8 ms·

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

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 universe - but I’m enjoying the series so far and it will be interesting to see where they go with it. Basically I’m just hungry for more space and since it’s visually very appealing and the universe is compelling, I think it deserves a chance.

TheTrotters 5y ago
Few people are criticizing the show from deviating from books per se. It isn’t good on its own merits. Of course they had to make some changes and flesh out some characters to adapt it for TV. They just made poor choices. Instead of going with chosen ones, heroes, and battles, they should have gone for politics in space. Something like the political manouvering in A Song of Ice and Fire but in space.
ianai 5y ago
It's been a while, but I remember Asimov leaving a lot out of the books. i.e. Stories would start after the violence or some clever twist would side step it altogether. He left a lot for a visual medium to add-in. The core is there so far: psychohistory, robots, huge Trantor, planning to 'save' a galaxy amount of culture and info for a galactic reboot, etc. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's the first live action adaptation beyond the robot movie. Kind of always have to be forgiving with a first attempt. Even Star Trek TNG didn't get into a grove until 2nd or 3rd season.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Arguably, the departure of Gene Roddenberry was what made TNG what it was after the 2nd season. Giving more spotlight to Klingons and Romulans, violating the prime directive, made for a more interesting show. Later DS9 improved on these concepts, by showing a Federation that is willing to bend the rules when desperate times, using deception (forging evidence to disrupt the Dominion-Romulan alliance), covert operations (Section 31) and even planning a genocide (infecting Odo with a disease to spread the disease to other Founders, also Hugh in Star Trek TNG).
GeekyBear 5y ago
>what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it Agreed. The inspiration behind the Foundation series, setting out to shorten the Dark Ages after the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is great. However, if you try reading those short stories again today, you're quickly reminded that early in his career, Asimov was already great at world building, but terrible with characters and dialog. Add in the mismatch between the cultural norms of the 1940's (when the early Foundation stories were written) and the cultural norms today, and a rewrite was always going to be required.
- StrictDabbler 5y ago
  Asimov's first real published story was in 1939 (his high school "published" a story earlier). The Foundation stories were written in 1941-1950. In 1951 Asimov stopped writing fiction for thirty years. So it's not "early Asimov" by any means. When he came back to write Foundation sequels his characters and dialog hadn't improved. Asimov was always an author only of ideas. His best dialog was the terrible and deliberately corny dialog in the Azazel fantasy-comedy stories, very much done in imitation of P.G. Wodehouse's cleverer banter. Excerpt from one of the 80's foundation books: “Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence ?” Pelorat said, “If you list it like that.” “List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.” Cringe.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    > it's not "early Asimov" by any means He wrote the first Foundation story when he was only 21. That certainly qualifies.
    - chaostheory 5y ago
      His retcon from the 80's wasn't any better in terms of dialogue
    - StrictDabbler 5y ago
      "Search by the Second Foundation" (the second half of the book "Second Foundation") was one of the very last science fiction stories he wrote, apart from the spate of novels in the 80's. It gets confusing because once he was famous, magazines would call him up asking for a story and he'd give them one that he'd written between 1939-1951 that had been rejected. They'd accept it because he was now a legend. So Second Foundation, at least, is not early Asimov. It's arguably late Asimov. And it's exactly as wooden as the other parts of the original trilogy. That said, I've read every bit of fiction he ever wrote and loved most of it, so...
brodouevencode 5y ago
> 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.
- ashtonbaker 5y ago
  Lord of the Rings by popular consensus, surely?
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    LOTR and Harry Potter are easy to translate to the big screen because both follow the Hero's Journey formula. The same can be said with Dune. The only difficulty with Dune is that all of its content is hard to fit in two hour snippets.
    - brodouevencode 5y ago
      I thought the same about Dune. It's one of my favorite books, but there's a lot of detail in there that didn't make it to the movie.
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    How could I forget about LOTR! Admittedly Ive not seen any of the Harry Potter movies.
- nescioquid 5y ago
  Kubrik made the film Lolita based on the screenplay Nabokov wrote in adaption from his novel. The narrative frame and structure for the screenplay is quite different than the novel, but more suitable for a visual medium. I'll leave it to you to decide if it is a great movie, but the proposition that slavishly transliterating a novel into a movie is usually a bad idea seems reasonable to me.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Contact and Dune 2021, mostly. For tv, the Expanse books are adapted very well.
justicezyx 5y ago
> 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.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  It's very good visually, but mediocre plot-wise. The last few episodes look relatively low budget, so my guess is that they're preparing to end the season with more fistfights, a elaborate space war and the Invictus exploding like a Death Star. If they had forgo the Foundation name and made their own universe, the fanbase would be more or less the same.

