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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

#351

Post by ghshephard »

dkonofalski wrote: post #321
goatlover wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the acting gets much better over the seasons. And when I rewatched seasons 1-3 recently, I didn't notice it. But maybe I'm so into the characters and stories that it just doesn't register anymore. And the Expanse certainly does have interesting character relations as the story progresses.

To be fair, I never made it past Season 1 so you may be right. It was just so distracting that I couldn't force myself to continue. More and more people recommend it, though, so I may have to just suffer through those early seasons to get to the good stuff.

The Expanse is one of only five science fiction productions on TV I could seriously recommend to someone. It deals with big themes in a coherent manner. And the characters get incredible depth as the seasons continue. And thematic/political elements get way more interesting. Almost every other science fiction series turns out to be mostly fluff (admittedly, very entertaining fluff) when viewed through the lens of The Expanse.

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

#352

Post by mrob »

brodouevencode wrote: post #242
robbiep wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. It took me a while to get my head around the approach they were taking (I re-read the whole series prior to it airing) but what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it. Even just getting rid of the 1950s stereotype gender roles - which is the obvious place to start - doesn’t change the long arcs of obvious dialogue. It’s a really grand scope for a univ…

> how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it What movies have you seen that have been faithful to the literary work but still were great movies? I'm struggling to come up with one.

Rosemary's Baby.

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

#353

Post by addingnumbers »

goatlover wrote: post #269
mdtancsa wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can usually forgive some tech contradiction details, but its really annoying when there is faster than light travel... But to create contrived suspense because no technology exists to make a flashlight strong enough to illuminate a cave for 10m ??!?!

>> but its really annoying when there is faster than light travel. Almost all space scifi has FTL, wormholes, warp drive or jump drive out of necessity, otherwise you're rather limited in travel. Even the Expanse allows for it at some point, after allowing for the super high efficiency fusion drive just to make travel around the Solar System reasonably fast enough. It's a necessary plot device, unless you're doing a…

Speaker for the Dead and the ensuing novels in the Ender's Game series managed to tell multi-stellar stories with sub-light travel and relativistic effects.

Also most of the Three-Body Problem trilogy, there is no FTL until the very end when they jump forward by aeons.

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

#354

Post by MomoXenosaga »

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_…

And maybe it will inspire someone to go read the books. Adaptations often do that.

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

#355

Post by chaostheory »

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_…

> the books are fascinating, but they are almost more like historical documentaries then narrative fiction

and this is why it's near impossible to translate Asimov's Foundation faithfully to TV. I don't understand why a lot of fans can't see this

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

#356

Post by jjk166 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #302
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_…

> No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all. I would offer an even more contrarian take: the show actually is being relatively faithful to the books. At least of the most recent episode. More concretely, while obviously there are important changes (the Cleons, how Seldon dies, the Anacreons invading rather than making diplomatic threats, nobody smoking, etc.) none of these are terribly unfaithful to the story. Most…

I'm pretty sure the seeing the future thing is just how they're doing the second foundation.

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

#357

Post by twoWhlsGud »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #271
throw0101a wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, is it a classic? No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all. But IMO it’s decent sci-fi, and interesting enough to watch if you’re bored :) If you want to make an action-y television series, then choose action-y source material. There's so much good sci-fi (and fantasy) out there that can be used for that type of style. The Vorkosigan Saga for one: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga While it may b…

Waiting Hard for Godot sounds amazing . The characters keep avoiding explosions and evading terrorists, mostly uninterested and unaffected by them, focused only on their eventual meeting with their CIA contact who is code named Godot. Occasionally an unusually big action sequence will trigger an extended reflection on the banality of it all.

Excellent point. I'd definitely would watch that. And seriously, I think your larger point is that if you're going mess about with some legendary original source material, doing it in a self-referential way that says, "Yes, we know the original isn't what we're doing here, and here's how we are different on purpose" is probably something you want to think about.

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

#358

Post by justicezyx »

robbiep wrote: post #168
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 agree with you. It took me a while to get my head around the approach they were taking (I re-read the whole series prior to it airing) but what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it. Even just getting rid of the 1950s stereotype gender roles - which is the obvious place to start - doesn’t change the long arcs of obvious dialogue. It’s a really grand scope for a univ…

> what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it.

For God's sake.

It's screenplay writers work to adapt. One did a good job if they create a nice screen play. If that work is simplified by a solid foundation (pun intended), we'd expect at least not worse off from starting from scratch.

Look at what we get in this visual carnage of garbage.

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

#359

Post by ehvatum »

GeekyBear wrote: post #339
mchusma wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree as well. I loved the premise of the books, but I just couldn't find myself to care about any of the actual characters. I think the same story, but where at least some of the characters are truly immortal (reasonable for far future sci-fi), would be better. Basically a mashup between Peter Hamilton and Foundation would be cool, his work does a good job of showing "far future technologies".

I would love to see someone take a stab at the Night's Dawn trilogy. The world building for the Confederation and the Adamist and Edenist societies as well as the various alien races was very well done. They might want to rethink the choice of Al Capone, which seems a bit over the top.

I agree; it really could make a surpassingly excellent show.

All the possession contagion dovetails with our COVID concerns, yet is so different as to allow exploration by metaphor.

The instagramish phenomenon Kiera Nightly convinces youths to travel to a remote place where they are tortured until they yield to possession: Reminds me of fyrefest.

The large amount of hilarious dark humor should translate very well. For example, the sadistic edenist who overcomes possession by being the mentally strongest edenist. And the plain sadist who re-possesses his body from his possessor by being more screwed-up than a soul that had endured what amounts to hell.

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

#360

Post by matthewdgreen »

jjk166 wrote: post #356
matthewdgreen wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all. I would offer an even more contrarian take: the show actually is being relatively faithful to the books. At least of the most recent episode. More concretely, while obviously there are important changes (the Cleons, how Seldon dies, the Anacreons invading rather than making diplomatic threats, nobody smoking, etc.) none of these are terribly unfaithful to the story. Most…

I'm pretty sure the seeing the future thing is just how they're doing the second foundation.

Fingers crossed. Except that also they're giving this power to Salvor Hardin, who really shouldn't have it.
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