6 ms·

Hopefully the team that brought us “Foundation” has nothing to do with it. Their adaptation is unrecognizable.

Bud 4y ago
To be fair, it was almost required to be unrecognizable. The original novels consist mostly of two people in a room, alone, talking to each other. Not exactly workable for a major TV series.
- stevenwoo 4y ago
  Prelude to Foundation is almost a novel length chase scene.
- dmix 4y ago
  Yeah the book was pretty abstract, a narrator/exposition driven story which doesn't translate well. Not a lot of content for building set pieces and action.
- xsmasher 4y ago
  The original "Foundation" novel is a set of short stories that take place decades or more apart, and barely share characters. The second novel is more unified but has a 100-year gap in the middle. They would have been an interesting "tales of" anthology series, but not a great narrative series.
- wiredfool 4y ago
  I loved the Foundation series when I was younger, until the fourth book or after it just got draggy and dull. Rereading it though, there are bits of brilliance in a sea of cigar smoke and 50’s atomic futurism. The suck fairy hit it pretty hard.
  - pantalaimon 4y ago
    It gets dull when that mule character appears, that supernatural twist just didn’t fit the rest of the story IMHO.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      It didn't but Asimov probably got tired of trying to adapt real Roman history for his space epic. I wonder if the Mule vaguely corresponds to the rise of Muhammad and the Muslim conquests?
    - mrkstu 4y ago
      It was how the Second Foundation has to come out of hiding, introducing them to the reader. Also by far the most 'filmable' part of the series.
- MikusR 4y ago
  Midnight Mass is 7 hours of people monologing and is awesome.
dmix 4y ago
I both loved and hated the Foundation TV show. It inspired me to read the book and it was indeed a very different story. But I loved the visuals and concept of the show. The Mary Sue thing wasn't even that much of a deal breaker like some modern scifi/fantasy TV. Just the story and characters in general lacked depth.
- stevenwoo 4y ago
  That space elevator crash in the first episode was very well done, and then some of sfx/practical bits in the last couple of episodes were astoundingly poor.
  - dmix 4y ago
    I was a big fan of the costumes. https://kotaku.com/the-art-of-foundation-1847986378 https://kotaku.com/the-art-of-foundation-1847986378
- wilg 4y ago
  Yeah the concept and most of the visuals were great. The writing, acting, and storytelling in most areas was really poor. The genetic dynasty storyline was the most interesting part (and apparently not from the book at all).
mephitix 4y ago
Ha I thought it was great. “Adaptation” is the key. The original book was a bit sexist…
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  How so?
rainworld 4y ago
tootie 4y ago
I think some of their deviations were kinda clever but overall they really lost the thread of what the story was supposed to be about. Also it was plodding and disinteresting.
nsxwolf 4y ago
Counterpoint: "Foundation" is unfilmable as-is, and what we got contains some of its DNA while actually being a good sci fi show. It gives me hope that this supposed "Hyperion" adaptation could actually work.
- thom 4y ago
  It would make a decent anthology show, but that doesn’t fit the prestige budget they wanted to throw at it. It’s possible that Prelude could have been a better start because it actually had action.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    That could have worked. Haven't seen a good sci fi anthology in awhile. "Black Mirror" seemed to have run out of ideas, and "Electric Dreams" was of very uneven quality.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      There's a bunch on Netflix right now that I haven't mustered up the interest to watch. "Love, Death & Robots" got a second season, and they also host two different sci-fi horror anthologies for short films from Neill Blomkamp and Guillermo del Toro!
      - thom 4y ago
        The Blomkamp stuff seemed pretty terrible to me. Love, Death & Robots was hit and miss, with the misses being more regular, but the hits like Zima Blue being transcendent.
- ThaDood 4y ago
  Someone is doing a Hyperion adaption?! Man. That could be some GoT/HotD level of scope.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
mwambua 4y ago
Yeah, I had the same thought. I wasn't able to make it past a couple episodes. The only interesting addition was the emperor clones.
failuser 4y ago
The best parts of the show (the genetic dynasty part) had almost nothing to do with the books. To be fair, especially the first ones would are very hard to adapt.
idiotsecant 4y ago
That's not so bad. 'Foundation' clearly was not a beat-for-beat recreation of the original work. Anyone trying to do that would have created an abomination anyhow. It took a few interesting pieces from the Asimov work and made an interesting TV show that was IMO visually stunning. I think if we get 'riffs' on the original material and not a retelling of the original that's fine, especially when the original is impossible to recreate cinematically
russellbeattie 4y ago
I couldn't agree more. LotR and the MCU have shown that when you respect the source material, you get incredible movies which are popular and long lasting. For some reason, Hollywood still thinks they can hire directors and writers who want to put their own spin on things and disrespect both the material and the audience and make adaptions like iRobot and Foundation (among many others) which are simply horrible. Even Steve Jackson fell down this hole with (to me) nearly unwatchable Hobbit trilogy. It's not about the adaption per se - you always need to make drastic changes to transform one medium into another - it's about understanding what makes the source material great. Instead you have directors who pride themselves on having never read or seen the original. It boggles my brain. Sometimes it works - think BladeRunner or Children of Men - but for more popular stuff, the first thing producers should do is hire a group of fanboys/fangirls to educate them on what makes a particularly loved story great and what changes would not only be unwelcome, but insulting.
- Anthony-G 4y ago
  I pretty much agree though I’m not sure I’d trust the fanatics to educate film-makers on what elements of a novel could or should be changed when telling a story in the very different medium of moving pictures. There are too many purists in the world; I probably was one when I was a teenager / young adult. > you have directors who pride themselves on having never read or seen the original. That is indeed mind-boggling. I’m curious which directors have taken this approach. Also, if they haven’t read the actual source, what do they use as their source instead? The Wikipedia article, an outline written for them by someone else?
  - russellbeattie 4y ago
    Cuarón bragged about never having read Children of Men, which is why I mentioned it.
    - Anthony-G 4y ago
      Thanks for the response. While I hadn’t read the novel, I thought Children of Men was an excellent film and your comment had piqued my curiosity of how the film’s story came about. I found the following interview by Film Maker magazine¹: > Filmmaker: How did you become interested in adapting and then making Children of Men? > Alfonso Cuarón: It was when I realized that the premise of the book, the premise of infertility and humanity, could serve as a metaphor for the fading sense of hope that I feel humanity has [today]. It was an amazing opportunity. > Filmmaker: I also read that 9/11 was a motivating factor to wanting to do this. > Cuarón: Definitely. I was trying to cope with the reality we’re living. Even before September 11th things were changing. The big phenomenon of globalization that started becoming so obvious in the ‘90s was really having a lot of repercussions. That was pretty much what I was trying to explore. > Filmmaker: Your adaptation of the novel is quite loose. How did you approach your source material? > Cuarón: Once we decided to do this exploration on the state of things – and you don’t have to go very far to realize that the environment and immigration are pretty much on the top of the list – then we had to craft a story. I had the story I wanted to tell so clear in my head that I was very afraid of reading the book and getting completely confused. I read an abridged version of the book, and Timothy J. Sexton, my writing partner, read the [entire] book. But our whole idea was lets find out what elements are relevant to what we’re doing and lets disregard what we think is irrelevant. I don’t think I’d call that bragging. It seems more like Cuarón had a set of ideas he wanted to explore and the book was a suitable hook on which to hang them. ¹ https://web.archive.org/web/20081009182846/https://www.filmmakermagazine.com/archives/online_features/hopeless_future.php https://web.archive.org/web/20081009182846/https://www.filmm...

