Low Budget

This is an interesting question about any work or body of work. Many an author, after developing a series, has felt constrained by fan expectations. If she unexpectedly kills off a much-loved character, fans feel betrayed. This didn't happen in "their" universe.

Movies are often more sensitive to fan requirements, given the budgets involved. Still, when David Fincher took over the third installment of Alien, he made some choices that were actively hostile to the nature of the series. He took an established universe, built over two installments by Ridley Scott and James Cameron, and replaced it with his own quasi-religious vision. To do so, he had to casually kill off characters whose survival had been the success of the prior movie. In response, audiences generally discounted his contribution, considering only the first two movies genuine.

But George Lucas is different. He created Star Wars. It is, arguably, his vision. Though almost every critic agrees that he is somehow unable to see why the original trilogy worked, it's still his, isn't it?

Is it possible that art can transcend the artist? Obviously when Lucas went back to the well, he had lost his touch. So the follow-up movies don't have the magic of the originals. But that happens to many authors, what really rankles is that he's altered the originals. Now, remember that when Star Wars came out, it was the first movie that people sawmore than once. I know someone who saw it 40 times while it was in the theater. More than one guy could do line after line of dialog. Star Wars wasn't just a fun, afternoon adventure, it had become part of people's lives. Bad sequels were painful, but changing the original?

The most glaring change, the one that has inflamed former Lucas fans, is the scene in which bounty hunter Greedo meets Han Solo at the Cantina. When Greedo tells Han he will kill him, Han shoots Greedo under the table. It's the ultimate cool moment for Han. But George Lucas in his drive for younger markets, felt there was something dishonorable about that scene. So he "fixed" it. In later versions, Greedo shoots first, somehow missing Han from like one meter away. It's unconvincing, and counter to the character that has been developed. More importantly, it broke relationship between audience and filmmaker. Remember, people have seen the original many, many times. Hundreds. Han is well-fixed, probably the most accessible character in the series. Now he's been emasculated, by the filmmaker. In response, hundreds of reviewers and websites have decried Lucas. Petitions have demanded that the original version be made available. Online comics have depicted the conflict in terms of a trial. One website is actually named Hanshootsfirst.org. Obviously, people believe that there is an authentic version out there, a Star Wars that they grew up with, one that is untouched by Lucas' revisions. Oddly, Lucas is blind to this. His comments on the original movies indicate he envisioned them differently, more like the later failures. Yet again, limitations create better art. The argument remains, though. Is the original more authentic because people have just seen it so many times, or is it somehow truer to the nature of storytelling?

I think we all remember that moment when Darth Vader became the greatest archetypal bad-guy in modern cinema.  It was as he stood over the freshly dis-armed Luke Skywalker and announced: "I am your father, Luke!" This was, to the truly uninformed, during the second (and best) Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back.

Darth didn't have to prove his claim, he told Luke that Luke knew it was true.  Luke did, and so did we.  Darth Vader was a powerful archetype and needed no explanation.  When he, in the third installment, was redeemed, we all felt lifted.  Somehow, his own son's nobility and resistence to the dark side allowed the unfeeling and ultimately evil Darth Vader to instantly transition back to the side of goodness.  It was quick, perhaps cheesy, but it made total sense within the genre, using those archetypes. We bought it.  Partially because we often fall for our most powerful villains, but also because they just did it and didn't spend a lot of time explaining.

The more you explain something, the better the explanation has to work.  If you say "we're jumping into the DeLorean and going Back to the Future," fine.  We're with you.  If you start talking about a contained black hole and the event horizon, we start wondering how that might work.  You've given us an authentic sounding explanation, and we're more likely to test it for true authenticity.

When a charming little kid, smarter and wiser than his peers, grows up to be evil, you can either just say it happened, or you can try to show us how.  But once you start showing us, you've changed the level of discourse.  Do we trust George Lucas to do this? 

The transition has been done.  Al Pacino's Michael Corleone went from being the good kid who wanted out of the family business to the new Godfather, as hard and violent as his father had ever been.  Of course Charlize Theron showed us the story of Aileen Wuornos, who became a serial killer.  These are, unsuprisingly, Oscar winning performances.  Will Hayden Christensen win an Oscar?

Still, this could be a fun movie.  The early press is good, even though Lucas' track record is unpromising. 

 

I saw the movie.  I immediately told a good friend mind who has not read the books not to see it.  Another friend, who has read them, will be asking me for a review, and I can't really decide.  Was it good?  Funny?  How often did I have to remind myself to keep an open mind?

 

When making a book into a movie, one type of authenticity to be conserved is that of the relationship to the source material.  Books and movies are different, obviously.  What works in one may not work in another.  The relationship between book and movie is always a problem.  The movie story is always smaller, shorter, without a lot of background.  Casting may not be satisfying to many readers, or in some cases, even to the author.  Hitchhiker's is a special problem, though.  I don't think anyone read it thinking: "this would make a great movie."  The weird sidebars and rapidly overlapping absurdity is more textual than visual.  Even apparently visual sequences are playing with the absurdity of metaphor as well.

But the books are much-loved.  With a lot of books, you jack up the title and swap out everything underneath.  Here, that would be sacrilige.  The books are adored, and so is the author, who screwed things up even worse by dying way too soon.  One means of authentication, authorial approval, is thus removed.  Sure, he worked on the screenplay, but he didn't finish it.  If he had lived, we might have found him to be, like Stephen King, a master on the page but a hack on the screen.  Or not.  But dead, he is sanctified, and any short-coming in the film will be held against someone else.

They tried to be faithful, and in many ways did a good job.  The use of animated entries from the Hitchhiker's Guide iteslf gave a framework in which many of the books purely textual passages could be presented in all their fun.  The whale and potted petunias are onscreen long enough to give at least a sense of that absurd interruption.  But a lot of things happen just too quickly.  The babble fish, the word Belguim, and other keys are tossed by the audience in ways that merely reminded us of how funny the book is.

In the end, the question is, for whom was this movie made?  The audience of people who've never read the books, who don't know what it is all about may get a few laughs and go away thinking it's pretty clever.  Those who've known about the books but never got around to reading them may think this is the easy way out.  Not a good idea.  Anyone, from now on, who claims an authentic connection to Douglas Adams by virtue of having seen the movie will be escorted off of the premises.  How about for those who've read the books?  Well, the movie does serve well as a salute to the books.  The dolphin sequence is quite fun, and, somehow, though I was often disappointed during the film itself, I discovered a lump in my throat by the end.  The closing reference to going for lunch at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.  Took me back to the end of the novel itself, and the sense of wonder I'd had after just zipping through it.  Also, having a movie made is a mark of validation, an honor to the books.  As a fan, even if the movie didn't quite work for me, I was very happy to see it at number one.  And, I have a renewed hunger to re-read the books.