You know, I first read the damn thing 25 years or so ago.
And I’ve never gotten the ‘Ford Prefect’ joke.
I think there are a few folks in this thread in the same boat who just don’t know it. 
Ford chose his name because of an initial misunderstanding about the dominant species on the planet. If he was looking at the U.S., he might have called himself “Ford Fairlane.”
On preview, I see I am too late. Eh.
It’s hard to tell in the preview, because of the size and quality, but Zaphod’s other head does show up briefly, in an unexpected place (I won’t spoil it, just look carefully).
It’s a car. He misjudged the dominant species on the planet as cars.
I was perfectly convinced that I was going to hate this movie before I saw the trailer. Now I’m not so sure. The thumb is corny, and I still think Marvin looks WAY off, but it might just be a good movie. Mos Def is one of my favorite rappers, and from what I’ve in the past, he can act, so I’m looking forward to seeing him as Ford.
Wait…can we then assume that Dice was an alien? 
Zaphod’s second head does indeed show up in the trailer - it was done that way to keep the special effects budget somewhat under control. At least his third arm is still there.
I’m cautiously looking forward to this, but I’ve heard that some early reviews said the British actors are all great, but the American actors (particularly Mos Def), well, suck. Not because they’re American or anything, but just because they don’t nail the performances. I dunno. FWIW.
Ah, well. At least they got Stephen Fry to voice the Guide.
Out of curiousity, is the movie just the first book or is it the entire ‘trilogy’?
This is a total guess but I’ve got a feeling that they’ll use the first book as the overall storyarc with elements from the other 4 books and most likely a stop at Milliway’s.
At least that’s what I’m hoping. If they manage to pull this off, I do not want them screwing it up with a bunch of sequels.
: crosses fingers and chants :
Please let it be good, please let it be good…
Oh, God. It looks like the only way this could suck any harder would be for Limp Bizkit to do a rap-metal cover of “Journey Of The Sorcerer” over the closing credits.
Okay, I was getting worried about this movie, given early screenere reviews that said it seemed cheap, but the trailer (which took forever to load, BTW) looks pretty decent. I have no problems with Ford’s color, Zaphod’s second head is cool, the Vogons are even nastier than I ever imagined them from the book, Slartibartfast’s planet-making shop is awesome, and I will get a toy Marvin to perch on my computer.
Now let’s just hope the trailer didn’t just snip all the cool bits from the movie…
I’m happy with it. Zaphod is almost exactly as I pictured him–to be honest, even though I know he’s supposed to have two heads, I never really pictured him that way when I was reading or listening. I even like Marvin.
“The fate of the Universe rests in their hands…” is just there to fulfill the trailer’s quota of Movie Trailer Cliches. These things are pretty tightly regulated, you know.
It isn’t going to be exactly like the books, or the radio series. It’s a separate entity. I liken it to the way a lot of comic books go from series to series–you tell a story with the same characters, starting from the same place, with a lot of similar points and elements, but not always going to exactly the same places.
I’m not going to post a direct link, because I’m getting the distinct impression the powers that be didn’t mean for it to be available anywhere but Amazon… but readers of Slashdot.com might just find something larger and downloadable…
I’m happy with it, even Mos Def seems like he might be OK. And the guy who plays Arthur is perfect.
The trailer is neither as good as I hoped or as bad as I feared. Mos Def is not my vision of Ford Prefect (I always imagined Eric Idle in full “wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, aye”) but I’ll give him a shot. I thought of Arthur as being, well, Douglas Adams, only a bit shyer. Trillian…well, DNA didn’t seem to know what to make of her when he was writing the character. Zaphod, though, looks on point from what has been shown, and it’s exactly the sort of thing that Sam Rockwell does so well (hyperkinetic, greasy, bombastic and neurotic.) I always thought of Marvin as being taller, but otherwise he does have that sort of bobble-headed and depressed look I expected. And I’m anxious to see the new characters Douglas wrote into the script, particularly Humma Kavula (John Malkovich).
Why rush to judgement? The world will end on May 6th (US). When the Vogons are floating overhead, then we’ll know if it was good or not. Just don’t listen to the poetry!
And know where your towel is.
Stranger
(I hope this leads to a Dirk Gently movie.)
The British sense of humour and comic timing is unique and distinctive. To have Americans try to emulate a British comedy sensibility is fraught with peril.
I am not too optimistic.
Isn’t Ford Prefect supposed to be claiming he’s from Guildford? Mos Def is mos’ def’ not from Guildford anyway. I guess that’s another joke that will have to be altered.
Try this. (I guess some browser/plug-in combos require an XML string to be passed through to the player. Weird.)
I’m curious about some of the posters who have opined that it looks like a load of suck. What, specifically, are y’all balking at?
I don’t have much of a problem with Zaphod’s supernumerary head. Better to work around it than have a distractingly non-perfect (and SFX-budget draining) attempt every time he’s on-screen. Besides, we know that he can appear as a standard humanoid – he had one head and two arms when Arthur first met him, after all.
I’m sure it’s going to grate a bit every time something is undergoes a conspicuous trans-atlantic transliteration. Like “hyperspace by-pass” becoming “hyperspace expressway,” for example. I’m not about to sweat the small stuff, though, so long as they don’t make Arthur a coffee drinker.
Mos Def? I’m still wait-and-see about that. I kind of liked that Ford had gone native in such a localized way. I’m not sure if a big black Yank earnestly pressing lager and peanuts on his friend in an English pub will work the same way.
By and large, though, it looks to me as though it’s going to be fantastic! I’m extremely excited about Stephen Fry’s participation – a perfect choice for the Book.
Any bets on the substitution? “How would you react if I told you I wasn’t from Yonkers after all, but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?” Or maybe they’ll try to stick with the *ford form, which implied that he still a bit ignorant/unimaginative when he made up his background? Hartford? I can’t see it, somehow.
So who all is planning on bringing a towel with them when they go to see it?
I was able to open it when I got home.
On my DSL connection.
preens