Heart of Platinum

Heart of Platinum

I always imagined that the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that book within the book that offered all kinds of useful information to those thumbing their way across the Milky Way, was a rather fluid thing, in a constant state of being rewritten and reedited as new information was gathered by writers such as Ford Prefect. So it didn’t really bother me that they made changes to the story in bringing “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” to the big screen. Having seen the results of a completely faithful screen translation recently (Sin City), I was more than happy to see “Hitchhiker’s” be less than faithful. Unfortunately, being Hollywood, they changed all the wrong things.

The basic story (and it’s always been the most basic of stories) of an English everyman named Arthur Dent who gets saved from the demolition of Earth by his good friend (and undercover alien) Ford Prefect to go on an incredible journey through the galaxy remains mostly unchanged. They still have to listen to Vogon poetry, conveniently translated by a Babblefish, before they are thrown out an airlock into space. They are still improbably saved from death by the Heart of Gold, the only starship in the universe with an improbability drive. That starship is still commanded by two-headed Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, (nothing like the name Zaphod Beeblebrox to make your spell checker more depressed than Marvin the Paranoid Android) and crewed by the aforementioned android and a girl named Tricia MacMillan (Trillian for short) that Arthur once tried to pick up at a party. And they all end up on the planet Magrathea, home of an ancient race of world builders who had originally built Earth itself as a huge computer designed to calculate the question to life, the universe and everything (the answer, already computed over 7.5 million years by another supercomputer named Deep Thought, is 42). They just take a few different detours than those familiar to readers of the books. The problem is that those detours result in a kind of philosophical shift away from what was always at the heart of the “Hitchhiker’s” story.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a book about the absolute absurdity of existence. The answer the question of life, the universe and everything is 42, and nobody is ever sure of the question (how many roads must a man walk down?). And that absurdity, first and foremost, is what the book was about, with characters and plot merely added on for context. Arthur Dent was a man to whom life happened. He was a victim of the absurd whims of a universe that would seek to destroy his home planet on the same morning that it destroyed his home. Surviving that absurdity, without actually learning anything valuable from it, is what made Arthur Dent who he was. The problem for Hollywood is that that is not the kind of hero they want for one of their movies. No, Hollywood heroes need to learn, or redeem, or defeat, or triumph over something.

So Dent, whose entire sad little life was annihilated in the first moments of the movie, when given the opportunity to return to that life in the end makes the uncharacteristic decision to continue to travel the galaxy with Trillian, Prefect and George W. er, Beeblebrox. It was not a decision that the Arthur Dent I remember would’ve made, but of course in the book it wasn’t an option. The world building Magratheans never finished Earth Mark II, and if they had it probably would have been minus the trappings of civilization that Arthur remembered. So by recreating the world entirely as it was in the moments before its destruction, this film takes all the wind out of the earth shattering opening. Although if absurd things like the Earth being destroyed to make a hyperspace expressway can happen, I suppose equally absurd things like a whole new Earth being created can also, but it shifts Arthur from a victim of circumstance to a being wholly in control of his situation. He now has that choice, return to a place identical to home or continue his adventures in the galaxy. Whatever he chooses, he is no longer a victim of the absurdity of life, a fact that defeats the point of the story.

Other changes in the story are also counter-philosophical. Zaphod Beeblebrox is now searching for the question to the answer of life, the universe and everything. Although his reasons are as shallow as we might’ve expected, I don’t see the need to change from his original goal of finding the treasure of the wealthy Magratheans. It all still takes you to Magrathea. No mention is made of the fact that Earth was only minutes away from calculating that question, which takes all of the irony out of the timing of Earth’s destruction (but I suppose if the Magratheans could rebuild the planet exactly as it was in the moments before its destruction the mice wouldn’t have needed Arthur’s brain, they could’ve just waited a few more minutes for the answer). Also, the Arthur and Trillian love story feeds us the old love conquers all, will make a new man out of you cliché that seems completely at odds with the overall philosophy of the books. If love gives meaning to life, then life has meaning and absurd old 42 doesn’t mean a thing. We always knew that Dent was attracted to Trillian, but being the man he was we never expected him to take the risks required to win her. Tacked on detours to see a strange cult leader and to rescue Trillian from Vogosphere don’t really add much to the story, just more layers of confusion for those not familiar with it.

Of course it’s supremely tricky to adopt a book about an idea to the screen, especially a book about as absurd an idea as absurdity. The actors, director and screenwriters (including the late Doug Adams, author of the book) all manage to be fairly competent. And in its own way this film is a legitimate take on the “Hitchhiker’s” story, especially if you like happy endings. But at its heart, it’s more platinum than gold; it’s just not the “Hitchhiker’s” that we all know and love.