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.

Comments

Oh, the potential

[UziBeatle]

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.

Re:Oh, the potential

[JackieBrown]

I'd be first in line for the foundation movies.

As long as it was movies. Not the whole thing crammed into a 90 minute movie

Re:Oh, the potential

[kandela]

As science fiction readers we always seem to approach a movie release of our favourite stories with dread.

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?

I have a feeling that when Hollywood hears the words 'science fiction' they immediately think special effects and action and how they can maximise those things for the viewing experience. Yet sci-fi books are about ideas. I, Robot is a classic example of the whole point of the book being sacrificed for extra action. Similarly I am Legend for those who have read the book is most thought provoking in its ending but Hollywood sacrificed that for a... well, Hollywood ending.

There have been some excellent sci-fi movies: 2001, The Andromeda Strain for instance, so it is possible. Why do film makers so often get it wrong?

Re:Oh, the potential

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

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.

Re:Oh, the potential

[Pad-Lok]

I

As long as it was movies. Not the whole thing crammed into a 90 minute movie

You, sir, live in a world of fantasy and science fiction.

Re:Oh, the potential

[jonwil]

2001 (the book, the film and the story) was basically co-written by one of the best SF authors of all time (Arthur C Clarke) and one of the best filmmakers of all time (Stanley Kubrick). Also, from what I gather, there wasnt a huge amount of involvement in the creative process by MGM (as opposed to the way most films get made today)

Re: Oh, the potential

[Black Parrot]

I have a feeling that when Hollywood hears the words 'science fiction' they immediately think special effects and action and how they can maximise those things for the viewing experience.

Not just SF. This year's Jones and Bond outings were all chase and fight, utterly devoid of all the other stuff that makes for a good movie.

Hell, I can't even tell you what Solace was about.

Hollywood movies are degenerating into big budget laser light shows: "Gee that's cool, but...."

Re:Oh, the potential

[foobsr]

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.

Re:Oh, the potential

[lgw]

Fans of Tolkein on the whole don't have a problem with Jackson's *omissions*. It's his *additions* that were the issue.

Re:Oh, the potential

[theaveng]

Well, I fell asleep after just ten minutes of reading the LOTR books. Okay not really, but I was bored out of my mind. That man rambled on more than my delusional grandmother. I never did get past the halfway point of book 1 because it was like listening to my English prof drone on-and-on-and-on.

As for Foundation, it's not really a novel. It's a series of short stories and I don't know how it can be adapted to a movie, since the cast of characters is constantly changing, and I can't imagine the movie makers constantly changing actors every twenty minutes. The result will probably be some bastardized mess that fails to properly span one hundred years of history. When you have a series of stories like Foundation, it makes more sense to handle it like Star Trek TOS - each episode is a standalone independent of the others. They should create an "Issac Asimov Presents" show with each episode covering a different short story, including his Foundation, Robot, and Empire short stories.

>>>misguided Will Smith feature I, Robot, the lame Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, and two B-grade adaptations of Nightfall.

I have to disagree with this statement. Yeah the B-grade movies were bad, but I thought Bicentennial Man was faithful to the original text, and I Robot was an original non-asimov story, but still stayed true to Asimov's original Four Robot Laws (1,2,3, and 0). I saw that movie three times and enjoyed it every time. I wish they'd go back and adapt a few more (but this time stick to the text).

Re: Oh, the potential

[bsDaemon]

I saw the new Bond with my sister and one of her friends, neither of whom had ever seen a Bond movie before. They both hated it because they had no idea what was going on.

This is probably because for some reason they decided to make an actual sequel to Casino Royale. If you didn't see it, you won't have any clue what is going on in this one.

They trash all the nice cars by the opening credits -- the Aston-Martin and the Alfa Romeos. The rest of the film is full of greeny-weenie mobiles and a few Range Rovers.

Bond only nails 1 girl the entire time. What's up with that?

Also, the plot was down right reasonable -- a conspiracy between industrialists and government officials to back a coup in order to gain mineral rights... and the CIA is HELPING!! That's not a Bond plot, that's the Iraq war. WTF.

