that of Jar Jar Binks, for example.)

The TV series is still my favorite version.

I've got the albums. Vinyl.

@TheRealFennShysa: Awesome. That I'd never heard!

The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy text-based game was the first computer game I ever played to completion. It was the coolest thing to have ever hit the Apple IIe.

I had a friend in college who obsessively collected every version of HHGTG that she could find: the radio serial, the books, the albums, the TV version, the book of the radio scripts, the audiobooks...

I'm not sure if she'll be happy or horrified that there is yet another version for her to acquire.

And yes, the TV version is wonderful, cardboard sets and all.

@darcymcgee: The script was based on the almost finished rough draft Douglas had been kicking about for a few years. It was "polished" by Karey "Chicken Run" Kirkpatrick.

The ending totally felt tacked on, and is my major beef with the film. The mice want his brain for the question because they don't want to wait around for the Earth to finish it's computations... But, Magrathia just restores from backup, which just happens to be mere seconds before the destruction - and read out- rendering any wait time moot.

Huh? So, you need his brain, but you don't really? That just made no sense.

@darcymcgee: I really think that a lot of people just didn't give the movie a chance because it was done by Disney, making a lot of people automatically discount it as being for kids. Also, since Douglas died before completion of the movie, people assumed he had nothing to do with the movie. I love when people say that he would be rolling over in his grave if he had seen the movie because it was mostly his vision and they are just making ignorant statements. I guess another part of it is that people just wanted to keep HHG2G as one of those sub culture type things, at least in the U.S., so when it became something mainstream, people were threatened in the same way that some people get when their favorite indie band gets popular.

I loved how they did the animated Guide sequences in the BBC series. Old school 4eva.

@zorazero: Oh frak yeah! I remember frustrating myself over that for hours and hours!

Ah, the Apple IIe. Now that was a puter.

The film looked good, but it doesn't stand close to the essential qualities that permeate the radio plays and the television series. What are those qualities? It is difficult to pin all of them down. An essential, but loving, tongue-in-cheek, world weary, but still optimistic cynicism that is sort of quintessentially British?

I knew Adams was very involved in the script, and the movie, and I still think it is the poorest representation of the wonderful world he created. Sorry.

Zooey Deschanel was lovely, marvin was spiffy (shame they bumped his original voice actor for a "name" though)and i really liked the rockstar zaphod. Arthur should have been a little less grumpy, and more angry/sarcastic to balance out the younger actor imho.
and Zooey Deschanel was lovely

The Hitchhiker's Guide books are what I turn to when I want an easy read and fun escape. My wife says I can quote something from either there or Lord of the Rings for any occasion. She's probably right. Yesterday she said she couldn't get her mind of some particular thing, so I told her to try thinking nice thoughts about lemurs. Can you believe we're still married after 23 years?

I don't know why, but that little segment in the movie with the shovel thingies that whack them in the face just caused me to laugh out loud.

Have you read The Salmon of Doubt? Or some of Adams' non-fiction?