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New Asimov Movies Coming
bowman9991 writes "Two big budget Isaac Asimov novel adaptations are on the way. New Line founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are developing Asimov's 1951 novel Foundation, the first in Asimov's classic space opera saga, which has the potential to be as epic as Lord of the Rings. At the same time, New Regency has recently announced they were adapting Asimov's time travel novel The End of Eternity. Despite having edited or written more than 500 books, it's surprising how little of Isaac Asimov's work has made it to the big screen. '"Isaac Asimov had writer's block once," fellow science fiction writer Harlan Ellison said, referring to Asimov's impressive output. "It was the worst ten minutes of his life."' Previous adaptations include the misguided Will Smith feature I, Robot, the lame Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, and two B-grade adaptations of Nightfall."
This reader also notes that a remake of The Day of the Triffids is coming.
Sure, they could do the same thing that was done for Dune. Yep, the epic potential of a horrid screen adaption is there. I'd say the potential is high. Pity as Foundation series was classic science fiction at its best.
Something between the lines jumps out and bites your arm off. Soltan Gris / London
It definetly was! The epic scale of the book, a conflict spanning a whole galaxy was incredible. I don't know how a movie could capture that to be truthfull... Even Star Wars didn't feel as epic. Not to mention the timescale of the book, with time jumping forward by decades at a time.
one would think watchmen was unfilmable, but apparently early previews say it is fantastic
one would have thought lord of the rings was unfilmable, and yet jackson made some of the best films ever made
as long as they do it right... for values of "doing it right" that are largely unquantifiable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As long as Will Smith isn't in any more of them. Between Independence Day, I Robot, and I am Legend I think he has saturated this market enough.
"Chance favors the prepared mind." ~Me
Look, I love Foundation more than anyone should love a work of fiction, and there are lots of people like me out there. That doesn't mean this is a good idea.
Foundation strikes me as one of the least "filmy" books - because it's really a bunch of short stories, each crisis a little puzzle. I fell in love with the books because they were essentially mystery stories wrapped around a gooey scifi center.
This is like trying to adapt three or four Sherlock Holmes short stories at once, all on top of Hollywood's hatred of smart science fiction. I predict PAIN.
Sorry about replying to my own post, but I found the movie - plays in Flash with reasonable quality. There is also download for some small cash, but I haven't tried that. The flash player has ads, but they are not too bad. There are no subtitles, though, and that's sad because I'm watching it now and the dialog (in the council chamber) is not meaningless.
Anyway, here is the working link.
"Why do film makers always do such a bad job with sci-fi classics? Is it just blatant commercialism? Is it that modernisation of a classic story is inappropriate? Or is it something more fundamental - do film makers simply not understand science fiction?"
It could also be economics. Just how much money do you think it would take to do Ringworld on the same scale as it exists in most peoples heads when they read science fiction? Grand usually takes a "grand".
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
If they insist on dipping into the Asimov bank of stories, they can't take the Foundation series all the way to the end without some background story about Baileyworld and R.Daneel, unless they cut vast swathes of content from the storyline.
Pro Coffee Drinker
Too bad Hollywood writers think science fiction adaptations are 50% special effects and 50% stuff they think is cool but is cliche and shows they didn't grasp the book.
Dune is complex, deep, and half of it takes place internal to the characters. Sci-Fi managed to stuff it into a five episode mini-series and did it a fair amount of justice, but I hold out slim hope for a feature length movie. That goes times a million if Brian Herbert is involved in any way.
I'll be seeing that first run in theatres and buying the DVDs.
They predicted that, you know.
Idiot, everyone knows psychohistory can't predict individual actions, just those of a group.
...he didn't pay much attention to standard values of novels; things like, say, human emotions, fast action, sex, or even much real suspense - the plot is usually "logical" and the real thrill of the reader is being taught the fine details that connect Point A to Point B. A lecturer-style, if you wish. In other literary aspects, like narrative structure and command of the English language, Asimov seems quite strong (I'm a non-native English speaker, having read most of his works translated, but as an adult [and professional bilingual writer] I've read a few originals - e.g. Gold - and liked it truly.) Many readers actually love that style in the genre of hard-SF. No literary decorations, no convoluted characters... just the fundamentals: GREAT ideas envolving future technology and its iteraction with society, and a competent and serious development of these ideas. Salvo exceptions like the Lucky Starr space-cowboy series; and even those books were much above the level of "entertainment sci-fi" like Flash Gordon.
