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

Are you suggesting Rambo's for children?

A few thoughts...


I do not believe Mr. X was referring to the music, but rather the multi-frequency screech; rather like god's fingernails on a chalkboard. I can understand his revulsion.


There was only ONE! _Alien_ film and it was a horror film. The others are fan-fic adventure flicks.

Sly Stalone's definitive role was as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo in _Death Race 2000_.

There is NO WAY that SW: ep VII was worse than the prequels. They shat on my childhood.

Heaven's Gate was actually a fine film but was panned by just a few actual critics who were parrotted by others. It was a financial disaster not because it was bad, but because people were told it was.


I thought I fondly remembered watching _High Fidelity_ (I'd never read the book) but after watching that trailer I see that it was utterly forgettable. The only scenes or characters I recognized were Jack Black, and the Cusacks. Feel free to unmake it.



If I were to unmake a film, it would likely be _Dumb and Dumber_ as it greenlit a slew of idiotic films in its wake with insipid "humor" and detestable main characters. I blame that film, and the audience it tapped, for allowing Adam Sandler to have a film career.

Icy, "adultier" perhaps?

No, no, not that. This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU4Rk0NATNs



"They should have done the whole hobbit in one movie."

Two movies.

Oh.

Yeah, what Baron Grim said.

"Sly Stalone's definitive role..."

I liked him a lot in Demolition Man.



"There is NO WAY that SW: ep VII was worse than the prequels. They shat on my childhood."

Hey, complain about the prequels all you like, but at least they WERE Star Wars. This isn't Star Wars at all, it's a patched-together J.J. Abrams... THING... that rushes from one emotionally unsatisfying explosion to the next (like all his movies) without giving the plot a chance to breathe. With a whiny, petulant child as the main villain.

Even the prequels at least had credible villains.

And he has absolutely no understanding of space distances. In Star Trek, Old Spock sees Vulcan implode in *remarkable* detail while standing on another planet. In the phony-baloney imitation Star Wars, our heroes physically see one planet blast a laser and blow up another planet across the galaxy, all while standing on a THIRD planet, in yet a completely DIFFERENT solar system.

Then there's the fact that this laser extinguishes a star every time it's used, which means it should only get one shot before the planet it's built on is dead forever. But apparently they can just magically teleport the planet straight to another solar system with a brand new star. And the "heroes" know exactly where it is. Somehow.

Even the original Star Wars films had plot holes you could fly a Star Destroyer through. (Was Luke trained by Yoda in an afternoon?)

I'd say that this latest film has the same basic plot as the original making it more Star Wars than the prequels. (Midichlorians!? Trade Council politics? Vader built C3PO!? Why?)

The Prequels destroyed any joy I had in Star Wars. I watched this latest one simply because I had time to kill on Xmas day. I didn't hate it like I did the prequels, but I really don't care about it either, so unmake it as you wish.


JJ Abrams will turn it into an endless franchise anyway, like all those comic book superhero films and, well, Star Trek. The original trilogy was leading to an ending. Now it's been "rebooted".

"Even the original Star Wars films had plot holes you could fly a Star Destroyer through. (Was Luke trained by Yoda in an afternoon?)"

Yeah, but this is TEN TIMES worse.



"I'd say that this latest film has the same basic plot as the original making it more Star Wars than the prequels."

Only mechanically. Not in spirit.



"I watched this latest one simply because I had time to kill on Xmas day. I didn't hate it like I did the prequels, but I really don't care about it either, so unmake it as you wish."

There, see, that's exactly the problem. You don't care about anything that happens in this movie. The only character I cared about at all (because he was the only character who seemed alive) was the new droid.



"JJ Abrams will turn it into an endless franchise anyway"

No, Disney will. Because Disney has the resources, the interest, and the talent. (Somewhere... they must...)

But only if Abrams doesn't *murder* it first.



"The original trilogy was leading to an ending. Now it's been "rebooted"."

Mmm... It would have been best if they had stuck with the ending and just made a whole new story with whole new characters (later, in a different part of the Star Wars universe), instead of tearing the old ending apart. Can't understand why they made such an obvious mistake.

" I blame that film, and the audience it tapped, for allowing Adam Sandler to have a film career." [Baron Grim]

Sandler's film career is, indeed, deplorable, with the possible exception of his voicing in "Hotel Transylvania." I liked "Fifty First Dates," because Drew Barrymore was in it. I doubt that Sandler was essential to the success of that movie. Or any movie he's been in....

"Click" was good.

Okay, I'll give you that, but the only scenes I can remember from that movie are the ones that Christopher Walken was in. He's a bit of a scene-stealer, isn't he?

For every _Click_ Sandler makes 5 _Pixels_;
For every _Punch Drunk Love_ he makes there are 10 _Jack and Jills_.


There is a good take down of Sandler on YouTube by Red Letter Media. Anyone interested should know it's NSFW and search for it.

I take that back. I haven't seen _Click_ nor would I. It doesn't look good to me.

Replace that with _Happy Gilmore_ which was tolerable.

Sandler is tolerable if all the alternatives are far worse.

