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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

#311

Post by [deleted] »

nottorp wrote: post #237
_ph_ wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is kind of hilarious to argue about the skin color of people millennia from now as if they would be static. Considering the amount of globalization, I would expect humanity to look quite different in a couple of hundred years already. If there are major visible differences between people 10k years in the future, they probably are along planet boundaries, and in which way they express is difficult to estimate. UV r…

In 10000 years we should all be some (light?) shade of brown. If we get rid of the racism at least.

[deleted]

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

#312

Post by molsongolden »

RHSeeger wrote: post #167

Man, reading through this thread, I feel like such an odd man out. I'm enjoying Foundation. Sure, it's not amazingly intellectually stimulating, and it's not really based on the books, but I find it fun to watch. As it's own thing, it's entertaining to me. I also really enjoyed The Flash (up until season 6 or so when it just got too repetitive). It seems like there's a lot of people that can't seem to enjoy things "j…

I haven't watched Foundation yet but I felt this way about Altered Carbon.

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

#313

Post by 542354234235 »

yufeng66 wrote: post #218
throw0101a wrote: post #150

The economist Paul Krugman of all people wrote a 'review' of Foundation versus Dune : > “Foundation” might seem unfilmable. It mostly involves people talking, and its narrative inverts the hero-saves-the-universe theme that burns many acres of CGI every year. The story spans centuries; in each episode everything appears to be on the brink, and it seems as if only desperate efforts by the protagonists can save the day…

Krugman is just too emotionally invested in the book, so nothing comparable to the book. If the show is not called foundation, he will probably enjoy it.

>If the show is not called foundation

I don’t think it is unreasonable for someone watching an adaptation of a book to expect that the central themes of that book to be central to the adaptation, or at least not have the main themes of the adaptation be a direct contradiction to the source material.

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

#314

Post by johnchristopher »

goatlover wrote: post #263
ourlordcaffeine wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>IMO it’s decent sci-fi, and interesting enough to watch if you’re bored :) Is it still a somewhat hard sci-fi or has it been turned into a fantasy flick?

Would an entirely new branch of mathematics that predicts the future count as hard science fiction?

Barely, since neither Asimov nor the TV show writers, have spent 60% of the material on explaining how it actually works.

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

#315

Post by BiteCode_dev »

tshaddox wrote: post #305
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have your cake and eat it. Apple made a ton of buzz around the TV show, and it took _because_ they use the Asimov work. Apple did the Apple thing, they overhyped a product that they then designed according to their own rules, expecting everybody to just eat their crap and smile as usual. But it turns out people liking classic SF books are not your average fanboy, and they don't like being lied to. It's not…

> Apple did the Apple thing, they overhyped a product that they then designed according to their own rules, expecting everybody to just eat their crap and smile as usual. > But it turns out people liking classic SF books are not your average fanboy, and they don't like being lied to. It’s a bit silly to imply that the intended market was people who like or have even heard of SF classics like the Foundation series. Th…

Sure, but in that case you can't expect to benefit from the hype produced by the fans community, and any backslash is on you.

Turns that those people make a lot of noise for their small number. The screeching voices and all that.

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

#316

Post by Apocryphon »

throw0101a wrote: post #227
yufeng66 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krugman is just too emotionally invested in the book, so nothing comparable to the book. If the show is not called foundation, he will probably enjoy it.

> If the show is not called foundation, he will probably enjoy it. It wasn't about Foundation , then why call it "Foundation"? It's like that Will Smith movie called I, Robot : why did they bother calling it that? You can create a new sci-fi show or movie without the 'false marketing' of referencing previous source material: that's what the original Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars did in the 1970s. Or you can try…

I, Robot is significantly harder to adapt than Foundation. The former is like a book of little logic mysteries. The film turned the setting concept into one big murder mystery to appeal to modern audiences. It was a drastic tonal change, but preserves some of the concepts of Asimov, even including the Zeroth Law at the end.

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

#317

Post by dkonofalski »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #86

No one learned anything from Game of Thrones. The show was absolutely amazing when it could follow the books. The definitive show everyone talked about. The moment the books ran out it started to go downhill. And when they couldn't easily extrapolate from the books the show fell apart completely. The showrunners and writes for the show weren't good enough to make Game of Thrones on their own. No offence, but that tak…

GoT isn't like Foundation at all, though. Game of Thrones had plenty of action and tense character moments that all happen within a relatively short period of time (within the character's lifetimes/generations). Foundation is about decades of time so adapting it directly like they could with GoT isn't really possible, imo.

Also, we don't know yet but, for all we know, Hardin might learn what the meaning of that saying is by making the very mistake it's cautioning against. After all, in the show, the line was given to her father who then follows through on his plotline (trying to be vague, here). So maybe it's not a betrayal of the source material as much as it is going a bit further back to establish why Hardin keeps that saying. Considering Goyer was involved with Man of Steel and felt like it was pivotal to establish Superman's "no-kill" rule as a result of being forced to kill, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a similar beat of character growth here.

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

#318

Post by Tronno »

ivankirigin wrote: post #261
burlesona wrote: post #159

There are a lot of people really hating on the TV show here, so I’ll offer a slightly contrarian take: I would say the biggest problem is the marketing that implies they faithfully are telling the books, when they’re not. The TV show is not faithful to the books. That said: the books are fascinating, but they are almost more like historical documentaries then narrative fiction. It works well because they are _short_…

I don't understand why more "unfilmable" books don't get launched as an animated series. Maybe execs think adults wouldn't watch it?

"Unfilmable" just means impossible to translate into a sequence of scenes, with characters and a coherent story. For example, long internal monologues about the design of space ships, etc.

You could try, but it wouldn't be entertaining in a classical sense without deviating strongly from the source material. Animated shows would have the same problem.

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

#319

Post by magoghm »

I had very low expectations for this TV show, so when I saw the first episode I felt it was better than what I had expected. But when I tried to watch the second episode, it was so bad that I couldn't even bring myself to finish it (I saw less than half of the episode).

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

#320

Post by dkonofalski »

rsynnott wrote: post #304
dkonofalski wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting to me because the brothers are one of my favorite parts of the show because of the new ideas they bring up in relation to the Empire. It gives the writers some really clever and interesting ways to discuss the problems with a long-standing continuity of ideas while giving those internal inconsistencies human faces to stand-in for something that would be much more nebulous and vague otherwise.

I feel like it kind of misses the point, though. Societies like that don't collapse because the leader is immortal, they do so because the _society_ is ossified.

I don't even think that's the point, though. I think it's more of a criticism of strict stubbornness. It's not the fact that he's immortal that's the problem, it's the fact that he/they continue to "lead" in the exact same manner, attempting to ossify a society that, on its insides, is changing. The only thing consistent is change, especially in society. Isn't the point of Foundation that, despite spectacular individuals, societies move on and change?
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