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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

#131

Post by simonh »

boublepop wrote: post #107
KennyBlanken wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love this guide to the key Buffy episodes. There's no way I could re-watch the whole show, but this looks achievable. I wish there were more guides like this.

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-an-epi...

I watched the first season of Arrow but it was a bit of a slog towards the end, and never got anywhere with season 2. It showed a lot of promise it almost delivered on. Maybe I should give it another go, but a guide like this would be invaluable.

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

#132

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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.

Such a post-truth comment, 'why is it wrong to call something A when actually it's not'.

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

#133

Post by pbak »

lostmsu wrote: post #103
m0zg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _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.

I don't know if it'll stick, but it works.

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

#134

Post by macintux »

Ekaros wrote: post #124
klodolph wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Selling your product to a network, and later to the audience, must be dramatically simpler when you have existing IP to build upon.

We almost certainly wouldn’t be talking about it on HN if it weren’t Foundation.

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

#135

Post by simonh »

sandworm101 wrote: post #108
edgyquant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's about a marginalised community's manipulation by a cynical religious cult, which indoctrinates them to await a messiah, then provides them with that messiah in order to usurp power over their entire society for the cult's own nefarious ends.

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

#136

Post by b112 »

Ekaros wrote: post #124
klodolph wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

But they didn't come up with new IP.

Instead, they hand picked 'oh, neat!' things they were told about, then just filled in all the missing bits with weird, unrelated, drama.

EG, non-story related character confict.

That's not content, but filler, designed to extend screen time.

To actors, drama is the only important part of the role, and thus to many in hollywood.

(One can have plot twists, action, suspense, without teenage drama...)

So it isn't new IP, that would require original thought, and 99% of modern hollywood is rehash. All the marvel/dc stuff, remakes of older movies, series, cartoons, the best stuff is old, but new.

Modern Hollywood can't do new.

Modern Hollywood can't even do remakes without bombs!

So it'd be hard to get buy in for new, and as this series sold loads of books...

Well, pick the juice IP bits, lather teen style drama (eg, noise), and...

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

#137

Post by rockemsockem »

Jansen312 wrote: post #112
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…

Foundations series as a whole was relatively lite. Characters aren't that sophisticated as what you get in GoT, Dune, or Tolkiens. Screen adaptations are mostly to target a different kind of audience. People who loves the original books aren't the intended target. The mass who have heard of Asimov but didn't bother to read or just read the back of the book would be the main audience for this Foundations. It is curren…

Strong disagree. This is one of the worst shows I've ever watched. Lots of magical story elements that just poof out of nowhere at just the right time. On top of that there's ton of useless scenes where literally nothing important to anything is on screen for over a minute.

The show-runner helped make Batman vs Superman and I see LOTS of that awful movie in Foundation.

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

#138

Post by thom »

rbanffy wrote: post #127

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 ca…

I think Prelude to Foundation would work on TV, and I'm slightly surprised they didn't attempt that first, cos presumably you either do it now or never. But that probably would have been a weird thing for fans of the original book.

You're right though, Foundation has an odd structure that doesn't at all match modern prestige TV templates, you'd do better with a sort of anthology series of some sort.

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

#139

Post by wffurr »

JasonFruit wrote: post #33
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…

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!"

The Expanse is exactly that. And it's pretty great.

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

#140

Post by watwut »

whazor wrote: post #130
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 th…

Heterosexual romance requires female characters, which is not exactly what Foundation would be full of.
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