The Will Smith movies was a disgrace to Asimov's legacy with, as one of the worse cinema whoring of all times, them actually making Dr. Calving fuckeable.
She was anything but cute in the books.
How will the be able to portray R. Daneel Oliwav and R. Giskard Reventlov and their brain wave mind bending of humans without it looking corny on screen BUT as amazing as it is written?
How will they portray the mule without it looking like a bad version of Alien?
How are they going to be able to flesh out the vast amount of social undertones that are perfused in all the books? Recently I have though "This is becoming like Trantor" when I see infrastructure "collapsing" around me in this real world we live in.
Heck 99% of the conflicts as I recall them are on the mental plane... from the start to mycogen and beyond.
They better be some spectacular screen writer adaptors to even scratch the surface.
"Foundation" would be a joke today. "We can predict the future. With math. In detail. By hand!" People are less impressed with mathematical prediction now; enough of it has been done to make it clear what's possible and what isn't.
Wall Street has had sizable efforts in that direction. You can at best do a little bit better than noise, some of the time. Which was enough to create hedge fund billionaires.
I loved Asimov's Foundation series. Actually, the "Foundation Universe" encompasses much more than the Foundation novels. But, as critics say, it more or less a vision of the United States of the Galaxy.
2001 came out shortly after the time of Marshall McLuhan's mantra "the medium is the message", which argued that the medium of communication is a fundamental influence on the way we process information or content. 2001 is a communication via visual content rather than dialogue. I still find 2001 an amazing and deep movie, but none of the message is contained in the dialog. Consider an obvious scene: the reading of the lips of Bowman and Poole while they are discussing the possibility of shutting down HAL, the dialog is irrelevant. Or the scene on the moon where the team is looking at the monolith in Tycho, the way they touch it ... reminiscent of the way the apes did, but now with opposable thumbs.
Or a more subtle one: when Bowman recovers Poole's body and brings it back to the Discovery HAL refuses him entry, there is then an extended quiet period where the discovery and the pod are shown facing each other. The pod seems to be offering up the body of Poole as a sacrifice. But in this moment we (again) see the three stages of evolution: Man, machine enhanced man (Bowman in the Pod) and Machine Intelligence. Man is dead, now is the time of the machine enhanced human, and the future humanity becoming or supplanted by machine intelligence.
Of course this is only scratching the surface.
Bitter and proud of it.
I think the thing that pleases me most is the fact that the Foundation books were largely about the idea that while religion and irrationality tend to mess up a society, science always kinda works. If they manage to convey this idea in the movies, it could be a great message for our culture at this time.
...Or the extended DVD of the third film, but they sort of blew it when Grima didn't go flying after the palintir, (and then HE kills Saruman? WTF). The book was not written from the human point of view. Without the original POV, very little plot is left to develop, hence the fluff that everyone else seems offended by. I haven't had to condense any novels into screenplays myself, but somehow the main plot point needs support. Three times was kind of the rule of thumb that comes to mind. I have done some film work, BTW. The essential plot point of LOTR was the protagonists having to reach deeper within themselves to find resources and strength that they didn't know they had, in order to succeed. Boromir fails, kid brother Faramir comes through. Saruman fails, junior wizard Gandalf defies the laws of physics and triumphs. Isildur fails, Aragorn gets to stage a big comeback. The Hobbits were the most humble and peace-loving of all, there is no warrior pride or arrogance, but they stood up when the time came, even Smeagol has his moments. The final section, where the Brandybuck and the Took answer their heritage and raise up the folks at home, WAS the whole point being developed. If you want to see superior might steamroll over groveling malefactors, look for Chuck Norris. It has been said that LOTR was an allegory for a "Nation of Gardeners and Shopkeepers" rising up to stand against Hitler. (By Godwin!)
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Most of Foundation action scenes are mind control fights. It would be really interesting to see how they manage to translate that to the screen.
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