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When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

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Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#101

Post by xref »

maire wrote: post #48
jlawson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dune explicitly was adapted to satisfy PC morality. Villneuve said so (using other words of course). They made Jessica into a physical fighter, converted Liet Kynes into a black lady, excised the distinctive word 'jihad' to refer to Paul's vision of war. They removed the Baron's homosexuality and sexual perversion and changed his servant boys into (bald) servant girls, etc. The damage wasn't too bad all things consid…

> They made Jessica into a physical fighter Reread chapter 31. Jessica bested Stilgar in a physical fight the same as the movie. Jessica was demoted in the movie. She was far stronger in the book. I didn't understand why until I read this review. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/10/dune

Abigail’s film reviews are almost always on point and add a ton of details and context

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#102

Post by R0b0t1 »

klodolph wrote: post #50
JasonFruit wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, if "Foundation and Dune are almost impossible to translate to screen faithfully," why are we translating them to screen, instead of writing a new work for which screen is the natural medium? With these adaptations, the two options are "That sucks!" and "That's not Foundation!"

I would reject faithfulness as a measure of success. I'd much rather have "That's not Foundation!" I already have Foundation. I can read it whenever I make the time. It's kind of cool to see a book translated to the screen... but if it doesn't really survive the translation? That's ok too! It can just be a movie with a ton of similarities to an existing story. Blade Runner, The Shining, Starship Troopers, or hell, Ad…

Some adaptation is appropriate, as a lot of the pulp fiction scifi from that area has characters doing ridiculous things like using tape drives. On the other hand, setting up a scene and doing a shoot are not the same skills used for telling a story. Many directors have absolutely terrible taste when it comes to story telling, as we can see from Game of Thrones and the other Dune adaptation.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#103

Post by lostmsu »

m0zg wrote: post #88
lostmsu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't roll a barrel on Amazon. They kept The Expanse alive (which is certainly better than Dune 2021).

> _Don't roll a barrel_ on Amazon Speaking of, is this a common phrase? This exact phrase ("не кати бочку") exists in Russian as well, but I have never seen anyone use it in English.

No, I just literally translated the Russian one, hoping it might stick.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#104

Post by vntok »

charlieflowers wrote: post #67
KennyBlanken wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a story can be re-imagined for a different medium and enjoyed by people? Who may in turn check out the original story and enjoy that, as well? Others are just as entitled to enjoy an adaptation as you are to not enjoy it. Some people enjoy seeing how a writer, director, cinematographer, cast, set and costume designers, etc present a written work. Lots of people watch an adaptation and find bits they enjoy and…

The show is basically fan fic set in loosely the same universe. It is absolutely nothing like the books.

Which is perfectly fine.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#105

Post by nextaccountic »

01100011 wrote: post #18
LegitShady wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only stormtroopers are so precise. Personally these days when I hear they're making a book or book series I like into movies/tv I wait for the inevitable disappointment. I hear they're ruining Robert Jordan's books next, something I plan to skip entirely and just re-read the books instead.

I'm looking forward to the day when we can just feed books to a DL network and have it spit out a rendered movie. I'd love to train it on the LotR movies and spit out a book-accurate rendition of the story with those graphics.

The LotR movies aren't book-accurate. But they are great!

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#106

Post by boublepop »

samplatt wrote: post #24

"Asimov's Vision". The guy himself has said in interviews that it was entirely inspired by gas/fluid dynamics theory, where you could predict the motion of the whole but individual molecules would be random, and then "what if that could be applied to people". Everything else is just exploring and extrapolating. It's far from perfect but I feel that if it was a new IP work the reaction to it would be very different. A…

If you had afsked me a year ago if “Good Omens” could be adapted to the screen I would have told you it was impossible. Heck if you asked me back in the day of A Song of Fire and Ice could, I would have told you it was impossible, but in reality it’s just the case that it’s only possible if you start from a place of respecting the source material and building everything around that. If you start by defining that it has to be a 8 season high budget series. It has to be a 2.5hour movie and try to shoehorn the material into that, then you get rubbish and it looks impossible.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#107

Post by boublepop »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #64
malermeister wrote: post #3

This sums up my feelings about the show pretty well. Loved the books, hated the show. It gets rid of everything that was interesting about the books - the high level narrative about civilization and power projection mechanisms and replaces it with generic Hollywood sci-fi tropes, with cringy romance subplots thrown in. The second episode was so bad I stopped watching.

Did you consider that with such a complex story and large cast the show might take more than one and a half episodes to show you everything? The show has indeed been about power projection mechanisms, once it set up the universe and cast enough. It's one thing to watch an episode and a half and say "eh, not for me." It's another entirely to declare you know "the show" and speak authoritatively about it as a whole whe…

Your comment reminds me of a friends recommendation to watch The Arrow. “The first two seasons are really bad, but if you stick through it they become ok”

It’s ok to not want to watch a show that sucks originally. We don’t need to watch it to completion in order to pass judgement on something that just didn’t hit the mark.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#108

Post by sandworm101 »

edgyquant wrote: post #59
sandworm101 wrote: post #5

They lost me in the trailer. Foundation is a story across centuries about elderly and ossified leadership structures, not attractive young people in spandex. It is about one faction rebelling against another, not kids trying to get out from under their parents. And I really don't mind changing the genders of characters but please don't do so just to create eye candy. Dune did this too. I think making Kynes female was…

Yeah. Dune can be (but I don’t think has been) done right as it’s still the story of one character and his ascension to the throne. Foundation can’t be done as a typical show due to the time span in which it takes place.

I'd say that Dune, as a single book, is a metaphor for a local Arab community rising up to overthrow a pair of colonial powers (Brits/Harkonnen and American/Atreidis) to take control of their own oil reserves (spice). It is a story about Jihad, a word that is used many times in the books but is notably absent in the latest film. Start changing too many characters and the metaphors to our real world fall apart.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#109

Post by euroderf »

samplatt wrote: post #24

"Asimov's Vision". The guy himself has said in interviews that it was entirely inspired by gas/fluid dynamics theory, where you could predict the motion of the whole but individual molecules would be random, and then "what if that could be applied to people". Everything else is just exploring and extrapolating. It's far from perfect but I feel that if it was a new IP work the reaction to it would be very different. A…

Now that I think of it, Emperor "Cleon" is a nice wordplay on "cliodynamics".

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#110

Post by euroderf »

yodon wrote: post #8

The army combat sequences are inconceivably stupid. Dozens of soldiers firing sci-fi machine guns at unprotected opponents at close range and everyone magically avoids injury. It makes one wonder if Apple applied some sort of violence limiting clause to the production with absurd results.

> It makes one wonder if Apple applied some sort of violence limiting clause to the production with absurd results. Sounds like The A-Team. My favorite sequence was when a helicopter flew into a rock cliff, exploding in flames. Cut away to the A-Team van. Cut back to the helicopter: the bad guys are emerging from the wreckage. Hear the standard A-Team dialog: "Are you okay?" "Yeah I'm okay." The most violent nonviolent scene I've ever seen.
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