Compare And Contrast Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book by Douglas Adams and the movie with the same title describes a fictional and rather comedic account of an adventure of four traveler’s space travel and surviving the various planets and their different inhabits within the galaxy, following the demolition of the main protagonist Arthur Dent’s home planet Earth. Both the book and the movie begin with Arthur’s home in the countryside preparing to be demolished to make way for a new bypass. As Arthur is protesting the demolition of his actual home Arthur’s friend and one of the travelers Ford Perfect is introduced, he is man visiting from a “small planet neighboring the planet Beetlejuice”. (Hitchhiker’s Guide) and he saves Arthur from Earth’s demolition

In addition, the development and portrayal of the main protagonists makes the movie and overall more successful comedic work.

The beginning of the storyline presented nearly identical between the book and the movie except for the character description of Ford Perfect, in the book the description of him as a redheaded and presumably a white male. This is different from the movie; Ford is a black man with dark hair (Mos Def). Also the comedic element of Ford giving beer to the demolition workers to distract them from working. In the book, Ford convinced Prosser to lay in front of the bulldozer while Arthur and ford go to the pub, this takes away from his characters witty and care free personality and his live by standing of “Don’t Panic.” After this doomsday drinks at the pub and the start of the Earth’s demolition, Ford takes Arthur to hitchhike on a Vorgon spaceship. Where they are captured and put in jail after suffering the punishment of listening to Vorgon poetry, “which is widely accepted as the third worst thing in the universe” (Hitchhikers). They are then released into space, where they hitchhike onto the stolen starship “Heart of Gold.” This is when the other characters are introduced, the President of the Galaxy