Good evening from quarantine beach! I made the trip from Maryland to Florida hopefully without a run in with Miss Rona. The airports were actually annoyingly full of old people blatantly ignoring social distancing. Maybe they’re Vogons!
This week was actually my pick. I know I know, it breaks the rules. There are only so many movies I could watch on my D.C. to Tampa flight and someone, Nicholas, wasn’t answering their phone. I selected classic film “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” directed by Garth Jennings was released in 2005. The film was based on the novel by Douglas Adams, first released in 1979. This film has a wild plot that gives more questions than answers, so I won’t be giving as thorough of a synopsis. In order to explain it I’d probably end up rambling like a toddler.
Our story centers on Arthur Dent, who seems very content with living simply. He loves his house and rarely strays from a typical British lifestyle. Even when offered a date in Madagascar with Tricia, played by Zooey Deschanel, Arthur refuses in favor of his comfortable and known lifestyle. Tricia is swept off her feet by a man using a spaceship pick up line to which Arthur rolls his eyes that it worked for her. Arthur wakes up to find him home is being demolished in favor of building a highway. He protests and is helped by friend Ford, who brings beer for the construction crew to stop them from taking down his home, for now. Ford reveals he is truly an alien and today is the day the world ends but he plans to save Arthur to repay a life debt.
Ford holds his thumb out and they’re both whisked away. It turns out they’ve become stowaways on a Vogon destroyer ship, destined to destroy earth in favor of a hyperspace highway. Arthur learns exactly who Vogons are, generally gross and boring bureaucrats, from a book Ford has been curating called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Ford and Arthur are discovered by the Vogons and are cast out into the void of space. In the same moment, a giant object appears around them. This turns out to be a shapeshifting spaceship lead by Tricia, now known as Trillian, and Zaphod, the man she left Arthur for. Zaphod is actually president of the galaxy who has kidnapped himself and stole the spaceship in order to find the meaning of life.
The gaggle cut a deal with Zaphod’s political opponent. They get coordinates to a mysterious planet that Zaphod believes holds the answers they need, while Hummer gets a point of view gun. As they leave Tricia is captured by Vogons for kidnapping the president. In captivity, Tricia learns that Zaphod signed off on the destruction of earth. They rescue Tricia and head for the mysterious planet on which they will find Deep Thought. Deep Thought was a super computer created to find the answer to life. When the answer turned out to be 42, they asked Deep Thought to create a super computer that’s capable of calculating the question to which 42 is the answer.
Arthur meets the creator of earth, who shows him they’ve built a second one exactly like the one he just lost. He is taken to his little house, exactly the way it was when he left it. He finds his friends inside enjoying a feast provided by inter-dimensional beings that had originally commissioned the creation of earth. They believe Arthur’s brain is the key to finding the question and attempt to remove it but Arthur is able to squish them with a teapot.
They aren’t out of the woods yet, Vogons are still looking for Zaphod. An army of them awaits outside and a shoot out begins. The gang is saved by a depressed robot using the point of view gun on all of the Vogon army. They become much too depressed and give up shooting. Arthur looks at the life he used to have and decides to choose adventure and explores the galaxy with his friends.
If you thought that was complicated, watch the movie and you’ll really see that was the abridged version. I didn’t even try to explain Zaphod’s two heads. This film has instantly become a favorite. There is a comedy and lightness that absolutely puzzles the viewer. You see yourself in Arthur because he’s normal and wants to be normal but is thrown into just about the least normal situation. The Vogons are truly disgusting and clearly have an advantage over these ‘criminals’ but are so caught up in red tape they never manage to capture Zaphod, as both a rescue from his kidnapping and as punishment for kidnapping the president. The president that is himself. Zaphod is a ridiculously annoying character full of vanity but he originally gets the girl with promises of adventure and something more exciting than a pint down the street. We could also see ourselves in Tricia, someone who is desperate to break normality that they’d rather go with a two headed idiot than someone they could be truly compatible with. The characters are exaggerations and their adventures are far from relatable and yet it offers a new perspective on our own lives. No matter which character you learn most from you’re still learning from them in a humorous way. Maybe you learn to bend some rules from the Vogons or to be less self-centered from Zaphod. No matter what, you learn something from this guide.
Next up let’s talk about how my opinions compare to that of Roger Ebert, one of the most acclaimed film critics of all time.
Nick and Kaitlin's Infinite Movie Playlist 