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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

#41

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

wyager wrote: post #22
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 wasn't exactly untouched by Hollywood politics. They completely eliminated the themes of European/Arabic cultural conflict (replacing everyone except the bad guys with a generic box-ticking multi-ethnic cast) and they completely nuked Kynes' character to replace him with a forgettable "generic strong woman" character.

While Dune (The Movie) is not exactly a treatise on colonialism with a specific focus on European/Arabic cultural conflict, it has several sections in which characters from both Fremen and Atreides camps describe and discuss colonialism directly and indirectly.

If the portrayal of Kynes was "a forgetabble "generic strong woman"", didn't that apply to (at the very least) both Gurney and Duncan also?

It seems that you wanted to see a different film than the one Villeneuve wanted to make.

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

#42

Post by canjobear »

smnrchrds wrote: post #9
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.

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…

I would barely call Apple TV's Foundation a loose adaptation. It's like 5% Foundation and 95% other made up stuff.

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

#43

Post by LegitShady »

01100011 wrote: post #18
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 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.

I don't think that's the way art I value would ever work. It sounds more like algorithmic factory production with no intention. "The algorithm thinks this will be like that other thing people like" is not a way to make novel and valuable new things, to me.

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

#44

Post by swsieber »

smnrchrds wrote: post #9
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.

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…

It was adapted to a radio drama. Pretty close to text, but also closer to an audio-visual format. And I liked it.

https://archive.org/details/foundationtrilogythe--bbc1973rad...

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

#45

Post by wellthisisgreat »

The show is just plain bad. It looks like a collection of tropes with thick layers of social justice agenda between. I am unpleasantly surprised that the idea of STEM = good can be discredited. I always assumed that in any movie / book I will sympathize with pro-science guys but Jesus this tv series demonstrated you can ruin anything if you lean onto it enough

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

#46

Post by hardwaregeek »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #35
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.

Yes, but why? I'm familiar with the concept and it can work well (see Robert Altman films), but why was it necessary for this show? I think the straightforward single story single episode would allow for continuity, narrative depth and emphasize the theme that these books span centuries and multiple lifetimes. One of the better aspects of the book is seeing Salvor Hardin go from young upstart to elder statesman to mythic legend.

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

#47

Post by elil17 »

I think the show does plenty of focusing on “power and precarity.” It obvious to me that it works with a very different definition of psychohistory, one which is more accessible to viewers but is, in my opinion, much less neat.

Beyond that, though, the differences between the books and the show seem to be done with the intention of coming up with a new and interesting narrative. I don’t have a problem with that.

Also, I think it’s important to note that the show is produced by his daughter and that she wanted to take things in a different direction. Most of these changes were made with deep knowledge of the books and the authors vision.

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

#48

Post by maire »

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 made Jessica into a physical fighter

Reread chapter 31. Jessica bested Stilgar in a physical fight the same as the movie.

Jessica was demoted in the movie. She was far stronger in the book. I didn't understand why until I read this review. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/10/dune

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

#49

Post by chrisfosterelli »

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.

My point is that something is only unfilmable up until the point at which someone makes a good film about it.

There's lots of literary attributes which may make a series easier or harder to adapt, but, just like Dune used to be called unfilmable for the heavy monologue, length, and nonverbal components, a director with a vision can overcome them.

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

#50

Post by klodolph »

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 would reject faithfulness as a measure of success. I'd much rather have "That's not Foundation!"

I already have Foundation. I can read it whenever I make the time. It's kind of cool to see a book translated to the screen... but if it doesn't really survive the translation? That's ok too! It can just be a movie with a ton of similarities to an existing story.

Blade Runner, The Shining, Starship Troopers, or hell, Adaptation. They all have varying relationships to the source material. None are especially faithful, but they're all still good movies.

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