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

And does anyone know why they decided to film 'TLOTR' and not
'The Hobbit'? From a cinematographic point of view 'The Hobbit' is far easier to film, has a better story, requires less highly paid actors and is understandable to an uneducated audiance.

Hmm/MMM\mmm.*














*This is the typed equivalent of that sound people make when they shrug and say "I don't know" without moving their lips.

If LOTR goes over well, The Hobbit may not be too far behind. (Sheeesh! We're thinking of prequels already?)

I have to admit, it would be a less daunting task script-wise, effects wise, actor-wise, etc.

Apart from the bit with the spiders.

This conversation is turning into one of the biggest on the guide!

It's probably one of the largest devoted to an approved entry, but there're a lot unofficial running forums that are WAY bigger than this. I'm diligently posting on this "roleplaying" forum in another section, and it's already swelled to well over 300 postings; And that's AFTER it was continued from another, LARGER conversation. I think the latter was somewhere in the area of a thousand messages before posting ceased.

And let's not forget all those forums in the "Ask H2G2" section. Man, some of those just won't die.

Wow! Really? I looked for anything else on the subject on a forum search, and only came up with postings for this conversation, postings for 'the rings that rule' (with many and varied changes of title), and then just miscellaneous mentions of Tolkien here and there. What's the forum #?

('Ask H2G2' shouldn't count. Someone's always have a question, (and some will argue the answer to the grave...)

Spiders... what precisely would be so hard about those? They wouldn't have to do anything exactly innovative to make them for the most part, I think.

How does one make spiders?




Looks like a job for more puppet/cgi combinations!...

Agreed. And in tight shots use a puppet. (Woah, Deja Vu!)

Dammit, you already alluded to the puppets. (try READING, Cenchrea...) But this IS starting to look familiar, no? So, what would the spiders look like? Tarantulas, black widows? I'd op for something very surreal looking, with silky, yet distinctly sticky/slimy webs flung everywhere. (It would look kinda like carmelized sugar, I think)

Hmmmm, I don't know how scary that'd be...**I**, for one, have never had nightmares about carmelized sugar. Or am I taking that too literally .

Weeeeeel, carmelized sugar would just have the right shimmery, gossamery, texture to it. Have you ever just played with carmelized sugar as it hardens? The consistency is fantastic for making surreal and dream-like tangles of what looks like cobwebs, if you play with it enough.

I thought carmelized sugar was scalding-hot. You don't play with it using your bare hands, do you.

I've seen it done, and they did it with sticks, skewers, and stuff. Then as it got cooler they'd twist it in their fingers and stuff, but they wouldn't even mess with it until it cooled to the consistency of thick maple syrup. Is it even carmelized sugar I'm thinking about? The taffy-like kind?

>Yeah, didn't he base Middle Earth on England?

I belive he based the Shire on England (in particular the rural areas of Oxfordshire). But I do not think the whole of Middle Earth is England. Mordor for instance doesn't sound like any part of England I know.

Zathras

Rehash wrote:
>all the film might do is expose the books many aforementioned >weaknesses

Some of the points are fair enough (incidently though I don't consider them weaknesses of the book). Gandalf's reincarnation can easily be explained away by saying he didn't actually die. Also the fact he is the keeper of the elven ring of fire (can't recall the name) would probably serve as an explaination.

Just accepting the rings are powerful without any reason is not beyond the wit of cinema audiences. You have to accept a lot in most movies and in a fnatasy movie the idea of magic is not beyond the pale. Possibly very slightly expanding Gandalf's explaination in Bilbo's hole would serve.

Zathras

Middle Earth is based on the earth in its entirety, putting Mordor somewhere in Asia Minor.

Gandalf's re-incarnation is understood better if you read 'Unfinished Tales'
In that book, Tolkien tells us that Gandalf is one of the Istari, a being a couple of steps below the Maia, and so virtually immortal. Saruman was expelled from the order of Istari by the 're-incarnated' Gandalf, and so stripped of his immortality. That is how Wormtongue could 'kill' him, and why the wind blew his spirit eastward when it tried to travel westward, towards 'the undying lands'

'G'

>I stand corrected, he does play a part in the plot, but not one so >big that the hole couldn't be patched up with some finesse.

I guess you could get around the problem by simply letting the hobbits get the swords from Bilbo (via Frodo). Since no movie of the Hobbit has been made we don't really need to worry too much about continuity.

>not how to stay true to the books on every detail, because, let's >face it, movies don't work that way.

And (just to be controversial) why should they. Books and films are different media and consequently should change. A literal page-by-page screenplay equivalent of TLoTR would proabably be a very poor (and very long) movie. I'd rather an imaginative director made a good movie based on the book, the a tedious copy of it.

>Wasn't she a child when he found he at the river side, or at least >very young? (I have read that part recently, however.)

Cant really recall either. Certainly she is 'childlike' in some ways, but so is Tom. And even if he did first encounter her when she was a child the idea of meeting one's future wife when she is a child is not unknown in the fantasitic genre.

Zathras (with apologies for the long response)

Good God! All I said was 'Apart from the spiders anyway' and we get an argument about the artistic merits of caramel!

All I meant was that the animetronics required for the Mirkwood scene would cost a bomb.

And...you believe costs would stop Hollywood movie producers?