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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

#441

Post by inostia »

jerf wrote: post #199
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 ??!?!

The humble flashlight must be one of the most abused pieces of modern technology in fiction. According to video games, it doesn't matter what century you're in, it is impossible to create a flashlight that lasts for more than a few minutes, and only provides a feeble cone of barely-light for that time. According to science fiction, despite the fact ~98%+ of the people reading this literally have a flashlight in their…

> weaponry in particular, most "ray guns" are noticeably inferior to real-world guns in almost every way except perhaps ammo capacity

I was thinking about this watching Foundation. In thousands of years will humans really be _shooting projectiles_ at each other to disrupt vital organs? Why wouldn't it be some kind of device that interacts on a deeper level, I'm thinking like setting off a mini-nuclear-chain-reaction when coming into contact with a single cell that just causes their body to instantly vaporize.

Guns in general seem like something that should already be antiquated.

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

#442

Post by pixel_fcker »

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 just finished this recently after dropping it halfway through because my eyes were in danger of rolling out of the back of my head due to the Capone stuff.

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

#443

Post by ASalazarMX »

citizenkeen wrote: post #170
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_…

> interesting enough to watch if you’re bored is a terribly damning critique when a show costs as much as Foundation does. It's not Netflix faff, it's Apple's flagship.

It reminds me a lot about Star Trek Discovery, another high budget flagship meant to carry CBS's streaming service. Top of the line CGI, written like a soap opera Star Wars.

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

#444

Post by ASalazarMX »

chaostheory wrote: post #355
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

I had the same idea of LOTR, with all their songs and heavy narrative, yet the Peter Jackson's adaptation was great, a love letter to Tolkien. He did show, not tell.

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

#445

Post by macintux »

citizenkeen wrote: post #439
macintux wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

You don't think we would be talking about Apple's flagship science fiction show?

I've not seen many front page discussions of modern movies or TV shows here, no. Sometimes a retrospective on older art, but I don't remember any of those either for the visual media.

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

#446

Post by rbanffy »

goatlover wrote: post #274
RegBarclay wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. The robot novels would be much easier stories to adapt with little deviation from the novels. It's been decades since I've read the whole canon of Asimov robot and Foundation novels, but I recall the Foundation novels being very dry and academic - I loved them, but they're just not high adventure action stories that translate well to the screen.

You can start with the robots, and then move to the Foundation story with the robots from the beginning, because that's how Asimov revised his own Foundation story.

Or they could reveal the connection with the robots at a later stage, the way Asimov did, while pretending the series are not that much connected.

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

#447

Post by squarefoot »

I like it, mostly, though it's probably because I didn't like the only one Foundation book I managed to finish some 30 years back. At that time I had already consumed a lot of SF books by well known authors and although I loved Asimov in his short novels, non sci fi novels and science books, found his longer works very hard to digest. My approach to this series is therefore sort of clean, I didn't even remember what the main plot was about, so to me is just a new series, and producers doing the usual Hollywood treatment by rewriting characters with gender, sexual orientation and ethnic differences in mind looks pretty normal to me; I don't expect studios to produce in the future anything inspired by old novels without this treatment.

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

#448

Post by ddoolin »

mikeklaas wrote: post #385
ddoolin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only read "Foundation and Earth" before the show began (that's what was on hand where I was, I had little choice, as much as I hate starting in the middle of a series), and that book is VERY different from what I'm reading in the first book and what's in the TV series, and would indeed make for a pretty interesting show or at least a movie. It's literally about three people's journey across the cosmos to discover t…

That's probably the worst book in the series.

Maybe relatively, but it was what was on-hand (in jail) and by itself it was more than interesting enough to get me to begin reading the series in order when I got the chance.

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

#449

Post by ASalazarMX »

stevenwoo wrote: post #306
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?

In the span of ten minutes they restore the artificial gravity on a derelict spacecraft then they walk into a room on that same ship that has large open vats of some dangerous liquid that people fall into and die.

Or Salvor's boyfriend who says his propulsor doesn't work and gently floats away, feet away from several people equipped with functioning propulsors, including Salvor.

The lava floor strongly reminded me of Galaxy Quest's chompers. Come on, Apple.

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

#450

Post by ddoolin »

agar wrote: post #98
ddoolin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only read "Foundation and Earth" before the show began (that's what was on hand where I was, I had little choice, as much as I hate starting in the middle of a series), and that book is VERY different from what I'm reading in the first book and what's in the TV series, and would indeed make for a pretty interesting show or at least a movie. It's literally about three people's journey across the cosmos to discover t…

That's like starting Game of Thrones at Season 7. It's not just "starting in the middle of a series", it's starting almost at the end...after the best part of the story is well in the rear-view mirror. IIRC, Foundation and Earth not only benefits from reading all of the Foundation books that came prior, but also all of Asimov's Robot books.

Fair point, I wasn't being precise in my language. I look forward to finishing the books before it at any rate. For what it's worth, I'm sure it does benefit from reading them first but you can definitely piece together the major plot points established in the preceding novels from the dialogue in the book, but they are certainly enhanced by knowing the full background.
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