Bud 4y ago

To be fair, it was almost required to be unrecognizable. The original novels consist mostly of two people in a room, alone, talking to each other. Not exactly workable for a major TV series.

stevenwoo 4y ago
Prelude to Foundation is almost a novel length chase scene.
dmix 4y ago
Yeah the book was pretty abstract, a narrator/exposition driven story which doesn't translate well. Not a lot of content for building set pieces and action.
xsmasher 4y ago
The original "Foundation" novel is a set of short stories that take place decades or more apart, and barely share characters. The second novel is more unified but has a 100-year gap in the middle. They would have been an interesting "tales of" anthology series, but not a great narrative series.
wiredfool 4y ago
I loved the Foundation series when I was younger, until the fourth book or after it just got draggy and dull. Rereading it though, there are bits of brilliance in a sea of cigar smoke and 50’s atomic futurism. The suck fairy hit it pretty hard.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  It gets dull when that mule character appears, that supernatural twist just didn’t fit the rest of the story IMHO.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    It didn't but Asimov probably got tired of trying to adapt real Roman history for his space epic. I wonder if the Mule vaguely corresponds to the rise of Muhammad and the Muslim conquests?
  - mrkstu 4y ago
    It was how the Second Foundation has to come out of hiding, introducing them to the reader. Also by far the most 'filmable' part of the series.
MikusR 4y ago
Midnight Mass is 7 hours of people monologing and is awesome.

dmix 4y ago

I both loved and hated the Foundation TV show. It inspired me to read the book and it was indeed a very different story. But I loved the visuals and concept of the show. The Mary Sue thing wasn't even that much of a deal breaker like some modern scifi/fantasy TV. Just the story and characters in general lacked depth.

stevenwoo 4y ago
That space elevator crash in the first episode was very well done, and then some of sfx/practical bits in the last couple of episodes were astoundingly poor.
- dmix 4y ago
  I was a big fan of the costumes. https://kotaku.com/the-art-of-foundation-1847986378 https://kotaku.com/the-art-of-foundation-1847986378
wilg 4y ago
Yeah the concept and most of the visuals were great. The writing, acting, and storytelling in most areas was really poor. The genetic dynasty storyline was the most interesting part (and apparently not from the book at all).

mephitix 4y ago

Ha I thought it was great. “Adaptation” is the key. The original book was a bit sexist…

pantalaimon 4y ago
How so?