The only reason I saw "Dumb and Dumber" was because I thought Jeff Daniels might be worth seeing. He was, but barely.

"apparently they can just magically teleport the planet straight to another solar system "

It's called hyperdrive. X-wing fighters have it, the Falcon has it, the original Death Star had it - or did you think Alderaan and Yavin were in the same system? There appears to be no limit on how small or how large an object can be transported by it, and "Starkiller Base" seems a natural extension of the "bigger, louder, MORE!" philosophy the Empire was already displaying with the second DS. It's no longer "that's no moon", it's now "that's no PLANET".

Ironically, given what Starkiller base is canonically capable of (i.e. hyperdrive travel between star systems, and basic being-a-planet stuff), it doesn't actually need any offensive weaponry. Roche limits being what they are, all it would need to do is drop out of hyperspace about 100,000km from its target and... just sit there for a day or two. The resulting damage would be catastrophic.

However - lest we forget, and exactly like the first - this is primarily a film intended to entertain eight-year olds. The fact I even know what Roche limits ARE is attributable in large part to the effect the original Star Wars had on me. All you need to know when you're eight is that the entire planet is a ****ING BIG GUN, and it can destroy other planets. That is undeniably cool. Later, when you get to thinking about it, it's fun to learn that it doesn't need the gun, and so on.

2015/16's kids can get a kick out of going back and watching the source material (i.e. "Star Wars" and its sequels), just as my generation got a kick out of going back and watching the source material for those - the old Flash Gordon serials, The Hidden Fortress and so on.



My favourite bit was on Jakku, when John Boyega's Finn sees Daisy Ridley's Rey for the first time. She's getting attacked by a bunch of thugs, and he unhesitatingly runs to her rescue. There then follows an absolutely brilliant bit of entirely wordless physical comedy as he
(a) realises that actually she doesn't need rescuing, as she's rather efficiently kicked their butts just fine all on her own
(b) realises that she's noticed him and
(c) realises that she's now coming after HIM, and now is the time for a sharp exit.

It's all over in a couple of seconds with no dialogue, but it really stuck in my mind. It's hilarious.



Film unmakes? Easy. One of my favourite films of all time is "Casablanca". It's one of those films (along with, say, "Brazil" or "Blade Runner") that is so perfect and of its time that nobody should ever attempt a remake.

That they did, and cast Pamela Andersen in the Humphrey Bogart role and set it in a science fiction future, is something I can barely believe happened even as I type this. "Barb Wire" is the title, and if I ever invent or otherwise acquire a time machine, that's on my list for erasure from history.

The stoopidest remake I can recall is the 1998 Gus Van Sant remake of _Psycho_.


It was a shot for shot remake. Basically it was the most expensive way to colorize a film.

"Casablanca" was a brilliant bit of last-minute invention, as they were still putting the script together fairly late into the shoot.

"It's called hyperdrive. X-wing fighters have it, the Falcon has it, the original Death Star had it - or did you think Alderaan and Yavin were in the same system?"

You can't hyperdrive a planet. More importantly, they weren't shown to do so, it was heavily implied that the thing never moved. For instance, if it had, then all the trees and stuff would've been dead already.

The (thrice!) recycled plot is equally insulting.

Kylo Ren wasn't at all menacing as a villain, he was just a petulant child.

The last time we saw Luke's lightsaber it was falling into the core of a gas giant, so how the hell did what's-her-face get it?

I like Rey but it's ridiculous that she learns in hours, without guidance, Force techniques that took Luke YEARS to figure out WITH a mentor.

If she's capable of that, then why didn't she do way before the movie even started during all that time she spent alone?

By resetting the story pretty much all the way back to A New Hope, you effectively erase the only GOOD Star Wars movies, in typical Abrams fashion.

(Because why should anything the heroes have ever done have a lasting effect when instead you can just lazily tell the same story over and over again forever!)

I could go on for some time, but I have more important things to do.

Good day, sir.

Actually, I don't really need it to be scientifically perfect to be entertained by it. It's listed right there in the genre: fiction.

Was it entertaining? It wasn't a complete waste of time, although I'd have been happier to spend less money on seeing it.

But, was I entertained by it? Sure. I got into the characters and followed their story. I'm curious to see how things turn out.

Do I need to see it over and over? Or even twice? Not in the least. Plot-wise I've already seen it at least twice.

Am I going to religiously follow everything that pops up in a theater with a Star Wars logo stamped on it? I sincerely doubt it.

How could I sum up my overall reaction to the new Star Wars? I wish they'd done half as good a job of marketing and popularizing Hitchhikers when it came out. And I'm really looking forward to the next Trek. (so, I'm still rather indifferent, apparently).

"you can just lazily tell the same story over and over again forever!) " [Mr X]

It's not laziness so much as a finite number of basic stories. One analyst has it that there are seven. Another says there are 20. Another says 36. I've heard of 12. Whatever.

If you liked the stories in the earlier "Star wars" movies, you'll go to see new episodes when they come out. If not, you'll ignore them.

"Hitchhiker's guide to the universe" has the "voyage and return" plot, minus the return.