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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

#121

Post by unicornmama »

xref wrote: post #97
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 not sure Jordan’s books can be ruined, if anything I’d hope a TV series can correct a lot of his fatal flaws like truly awful writing of female characters. Sanderson tried to fix some of that after Jordan’s death, but when did he come in, book 12 or so?

Yeah I look forward to hours of screen time of Nynineneave riding a horse and kuckling her back.

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

#122

Post by unicornmama »

smnrchrds wrote: post #31
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand... Dune had also been widely considered 'unfilmable' in the industry and that same thing had been said about it: https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/why-denis-villeneuve...

But Foundation is the one that had never been adapted. It had passed the test of time for being unfilmable, unlike Dune that has been adapted multiple times to multiple media.

I think it’s comical that a group of techies make broad assertions about what’s film able and not film-able. It’s like because we’re smart in one domain then we are smart in other domains and can just make baseless claims not grounded with experience.

If an experienced film creator made such claims then it’s worth listening. Otherwise these sorts of comments are just noise.

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

#123

Post by technofiend »

gameswithgo wrote: post #120

I love the show but apart from the premise of long term mathematical predictions of civilization it has no relation to the book. Shouldn’t be called Foundation.

I don't think Apple would have gotten as much traction if they just dubbed it "Set in the Foundation universe", or "Fanfic with modern FX" but that's kind of how I view it. I agree it's (so far) decent, though.

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

#124

Post by Ekaros »

klodolph wrote: post #53
jonnycomputer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this really gets at the issue. Calling it Foundation, but not keeping the spirit of the novel, is just basically exploitative.

Who or what's getting exploited? The material itself? Or the audience? I think few people who read the SF classics will be duped just by the name.

The IP... I really don't understand why having some relatively well known name is so important when it ends up being something entirely different. I think culturally that really shouldn't fly. Why not at that point just come up with new IP? If you want take the elements needed from existing work as influences...

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

#125

Post by Freak_NL »

nextaccountic wrote: post #105
01100011 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The Hobbit films on the other hand fell rather flat.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy seems like quite an achievement these days; I don't recall seeing the same amount of passion and dedication in any of the more recent film adaptations. But I think I might also be biased due to my age when it came out. I'm in my forties now, and I rarely bother with film and television now, preferring books instead.

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

#126

Post by pmlnr »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #91
edgyquant wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read both, I don’t think Dune is impossible to bring to the screen. I think it needs to be a TV show because as a film it will need to be super long (and will be exposition heavy and/or kinda boring.) But Foundation is like the Silmarillion. It’s supposed to be detailed over centuries/millennia and definitely is hard or impossible to get right on the screen.

> like the Silmarillion. It’s supposed to be detailed over centuries/millennia Well, the last books of the original series of Dune take place over thousands of years when Leto II becomes the worm via symbiosis with the sandtrout. There is so much that happens in these millenia, sometimes told in flashback through the everlasting Duncan Idaho, or through the narrative of the religious texts. The wars and the scheming…

Dune jumps in time basically once, between book 3 and 4, from Children to God Emperor. 1-3 is set in Paul's time, 4-6 is set 4000 years later, but within a few years. (We don't talk about 7-8.)

No, Dune is not like Silmarillion or Foundation, they both jump times more regularly, with things and episodes happening in those times.

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

#127

Post by rbanffy »

Unpopular opinion: Foundation, as written, would probably be very niche TV. A straightforward adaptation would be terrible, albeit interesting if seasons were launched in the order of the books the way Asimov fused his Robots, Empire, and Foundation series. Even then, you can get away with a lot less detail in a book than you can with a TV series - you need to flesh out cultures and characters that, in a book, you can leave shallow.

I’d say this is Foundation, but for TV. It’s a different beast and I’m curious how much it will deviate from the books big picture (which, in total, span a couple dozen millennia.

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

#128

Post by pbak »

wslack wrote: post #37
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 removed the Baron's homosexuality and sexual perversion Probably because at the time Dune was written, people conflated those things in a way that caused a lot of harm to people not interested in harming children. Seems highly reasonable not to feed a trope like that.

Are you saying grown men keeping young boys for sexual gratification is not perversion anymore ?

It seems to me that that catholic priests abusing choir boys or the "bacha bazi" practice in Afghanistan are still shocking everybody.

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

#129

Post by orangepanda »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #13

The show feels like the creators read the back of the book and nothing else. Adaptation is never a one-to-one translation but you need to keep the spirit of the show. Also the whole emperor lineage stuff feels like an attempt to add a Game of Thrones type plot to the show. I'm not far into the show, so perhaps they address this, but I'd love a more modern commentary on how the whole ideology of the Foundation is basi…

> Also the whole emperor lineage stuff feels like an attempt to add a Game of Thrones type plot to the show.

By episode 7 that is the only interesting/good storyline the show has.

(Mostly because everything else is on par with CW network)

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

#130

Post by whazor »

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.

But I completely understand why went with the current direction. I believe they are not replacing the high level narrative, but they are slowing down for making something that resonates emotionally. When producing television, you work with actors, screenplay, and a story. I believe you cannot make good TV with replacing actors at the speed of Asimov. I also believe that Asimov books allow for romance subplots, but they were 'skipped'.
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