The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a 2005 science fiction comedy film. It is based upon the television series, radio series and book of the same name by Douglas Adams.

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The Guide

It's an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

It is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: Avoid, if at all possible.

Listen, if you're gonna survive out here, you've gotta know...where your towel is.

[first lines in the movie] It's an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was the most intelligent species occupying the planet, instead of the third most intelligent. The second most intelligent creatures, were of course dolphins who, curiously enough, had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth. They had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger, but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for titbits. So they eventually decided they would leave Earth by their own means. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards somersault through a hoop while whistling "the Star-Spangled Banner", but in fact, the message was this: [dolphin freeze-frames in mid-air] "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book — perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. More popular than the Celestial Homecare Omnibus, better selling than 53 Things to Do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters — Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes, and Who is This God Person Anyway?

It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a sperm whale had been called into existence, several miles above the surface of an alien planet. But since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity. This is what it thought as it fell: 'Ahhh! Whoa! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by 'who am I'? Okay, okay, calm down, calm down, get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? It's a sort of a tingling in my... well, I suppose I better start finding names for things. Let's call it a... tail! Yeah! Tail! And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do. Yeah, this is really exciting! I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now, isn't it? And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello Ground!' [the whale crashes into the ground] Curiously, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell, was: 'Oh no, not again.' Many have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that, we should know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

Vogons are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy — not evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious, and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, lost, found, queried, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry to you.

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.
- Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
- A deleted portion of the filmed narrative, included as an Easter egg on the DVD

Vogon poetry is widely accepted as the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Khria. During a recitation by their poet-master, Grunthos the Flatulent, of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience members died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council only survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. The absolute worst poetry is by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex. Luckily it was destroyed when the earth was.

"Space," says the introduction to The Hitchhiker's Guide, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is," and so on.

The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call "The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief", are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each. They are unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.

What to do if you find yourself stuck with no hope of rescue: Consider yourself lucky that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far — which, given your present circumstances, seems more likely — consider yourself lucky that it won't be troubling you much longer.

The Encyclopedia Galactica chapter on love states that it is far too complicated to define. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: Avoid, if at all possible. Unfortunately, Arthur Dent has never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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Ford Prefect

Workers of the Earth...I bring good tidings of peanuts...and BEER!
Aha! Towel!
It's a tough galaxy. If you want to survive, you've gotta know...where your towel is.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so.
[about Vogons] They don't think, they don't imagine, most of them can't even spell. They just run things. And if we don't hitch a ride soon, you won't need the guide to tell you just how unpleasant the Vogons can be. They already destroyed a planet today, and that always makes them a little "eeee!"

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Zaphod Beeblebrox

If there's anything around here more important than my ego, I want it caught and shot now!

If there's anything around here more important than my ego, I want it caught and shot now!

Whoo, they're on our tail! Fire a gun! Launch a missile! Do some damage! Come on!

In the name of democracy, freedom, stuff like that... I hereby kidnap myself, and I'm taking the ship with me!

Apparently you can't be president with a whole brain.

I'm just gonna go… find something else for my whole life to be about.

I'm the president of the galaxy, babe. I ain't got a whole lot of time for reading.

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Trillian (Tricia McMillan)

So much for the laws of physics.
Buttons aren't toys!
[about the point-of-view gun] I'm already a woman. It won't have any effect on me.

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Slartibartfast

You must come with me.
Welcome to our factory floor!
Voila! Himalayas! Good, eh?

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Others

Questular Rontok: She's lying. She's skinny and she's pretty and she's lying.
Arthur Dent: Go with the hunch of a man whose brain is fuelled by lemons?!

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Dialogue

What if I told you I really wasn't from Guildford — I was from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?

Life. Don't talk to me about life.

Ford: Arthur... what if I told you I really wasn't from Guildford — I was from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?

Arthur: [chuckles incredulously] Is that something you're likely to say?

Bartender: You really think the world's gonna end?

Ford: Yes.

Bartender: Shouldn't we lie down? Put paper bags over our heads or something?

Ford: If you like.

