h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Simpost - should of typed faster ...

Speaking of adaptions- what about "The Running Man"?
Originally a Stephen King short story about a bloke who enters a gameshow intentionally to get medical treatment for his son, and then the Arnie version puts in all of this "Buzzsaw" nonsense.
Which is gloriously cheesy !
Nothing like the book, but great in a way that the book wasn't.
Worth it just for Arnie's random quotes:
"I live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist, because I'm going to punch it into your stomach, and BREAK YOUR GODDAMN SPIIIIIINE!"

And "The Lawnmower Man"- another Stephen King short story (this one's four pages long!) about a bloke who hires someone to mow his lawn. Lawnmower man arrives, gets naked, kills homeowner with mower. That's it. Where's the computer nonsense come from?

I will have to read the short story...I love short stories...maybe they would have done better if they had just kept it short...maybe just one of those short pieces that plays at a beginning of a film...but then they wouldn't have made money off the star name....Hollywood is weird-profit before quality sometimes.

Another Stephen King story that made a terrible transition to celluloid is 'Apt Pupil', the one with Jared Leto (?) as a creepy Nazi groupie and Ian McKellan as the old Eichmann figure.
Anyone seen it? Anyone screaming at the screen at the end: "Kill him! Kill him!"? (Him being David Schwimmer.) I know I was. And in the book he does - but the film's ending was a weak cop-out.

"It is without single redeemimg feature in either script acting or direction."

It's an action film, so many people watching it don't care about any of those things. Also, it has a twisty-turny plot which is unusual for a sci-fi film.

I think it's OK, but as a PKD fan I'm annoyed that they turned his short story into an Arnie action film. The plot is actually very good, and would have been better if done a little more like Spielberg's "Minority Report" and a little less like "Commando, but on Mars".

The bulging-eyeball thing annoys me. As well as being gross, it is scientifically innacurate. Mars is not a f**king vacuum, it has a thin CO2 atmosphere so all those people would do is suffocate. True, it's "just a film", but when I was at school it had a lot of kids convinced Mars had no atmosphere.

John Woo can make well directed action films.

Bruce Willis can make well acted action films.

James cameron can make well scripted action films.

I see no reason to cut any slack for sub-standard piece of tosh that is Total Recall simply because 'it's an action film'. That just settling for second best because we can't be bothered to find the best.

"I see no reason to cut any slack for sub-standard piece of tosh that is Total Recall simply because 'it's an action film'. That just settling for second best because we can't be bothered to find the best."

*You* don't, many do. A lot of people went to see TR as a popcorn film. They didn't sit and analyse the script or direction.

Yes, you can make films with all the redeeming features you mentioned. You can also make a fantastic homemade chocolate cake or you can buy a 60p chocolate muffin from a newsagent. Sometimes people are quite happy to do the latter. It doesn't make the 60p muffin worthless crap, just inferior.

But this movie was a waste of PKD. I heard they considered Matthew Broderick for the movie, I wonder how it could have turned out then.

"But this movie was a waste of PKD. I heard they considered Matthew Broderick for the movie, I wonder how it could have turned out then."

Oh, I agree. As an Arnie action film it's fine. As a PKD adaptation it's a bit s**t.

I didn't know about Matthew Broderick. I had heard they were considering Tom Cruise for the lead role (who later, of course, got to be in a good PKD adaptation, Minority Report).

Now Minority Report I liked, though there are still things I don't quite understand.

Zagreb - the inaccuracy of the eyeball thing is part of its charm. Like the "it can make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs" bit in Star Wars .

Bruce Willis makes well-acted action films??? When did that happen? I've only seen the ones where he smirks like a juvenile buffoon! His only decent performance in a leading role was when Terry Gilliam provided him with a list of Bruce Willis "Acting" Cliches & demanded that he didn't do any of them!

But yes, Total Recall was a bit of a waste, but even in its Arnie-fied state the intelligence of PKD's trademark visions still manages to peep through & provoke. & its FAR from being the worst movie ever made! (The fascinatingly bad Batman & Robin gets my vote for that particular award! What WERE they thinking of??)

In a word (well symbol): $ Happily, that reeking pile of cheese seems to have killed off the franchise.

I think what a lot of people look for in an action movie is, well, lots of action obviously, but they also like some pseudo-clever plot/theme/idea that they can discuss on the way home from the cinema and promptly forget the next day. Subconsciously it makes them feel less like they've just degenerated to a primitive state of bloodlust for ninety minutes. I suppose the Hollywood vermin see a clever idea and decide to hang an overblown bloodbath of a movie from it.

As for the worst movie ever made, my vote goes to 'Black Knight' with either Martin Lawrence or Chris Tucker. I was forced to watch it on a bus trip during which a fellow-traveller vomited in my lap. The film was worse

I just watched it again, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I wouldn't say it was a parody, but it's definitely played for laughs and does it well. But then, not everyone is amused by things like the bulging eyeball scene or the bit where Arnie pulls the bug out of his brain through his nose. As well as comic gore, it has some great Arnie one-liners and dialogue (read it in an Arnie voice: "If I'm not me, who da hell am I?").

I was watching this stand-up thing on TV last night, and one of the comedians raised a very good point. Why doesn't anybody in an Arnie film ever wonder where he's from?
In Predator, for example. He's playing an all-american soldier.
"Billie! Gyet to da choppah!"

I'm more wondering about the Terminator movie. They mention they started using dogs to detect which ones were robots. So the fact that they were big, extremely muscular and had a thick austrian accent wasn't enough of a giveaway?

I just read on IMDB that the precogs from the minority report book are supposed to be from Mars, like those psychics we see in Total Recall.

Phonetic spellings of Arnie lines always make me chuckle, it just reminds me of his Simpsons counterpart (is he called Ranier Wolfcastle), he's better than the real thing.

The problem with Arnie is that in The Terminator he gave a fantastic performance as a pschopathic cyborg, but in all his subsequent films he's still seems to be playing that damned cyborg! Even in Twins (oh, & "Choonior")

But even so, its not his fault that Total Recall falls short of its inspiration & potential. If the finger of blame must be pointed then it shall forever point at Paul Verhoeven, preferably in a jabbing painful way.

On the contrary, Arnie is one of those irritating actors who insists on script changes to better reflect his imagined popularity with the public.

I know this because I have a n aquaintance who was paid a six figure sum to write about 12 lines of dialogue for Total Recall. He was one of many who were never credited with such tinkering of the script at Arnie's behest.

Which 12 lines were they?

If they included that little gem...

"But we're married!"
bangbang
"Consider dat uh di-vaws."

...then buy your friend a drink on me