I stand corrected. (Funny that I never noticed slashdot comment pages have more than one page before. Ooops.) Thanks for braving the wrath of moderation. (Although I can’t imagine why finding a easier-to-view version of a publicly available advertisement should be in any way suspect.)
So, clearly there’s nothing wrong with Marvin that couldn’t be fixed by an industrial strength shot of the cybernetic equivilent of Prozac. He’s supposed to be sleek, and although the description doesn’t describe him as “cute”, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation clearly wants their robots to be amiable in apperance. I don’t think the cinematic Marvin is too far off of what Adams described, though clearly his the more post-modern antiseptic white than the gleaming Art Deco stainless.
Gah…typing those paragraphs now makes me hunger for the movie. “Far out in the unchartered backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun…”
I’m not a fanboy, but…I can’t wait!!!
Okay, I guess I am a fanboy. :eek:
Stranger
I checked. It’s in the introduction to the Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide, but not in the actual text of the first novel.
Having first heard the radio play, then read the books, and seeing the tv mini-series, I kept thinking “why don’t they sound british” during the preview.
msmith537 beat me to the punch. I was expecting Zaphod to be more of a smarmy Johnny Knoxville character.
Arthur looked to be a good casting choice.
I can’t wait to hear Alan Rickman do Marvin’s voice. Marvin is not at all like I pictured him, but if it’s Alan Rickman’s voice, it should be OK. I was let down that we didn’t get to hear Marvin say anything in the trailer. Marvin damned well better say something about the pain in all the diodes down his left side.If they do make Marvin into a toy that says depressing things, I will have one on my desk at work.
Zooey Deschanel in anything is hot. I look forward to seeing how she does as Trillian.
Did I see the giant frozen cup from the radio series in the trailer?
I was both thrilled and a little disappointed with this trailer. It does look a little too slapstick and not enough British humor to it. But they had to target it for an American audience as well. Not everyone gets British humor. Remember that it wasn’t made for just us fans, it was made to gross as much as it could.
I will be bringing a towel to this movie.
For those having trouble playing the movie on Amazon, this site has the trailer in WMV, Real and Quicktime formats (click on “Larger Trailer”).
Did anyone else notice that in the final scene, when they are getting hit by the fly-swatters, that both Arthur and Ford have their towels? 
Here’s a thread at another message board with various stills taken from the trailer and the dissection thereof. There’s a lot of neat little details I missed out on.
The trailer is avaible now at the official Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie site.
Ford looks too cool in this movie. He shouldn’t be cool, he’s odd. And he’s American. Why not have him be British? You want American characters to appeal to an American market, then Zaphod and possibly Trillian can be American (Zaphod really suits being American). You want to avoid an all-white cast, then have a black British actor play Ford.
There was also way too much slapstick. Slapstick wasn’t an element of the book, radio series, TV series, computer game or anything. Hopefully that’s just the trailer though, and the film has more of the intelligent humour of the other versions. I also hope that the ‘fate of the universe’ crap was just advertising cliche …although I wouldn’t have expected a Hitchhikers’ trailer to stoop to using cliche.
What kept springing to mind as I watched was Evolution. I don’t mind that movie, but oh my sainted Doug, that’s not what Hitchhikers’ is about.
Still. I like the look of the thing, think Arthur looks fantastic, am pleased with the design of Marvin and ecstatic that he’s going to be voiced by Alan Rickman, so I remain cautiously optimistic.
sniff American Ford. The actor won’t even know what a Ford Prefect is. He probably won’t even know what a prefect is!
That “cast people by merit, not nationality” thing is never gonna sink in, is it? 
So you think he’s stupid too, eh? :smack:
Annoyingly, I did remark on that in my original post, but my computer died and took my thoughts away.
Do you really think casting a rapper is appropriate for Ford Prefect, in the ‘merit’ stakes?
No, I think that, given the lack of British public school with prefects in America, the vast majority of Americans would not know what a prefect is, and even after it was explained to them they might not understand. Nothing to do with intelligence - it’s a cultural/linguistic term.
Some new, and improved trailers have been put up recently. Not as conventional as the first trailer, thank Og.
In case anyone’s still having trouble with the trailer, try this. It worked for me.hitchhikers.movies.go.com/main.html
Holy, holy holy, holy crap.
This is gonna be good.
I had my reservations… an american Arthur? A black rapper Ford? Zaphod with ONE head? Uh, hello, did you even READ the book?
Then I saw the trailers in JoeSki’s link.
Doug, even dead, you are a genius.
This is gonna be awesome.
I particularly liked that, apparently, the Voice of the Book is british. Sounds quite a bit like the original Voice, too.
Marvin SPOKE in this trailer. Not quite perfect, but if there’s a better voice talent for this role than Alan, I don’t know who it might be.
Judging by the fact that they used the ground-shovels (Huh?) bit repeatedly as the ‘slapstick’ segment (pardon the pun) I’m going to guess that is the only slapstick segment available. This is a very good thing.
And the special effects are simply outstanding. If the BBC had had this kind of budget in 1981… well, and the computers… nope. Still couldn’t have pulled it off. This needed Disney.
:::Sits outside the theater with his towel, waiting.:::
Arthur has never been anything but British. Martin Freeman is from The Office.
Well, how 'bout that. Now I feel foolish.
Good thing I can cover my head with this towel!
That’s OK, you’re still a hoopy frood.
It looks like it could be good. Hopefully, it’s not so hideously bad that I can’t stand to sit through 30 or 40 times. (Remember, folks, the more money this film makes, the more likely they are to make other DNA films.)
You know what’s funny? These new trailers are a complete satire of the first, color by numbers, HGTTG trailer. It made outrageous claims of being the greatest story ever told, it indeed, featured a narrator who sounded 7 feet tall and who had been smoking since he was nine, and yes, had plenty of gratuitous explosions and slapstick…only it had all this and no real sense of humor about it.
Well, thank God there’s footage out there representing DNAs humor. It’s appealing enough to be found funny by the masses, and quirky enough for Adams fans to feel at home with it. Disney should have a success on it’s hands with this one.
I’ll strangle them if they kill the series by creating countless, shoddy straight to video/DVD sequals.
Well, this is a great plan, up to a point. After all, there’s only, what, six? Nine? Different DNA books available to even consider filming. And most of those are two series… HHGttG and the even less filmable Dirk Gently… uh… series.
Not that I won’t do everything in my power to see 'em done. With the possible exception of preventing the rise of life on earth. 
:::Shudder:::
The animated series. Endless crappy videos, with completely different voice talent, following Marvin and Arthur/Trillian’s kid around the Galaxy as they have weird and wacky adventures.
I think I’d rather endure Vogon poetry again.
Ah, now that trailer is much, much more amusing. Good stuff!
I want you all to know I’m feeling much less depressed.