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Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
Director: Garth Jenninngs
Cert: PG

As a great fan of both the Douglas Adams books and the BBC TV series of |Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galax|y, I awaited the launch of the new movie by the same title. After the first 15 minutes of viewing, I knew I was not going to be disappointed. Martin Freeman was a perfect Arthur Dent. They even kept the BBC theme music.

Stephen Fry was the obvious choice for the voice of the Guide and the animated shots, although less frequent in the movie than in the TV series, had a contemporary style that worked well. For fans of the TV series there were several references to it throughout: the BBC Marvin robot could be seen in the queue at the Vogon records office.

In order to condense the story into the length of a movie, several scenes were added, namely the scene with Humma Kavula (John Malkovich), in order to speed up the journey the characters made. The Point of View Gun seemed to have been added as a means of exposing the characters’ feelings: when fired, the victim sees things from the point of view of the person who shot them. Thus the romantic subplot between Arthur and Trillian could be brought to the surface, and was much more prominent in the film.

However, the change that I thought worked the least was the ending. In the TV series, Ford and Arthur travel back in time, via the Restaurant at the End of the Universe to prehistoric earth. The question to the Answer to the Meaning of Life the Universe and Everything (which is 42) is discovered to be ‘What is six times nine?’ which is both absurd and bad maths. They then realise that the planet they are now on, though beautiful, is in fact doomed to destruction by the Vogons, and so futile. In the film, however, Slartibartfast takes the main characters to a second earth which he and the Magratheans are building. They witness the glorious start of this second earth. The film ends with Hollywood optimism.

It has often been said that the dominant world-view of both the books and film of Hitchhiker’s Guide is nihilism; the meaning of life is absurd, and life is just a string of improbable co-incidences. This contrasts with the Christian view of life finding its meaning in the worship and glory of God. I have heard that Douglas Adams was a committed atheist, and this can be detected in the world-view of the book: the ultimate reality behind the earth is not a transcendent Creator God, but pan-dimensional hyperbeings disguised as mice, which are themselves part of creation. It is clear how the monism of both atheism and the universe of Hitchhiker’s Guide leads to nihilism. Meaning requires an ultimate reference point.

The nihilism of the book and TV series was lost in the happy ending. Perhaps the film had its own message: in a God-less, meaningless universe, the hedonistic lifestyle of Zaphod Beeblebrox is the only hope. The book, TV series and movie of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy therefore gets to the heart of atheism, and provides a tool which Christians can use to show their non-Christian friends the beauty and coherence of the biblical world-view.

Philip Harper