Bartender: Would it help?

Ford: Not at all.

[Ford and Arthur have been turned into sofas]

Arthur: Ford?

Ford: Yes?

Arthur: I think I'm a sofa.

Ford: ...I know how you feel.

[Ford and Arthur both scream until they revert to normal]

[Everyone aboard the Heart of Gold has been turned into yarn dolls]

Arthur: I think I'm gonna be sick!

Zaphod: Hey, do it in the trash can, Earthman! This ship is brand new!

[Arthur vomits colored yarn into the can]

Marvin: I think you ought to know that I'm feeling very depressed.

Trillian: Well, we have something that should take your mind off things.

Marvin: It won't work. I have an exceptionally large mind.

Trillian: Yeah, we know. But uh, we need you to go down to the number two entry bay and pick up our stowaways and bring them up here.

Marvin: Just that? I won't enjoy it.

Trillian: Yeah, well, that's life.

Marvin: [Scornfully] Life. Don't talk to me about life.

Zaphod: Hey, sorry to hear about your planet, what was it called again?

Arthur: Earth.

Zaphod: Yeah, Earth, I liked Earth. Got these boots on Earth. Anyway, don't tell the girl, okay? 'Cause if you do...

[Zaphod's other head pops out]

Zaphod: I'll pull your spleen out through your throat!

Zaphod: I'll take this! Good zarquon, do I have to do everything? Yes I do! Hey, Trill, this looks really pretty...

Tricia: Don't!

Zaphod: Whoo, they're on our tail! Fire a gun! Launch a missile! Do some damage!

Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.

Arthur Dent: And are you?

Slartibartfast: Ah, no. Well, that's where it all falls down, of course.

Trillian: Marvin, you saved us.

Marvin: I know. Wretched isn't it?

[Arthur is flying the escape pod]

Arthur Dent: Ford? Ford! Help here!

Ford: Um...let's push this button here!

[Pushes button]

[Screen displays "Do not press this button again"]

Arthur: Uh, no! no no no no no!

Ford: How about...this?

[Pushes another button]

[Steering wheel pops up]

Arthur: Ah! there we go, Good man! Good man! Okay, Ford, there's uh, could you...

[Points]

Ford: You mean that?

Arthur: No, that's not it, that makes it worse!

[Display beeps]

Ford: No? No. Um...

[Pushes another button, windshield wipers activate]

Arthur: No, I don't need that, that doesn't help!

Ford: [shrieks his battle cry and runs at the Vogons]

Vogons: He's got a towel! Run away!

[Arguing over using a portal]

Ford: Arthur, calm down! It's no biggy!

Arthur: It's a big biggy, Ford! A big biggy! I mean, what if it rips us all into tiny little atomic partical-things?!

Zaphod: This is the right one! I have a hunch!

Ford: His hunches are good, Arthur! I say we go!

Arthur: [absolutely furious] GO WITH THE HUNCH OF A MAN WHOSE BRAIN IS FUELED BY LEMONS?!?!

[The mice (Lunkwill and Fook) are trying to remove Arthur's brain]

Arthur: Just wait a sodding minute! You want a question that goes with the answer for 42? Well, how about "What's six times seven?" Or "How many Vogons does it take to change a lightbulb?" Here's one! "How many roads must a man walk down?"

Lunkwill: Hey, that's not bad!

Arthur: Fine. Fine, take it. Because my head is filled with questions. And I can assure you, no answer to any one of them has ever brought me one iota of happiness. Except for one. The one. The only question I've ever wanted an answer to - "Is she the one?" And the answer bloody well isn't "42", it's "yes"! Undoubtedly, unequivocally, unabashedly yes! And for one week, one week in my sad little blip of an existence, it made me happy.

Trillian: [moved] That's a good answer...

Lunkwill: Rubbish! We don't want to be happy, we want to be famous!

Fook: Yeah, what is all this "Is she the one" tripe?!

Lunkwill: Take his brain!

[Their drill starts again, but Arthur manages to break free and holds a heavy book above the mice]

Fook: Oh, bollocks! [they are squished]

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