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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.
After RTFA I noticed that they are also in the process of making a new Dune movie! http://sffmedia.com/films/science-fiction-films/179-this-time-its-for-real-new-dune-movie-confirmed.html
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I thought it was a good reflection of being human. I have never read an of Isaac Asimov books though so Im sure it doesnt live up to the book, but i thought it was still a good film on its own.
I'm afraid it's because the vast majority of the moviegoers out there are just not capable of watching a movie any more if it's not crammed full with special effects and made for a 5-year old to understand.
I suppose 2001, one of my favorite movies, would be a complete failure if it were to be shown to todays public.
Thank you, you saved my day — and, yes, The Times They Are A-Changin', but not to the better these days.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Honestly, Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat stories would make better movies than either Tolkien's or Asimov's best stories.
Hollywood takes too many good stories and ruins them with T&A. They should instead be taking marginal stories and improving them as only marginal stories can be improved.. with gratuitous sex and violence.
As for Heinlein, I remember checking out audio tapes of some of his books as an initial act of juvenile choice at the library... and only after they were playing for my whole family to hear did I realize that the dude had some serious issues with waiting till his heroins were menstruating before thinking about their thighs.
They are ADAPTIONS FFS Why can people not get this through their skulls. For many many reasons movies cannot be the same as the books. I happened to enjoy the LOTR Movies, but only because I detatched them from the Epicness of the books.
Noone, except you it seems, is expecting the movies to be exactly the same as the books, Its just not feasible. We dont know what Tolkien himself would have wanted with regards to these movies, or how he would have felt about them.
The story has been sold, theres nothing you can do about it now. If you dislike these movies, then Dont fucking watch them, Its not hard.
Exactly. What I don't understand is why there are no Hollywood studios like Apple. There's one guy at the top, and if he thinks it sucks, then it doesn't go. Is it really that hard to find one person with good taste and a bit of business sense? I mean, seriously, Quantum of Solace sucked hard and it was pretty obvious that chucking every damned effect and action scene they could think of at it was not what the movie needed. Why can nobody tell them this?
[FUCK BETA]
It takes hundreds of people to make a movie, and most of them are selected not for their familiarity with the target material but for their previously demonstrated moviemaking skill. This hit home when I was reading an interview with one of the top people responsible for Terminator 3; IIRC it may have been James Cameron but I'm not sure. In any case he was going on about the time travel scenes, and how the terminators appear naked, and he tossed out a comment along the lines of "It's part of the franchise, the terminators appear naked. Who knows why? I don't know why, but that's just the way it is." And so we had to wall off the whole street for Kristanna Loken, yadda yadda yadda.
My immediate reaction was, WTF? You are spending millions of dollars to make this thing and you don't even understand the first most basic thing, a thing any American ten year old could probably explain to you? But that's just it; millions of dollars are on line, put up mostly by people who have not read the book and would rather spend those dollars on people who have proven movie experience. And sometimes those people just don't get it, even if they are very good at what they do, and things like I, Robot are the result.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
But omission of "The Scouring of the Shire", THE BEST PART of the whole fucking story, was just asinine.
... or would have been in the book. Movies require different considerations, and the omission of that scene from the movie made sense.
In fact, when they first announced the movies many eons ago the two scenes you mentioned were the first ones I was hoping Jackson would cut, the Scouring because it would have rendered the ending even more long and cumbersome than it was in the final film. Remember, the point is not to make a shot-for-shot documentary of what's in the book, but rather to make a good film that shares the book's concepts, plot and characters. Including the Scouring would have been good from a character development and accuracy standpoint, but it would have failed in the sense that the film's ending would have felt egregiously long. Most viewers new to Tolkein's stories, their attention focused on the destruction of the ring and celebrations in Minas Tirith, would have found an extra battle in the Shire as superfluous as the transparent mechas of the frozen future at the end of Spielberg's AI.
I wouldn't have the book any other way. And of course, none of the above explains why Faramir is temporarily a bad guy, nor why half the scenes in Return of the King were in slo-mo despite its already egregious running length. But Scouring's omission always made sense to me.