TheTrotters 5y ago

Few people are criticizing the show from deviating from books per se. It isn’t good on its own merits. Of course they had to make some changes and flesh out some characters to adapt it for TV. They just made poor choices. Instead of going with chosen ones, heroes, and battles, they should have gone for politics in space. Something like the political manouvering in A Song of Ice and Fire but in space.

ianai 5y ago

It's been a while, but I remember Asimov leaving a lot out of the books. i.e. Stories would start after the violence or some clever twist would side step it altogether. He left a lot for a visual medium to add-in. The core is there so far: psychohistory, robots, huge Trantor, planning to 'save' a galaxy amount of culture and info for a galactic reboot, etc. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's the first live action adaptation beyond the robot movie. Kind of always have to be forgiving with a first attempt. Even Star Trek TNG didn't get into a grove until 2nd or 3rd season.

skocznymroczny 5y ago
Arguably, the departure of Gene Roddenberry was what made TNG what it was after the 2nd season. Giving more spotlight to Klingons and Romulans, violating the prime directive, made for a more interesting show. Later DS9 improved on these concepts, by showing a Federation that is willing to bend the rules when desperate times, using deception (forging evidence to disrupt the Dominion-Romulan alliance), covert operations (Section 31) and even planning a genocide (infecting Odo with a disease to spread the disease to other Founders, also Hugh in Star Trek TNG).

GeekyBear 5y ago

>what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it Agreed. The inspiration behind the Foundation series, setting out to shorten the Dark Ages after the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is great. However, if you try reading those short stories again today, you're quickly reminded that early in his career, Asimov was already great at world building, but terrible with characters and dialog. Add in the mismatch between the cultural norms of the 1940's (when the early Foundation stories were written) and the cultural norms today, and a rewrite was always going to be required.

StrictDabbler 5y ago
Asimov's first real published story was in 1939 (his high school "published" a story earlier). The Foundation stories were written in 1941-1950. In 1951 Asimov stopped writing fiction for thirty years. So it's not "early Asimov" by any means. When he came back to write Foundation sequels his characters and dialog hadn't improved. Asimov was always an author only of ideas. His best dialog was the terrible and deliberately corny dialog in the Azazel fantasy-comedy stories, very much done in imitation of P.G. Wodehouse's cleverer banter. Excerpt from one of the 80's foundation books: “Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence ?” Pelorat said, “If you list it like that.” “List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.” Cringe.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  > it's not "early Asimov" by any means He wrote the first Foundation story when he was only 21. That certainly qualifies.
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    His retcon from the 80's wasn't any better in terms of dialogue
  - StrictDabbler 5y ago
    "Search by the Second Foundation" (the second half of the book "Second Foundation") was one of the very last science fiction stories he wrote, apart from the spate of novels in the 80's. It gets confusing because once he was famous, magazines would call him up asking for a story and he'd give them one that he'd written between 1939-1951 that had been rejected. They'd accept it because he was now a legend. So Second Foundation, at least, is not early Asimov. It's arguably late Asimov. And it's exactly as wooden as the other parts of the original trilogy. That said, I've read every bit of fiction he ever wrote and loved most of it, so...

brodouevencode 5y ago

> 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.

ashtonbaker 5y ago
Lord of the Rings by popular consensus, surely?
- chaostheory 5y ago
  LOTR and Harry Potter are easy to translate to the big screen because both follow the Hero's Journey formula. The same can be said with Dune. The only difficulty with Dune is that all of its content is hard to fit in two hour snippets.
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    I thought the same about Dune. It's one of my favorite books, but there's a lot of detail in there that didn't make it to the movie.
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  How could I forget about LOTR! Admittedly Ive not seen any of the Harry Potter movies.
nescioquid 5y ago
Kubrik made the film Lolita based on the screenplay Nabokov wrote in adaption from his novel. The narrative frame and structure for the screenplay is quite different than the novel, but more suitable for a visual medium. I'll leave it to you to decide if it is a great movie, but the proposition that slavishly transliterating a novel into a movie is usually a bad idea seems reasonable to me.
goatlover 5y ago
Contact and Dune 2021, mostly. For tv, the Expanse books are adapted very well.

justicezyx 5y ago

> 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.

ASalazarMX 5y ago
It's very good visually, but mediocre plot-wise. The last few episodes look relatively low budget, so my guess is that they're preparing to end the season with more fistfights, a elaborate space war and the Invictus exploding like a Death Star. If they had forgo the Foundation name and made their own universe, the fanbase would be more or less the same.