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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

#31

Post by smnrchrds »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #25
smnrchrds wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foundation, as written, does not lend itself to any medium other than text. Dune had already been adapted to films, TV shows, and games multiple times before Villeneuve's film. Yet, despite its popularity, Foundation had never been adapted into another medium before the current TV show. I agree that the Apple TV series does not capture the essence of the books, but no series or film possibly can. Best we can hope is…

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.

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

#32

Post by m0zg »

I'm now glad Amazon decided not to do a show based on the Culture series by Iain Banks. I can only imagine how horrible that'd be, since they have even less taste than Apple or Netflix. Sci-fi is better for it, just read the books, they're excellent.

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

#33

Post by JasonFruit »

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!"

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

#34

Post by bobsil1 »

kaczordon wrote: post #6

This is also what happens when you re-write the core story to match a Political Correctness agenda. The producers should’ve taken a note from Denis Villeneuve’s treatment of Dune, the source book should be the Bible and you don’t mess with it.

Quite the opposite: TV Foundation’s terrorists are brown; Villeneuve’s Dune turns Muhammad into a white guy and defends oil/spice colonialism.

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

#35

Post by KennyBlanken »

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…

> I also don't get why the stories are intertwined and so stretched out.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RotatingArcs

It's a pretty standard technique to have multiple arcs going on in an episode. The most ready example that comes to mind is Battlestar Galactica.

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

#36

Post by ddoolin »

Jtsummers wrote: post #27
weikju wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"presented as Chosen Ones" -- from the Goyer AMA, he said the show explores when believe think they are Chosen Ones, but that there are no Chosen Ones. In fact, the whole thing about Salvor believing she's a Chosen One is falling apart, as every one of her schemes (involving violence as well) are falling apart.. and it seems like she's where Gaal was supposed to be, therefore she's being mistaken as the leader that G…

I'll grant you, Salvor is definitely turning into a false Chosen One (also, this would be the first Seldon Crisis which they weren't even supposed to know of until after the first one, and she's already name dropped the term). She's got an idiot ball grafted onto her somewhere that she just can't shed. However, Seldon, to Raych, tells him that his decision with respect to Gaal will determine the fate of the galaxy. T…

I agree, it was a stark reversal from "The Plan does not account for the actions of any one individual" but was just revealed that it somehow hinged on the actions of...one individual. I think they fell into a trap with that and hope that they don't dig that hole any deeper. I'm a very casual viewer and even I picked up on that.

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

#37

Post by wslack »

jlawson wrote: post #26
kaczordon wrote: post #6

This is also what happens when you re-write the core story to match a Political Correctness agenda. The producers should’ve taken a note from Denis Villeneuve’s treatment of Dune, the source book should be the Bible and you don’t mess with it.

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.

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

#39

Post by jonnycomputer »

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!"

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

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

#40

Post by rpmisms »

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.

I think if the past few weeks have taught us anything, it's that Hollywood collectively knows jack shit about firearms.
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