Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 498 posts

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

#451

Post by tshaddox »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #424
tshaddox wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and that’s precisely what I’m saying: that it’s silly to claim that Apple’s plan was to make a mediocre show and rely on generating hype with nothing more than the name recognition of Asimov and the Foundation series.

Apple TV is at this point, the underdog that most people don't know about. Probably 1 out 50 persons even know it exists around me. So I wager they wanted very hard that the name of Asimov created a fan base that would carry their own PR. Otherwise, why chose the book at all ? After all, as you said, it's almost impossible to adapt, so they didn't buy the rights for the writing.

> Otherwise, why chose the book at all ? After all, as you said, it's almost impossible to adapt, so they didn't buy the rights for the writing.

I mean, Apple bought the show from a production company that was able to get adaptation rights from the Asimov estate, and presumably that production company had creative people who liked the series and were motivated to adapt it. It's not like there was some white label series already in development and Apple went searching for some famous book series brand to attach to it.

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

#452

Post by ASalazarMX »

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…

If the show was called "Empire" and hadn't been hyped as an adaptation, but as inspired by SciFi classics, I would have no trouble with it, even if it wasn't as compelling. I'd even be happy to find references here and there.

Naming and marketing as Foundation is like pretending the I Robot movie was an honest adaptation of Asimov's I Robot. Foundation started well, but it's becoming a standard space opera template with Asimovian names.

Asimov wasn't the greatest writer, but he had innovative ideas and central themes that should be the core of any adaptation.

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

#453

Post by clarge1120 »

While lots of people are disappointed (to say the least) in the rendering of the books into a TV show, citing unfaithfulness to the source material and the spirit of the books, there are also a number of people who praise the representation of gender, approach to things like smoking, race relations, and other modern ideals.

I see it differently. The Fallout video games put an interesting spin on the "future" by showing that what was once considered fashionable can become distasteful due to catastrophic events. With Foundation, it would have been more interesting to show how different events lead to the current state of society. The Battlestar Galactica TV series made a point to showing how society turned decidedly against digital communications because of how vulnerable it was to AI.

Much like with A Handmaid's Tale, I wish they would have tried a little harder to bridge the gap between how we see things today, and how we could see them under different circumstances. 12,000+ years from now could be quite different from now in a lot of ways.

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

#454

Post by ASalazarMX »

jjk166 wrote: post #436
ASalazarMX wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big but: Foundation never had clairvoyants, not even Gaia. This is a huge deviation from the books, since now we have people predicting the future on their own, without psychohistory.

Of all the deviations from the books, this is really one of the smallest.

It's a critical deviation, which shouldn't have been done on a whim.

Seldon's psycohistory predicted the path of the whole empire with great accuracy, but knowing their destiny would make people act differently, so Terminus didn't have psycohistorians, just a vault that would open at crucial events and give information. It would have worked well until the Mule threw a wrench with its mental ability to tune other minds. He wasn't a clairvoyant, he just altered people's feelings. The Second Foundation put the plan back on track thanks to their own mental abilities, but they also weren't clairvoyants. So far only psychohistory could predict the future. Later we have Golan Trevize, who also couldn't see the future, but had a gift for choosing right with incomplete information. Even Gaia had to rely on Trevize for its final decision.

Foundation's Gaal can see the future, and this is a world breaking ability. Hari Seldon and his psycohistory become obsolete since she can do that on her own, any action against the Foundation is moot, any deviation from the plan can be predicted, etc.

The only way to write Gaal out of that corner is making her clairvoyance work as reliable or unreliable as the plot needs (lazy writing), and judging from how she can predict and block micrometeorites now (which can puncture a ship's shield and hull, but not a tablet), it seems that's the route they will take. There was no need to introduce clairvoyance in the Foundation's universe.

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

#455

Post by Accujack »

bmh100 wrote: post #411
tweedledee wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed the realpolitik of Expanse but hated the trite interpersonal conflicts which seems to be a mainstay of modern drama. I find the main characters to be rather childish.

They are written in a childish manner: the white knight, the highly assertive love interest, the sociopath who wishes he could be a good guy, and the cowboy. Their personalities are unrealistic in ways that I would attribute to a young teenager. That said, the quirks of these trope-like characters is sometimes amusing. I enjoy the series mainly for the protomolecule plot, despite the characters.

I enjoyed Neon Genesis Evangelion despite the characters.

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

#456

Post by matthewdgreen »

jjk166 wrote: post #436
ASalazarMX wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big but: Foundation never had clairvoyants, not even Gaia. This is a huge deviation from the books, since now we have people predicting the future on their own, without psychohistory.

Of all the deviations from the books, this is really one of the smallest.

To echo the sibling comment: the largest possible deviation you can make when filming Foundation is to undermine the entire premise of psychohistory.

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

#457

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

mstade wrote: post #189
juliangamble wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that Paul Krugman implies that Foundation copied Star Wars. (Ie Foundation was the original Empire Space Opera from which many Sci Fi authors cribbed including George Lucas)

I read it completely differently. To me it seems he’s saying the show Foundation is copying Star Wars, which in his opinion is completely antithetical to the novel and so therefore he’s stopped watching the show.

That is indeed what Krugman is saying. It's pretty clear:

> "How does the Apple TV series (of Foundation) turn this (the novel, Foundation) into a visually compelling tale? It doesn’t. What it does instead is remake "Star Wars"

And having seen the Foundation show, having read the Foundation book and seen the Star Wars movie, I think he (Krugman) has a point.

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

#458

Post by hintymad »

I just don't understand why the screenwriters thought they could create a better story than Asimov. And why is it so important to have a side story about some people's boring feeling towards each other?

What's wrong with simply telling the story as told by Asimov?

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

#459

Post by hintymad »

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 was wondering if there is an explanation on why the political systems in American's science fictions are just so unimaginative? I mean, a civilization could predict the future, could destroy a planet, could travel across galaxies, and could rule trillions of people, yet they had an empire just like ancient Rome? Change of technologies and productivity and economy will not lead to change of political systems?

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

#460

Post by WorldMaker »

TheTrotters wrote: post #427
chaostheory wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also Hardin being a Chosen One and the producer insisting on reddit that "it's not really so Almost all modern TV in the Scifi & Fantasy tropes relies on the the Hero's Journey. It is very hard not to use it especially if you want a large audience. To faithfully recreate Foundation for TV, you'd have to make a fake documentary and that just doesn't draw enough people to make the budget work

But if you want your show to be a success you have to take chances. If they make just another derivative show they can’t be surprised by the poor reception. (Besides I’m not sure I agree with the premise. Game of Thrones was a big success and it was much more complex than a simple Hero’s Journey.)

Arguably, framing Hardin as a "Hero's Journey" is the show taking chances versus the relatively much more dry source material. As Seldon says time and again, psychohistory can only predict the actions of large enough groups of people, it cannot predict the actions of individuals. From that perspective alone, I've found so far I mostly appreciate the twists the show is taking on the source material. Most of them seem to me to be individual actions within the overall predictions of psychohistory (treating the books as one prediction versus reality/timeline and the show as another).
Post reply on HN