rainworld 4y ago

tootie 4y ago

I think some of their deviations were kinda clever but overall they really lost the thread of what the story was supposed to be about. Also it was plodding and disinteresting.

nsxwolf 4y ago

Counterpoint: "Foundation" is unfilmable as-is, and what we got contains some of its DNA while actually being a good sci fi show. It gives me hope that this supposed "Hyperion" adaptation could actually work.

thom 4y ago
It would make a decent anthology show, but that doesn’t fit the prestige budget they wanted to throw at it. It’s possible that Prelude could have been a better start because it actually had action.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  That could have worked. Haven't seen a good sci fi anthology in awhile. "Black Mirror" seemed to have run out of ideas, and "Electric Dreams" was of very uneven quality.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    There's a bunch on Netflix right now that I haven't mustered up the interest to watch. "Love, Death & Robots" got a second season, and they also host two different sci-fi horror anthologies for short films from Neill Blomkamp and Guillermo del Toro!
    - thom 4y ago
      The Blomkamp stuff seemed pretty terrible to me. Love, Death & Robots was hit and miss, with the misses being more regular, but the hits like Zima Blue being transcendent.
ThaDood 4y ago
Someone is doing a Hyperion adaption?! Man. That could be some GoT/HotD level of scope.
- nsxwolf 4y ago

mwambua 4y ago

Yeah, I had the same thought. I wasn't able to make it past a couple episodes. The only interesting addition was the emperor clones.

failuser 4y ago

The best parts of the show (the genetic dynasty part) had almost nothing to do with the books. To be fair, especially the first ones would are very hard to adapt.

idiotsecant 4y ago

That's not so bad. 'Foundation' clearly was not a beat-for-beat recreation of the original work. Anyone trying to do that would have created an abomination anyhow. It took a few interesting pieces from the Asimov work and made an interesting TV show that was IMO visually stunning. I think if we get 'riffs' on the original material and not a retelling of the original that's fine, especially when the original is impossible to recreate cinematically

russellbeattie 4y ago

I couldn't agree more. LotR and the MCU have shown that when you respect the source material, you get incredible movies which are popular and long lasting. For some reason, Hollywood still thinks they can hire directors and writers who want to put their own spin on things and disrespect both the material and the audience and make adaptions like iRobot and Foundation (among many others) which are simply horrible. Even Steve Jackson fell down this hole with (to me) nearly unwatchable Hobbit trilogy. It's not about the adaption per se - you always need to make drastic changes to transform one medium into another - it's about understanding what makes the source material great. Instead you have directors who pride themselves on having never read or seen the original. It boggles my brain. Sometimes it works - think BladeRunner or Children of Men - but for more popular stuff, the first thing producers should do is hire a group of fanboys/fangirls to educate them on what makes a particularly loved story great and what changes would not only be unwelcome, but insulting.

Anthony-G 4y ago
I pretty much agree though I’m not sure I’d trust the fanatics to educate film-makers on what elements of a novel could or should be changed when telling a story in the very different medium of moving pictures. There are too many purists in the world; I probably was one when I was a teenager / young adult. > you have directors who pride themselves on having never read or seen the original. That is indeed mind-boggling. I’m curious which directors have taken this approach. Also, if they haven’t read the actual source, what do they use as their source instead? The Wikipedia article, an outline written for them by someone else?
- russellbeattie 4y ago
  Cuarón bragged about never having read Children of Men, which is why I mentioned it.
  - Anthony-G 4y ago
    Thanks for the response. While I hadn’t read the novel, I thought Children of Men was an excellent film and your comment had piqued my curiosity of how the film’s story came about. I found the following interview by Film Maker magazine¹: > Filmmaker: How did you become interested in adapting and then making Children of Men? > Alfonso Cuarón: It was when I realized that the premise of the book, the premise of infertility and humanity, could serve as a metaphor for the fading sense of hope that I feel humanity has [today]. It was an amazing opportunity. > Filmmaker: I also read that 9/11 was a motivating factor to wanting to do this. > Cuarón: Definitely. I was trying to cope with the reality we’re living. Even before September 11th things were changing. The big phenomenon of globalization that started becoming so obvious in the ‘90s was really having a lot of repercussions. That was pretty much what I was trying to explore. > Filmmaker: Your adaptation of the novel is quite loose. How did you approach your source material? > Cuarón: Once we decided to do this exploration on the state of things – and you don’t have to go very far to realize that the environment and immigration are pretty much on the top of the list – then we had to craft a story. I had the story I wanted to tell so clear in my head that I was very afraid of reading the book and getting completely confused. I read an abridged version of the book, and Timothy J. Sexton, my writing partner, read the [entire] book. But our whole idea was lets find out what elements are relevant to what we’re doing and lets disregard what we think is irrelevant. I don’t think I’d call that bragging. It seems more like Cuarón had a set of ideas he wanted to explore and the book was a suitable hook on which to hang them. ¹ https://web.archive.org/web/20081009182846/https://www.filmmakermagazine.com/archives/online_features/hopeless_future.php https://web.archive.org/web/20081009182846/https://www.filmm...