I hope that they rectify this in the next film. They're on notice, as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Oh, the potential

[ushering05401]

Probably because it's fucking awesome. You and your mongoloid son aren't.

That's just funny. Please read Tales Before Tolkien before ever commenting on this subject again.

Tolkien revolutionized fantastical storytelling, went unnoticed for years because he was not an attention whoring populist writer, and has now been totally dishonored by the massacre that is the Peter Jackson LOTR saga.

If the studios wanted Tolkien without the classical elements they should have paid off Terry Brooks for his stories and been done with it.

I cannot even fathom how a fan of the LOTR books could sit through half of the first movie installment, and I remember telling the friend I saw the first movie with that Asimov would be next... cause Hollywood was obviously running dry if they thought they could pull this shit over the eyes of the educated public.

Related evidence suggests that there is very little left of the educated public, as both the LOTR adaptations and the Asimov adaptations are completely bereft of any intellectual value.

But hey, maybe J.R.R. and Isaac were just fucking off.. they prolly were just in it for the paychecks just like the fuck holes making these shit-ass movies. Right? I mean why else would they be contemplating things like classical linguistics and transhumanist morality when the world is full of redemptionless fuckheads like yourself willing to part with your hard earned dollars over Liv Tyler's minimal tits.

Re:Oh, the potential

[Anonymous Coward]

Faithful to Asimov's Laws? Did I miss something? I could have sworn that there were robots deliberately killing people with malice aforethought in that movie.

Asimov was as much - or more - a detective writer as he was a science-fiction one, and he always anchored his stories firmly in his conjectured reality. No deus ex machina (no pun intended), no violations of the ground rules. Or, to quote Holmes: "No ghosts need apply". Many of the robot stories, in fact, were about how neurotic robots became when faced with conflicts of the laws.

In only one of them did he actually have a robot deliberately committing murder, and even there it wasn't gratuitous, much less wholesale slaughter.

I enjoyed the movie in general, though I've had enough of the conflict-over-the-abyss cliche, thanks very much. However, the hook in Asimov's stories was always how this could happen without breaking the 3 Laws. The movie took the easy way out and broke the First Law without compunction.

Asimov's robots were soulless, but they were never evil. And they had a lot more personality.

Re: Oh, the potential

[dpilot]

I just saw it yesterday, without having seen Casino Royale. (The new one, that is. I've seen the David Niven/Woody Allen farce.) The action was very thick, but there was a plot in there, you just had to really be paying attention to ferret it out.

All in all, I liked it better than the later Roger Moore Bond films. By that time he seemed to be mugging and smirking his way through the films, laughing all the way to the bank. This film was very dark, any hint of humor would have gotten shot, thrown out of the vehicle, and blown up immediately, but I still rather liked it.

I thought "Quantum of Solace" referred to the tiniest amount of relief from his grief after the last movie. But I would have sworn I heard a few references to "Quantum" as an organization, and saw a few flashes of "Q" logo. I don't know if it was a hint, something I needed to see Casino to understand, or a changed direction that wasn't completely removed.

Speaking of which, (incompletely removed change of direction) don't forget that they're making, "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" into a movie, as well as Ridley Scott doing "The Forever War." I've heard that in the latter, he wants to emphasize the lost feeling or returning home to a changed world, after losing time to relativistic travel.

Re:Oh, the potential

[ushering05401]

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.

Re:Oh, the potential

[conureman]

I for one, could live with the additions, and can sorta understand the thinking behind changing the POV from the halfling's to the human's. I can live with the substitution of Aragorn's chef's roll of weaponry for the whole Bombadil/Barrow Wight episode. But omission of "The Scouring of the Shire", THE BEST PART of the whole fucking story, was just asinine.

Re:Oh, the potential

[ijakings]

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.

Re:Oh, the potential

[hiryuu]

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.

My wife and I had this discussion early on; one of her favorite Heinlein novels is Friday, which was just one big soft-core-porn action flick script, as far as I could tell. She found it an incredibly woman-empowering tale. The conversation would then devolve into whether Heinlein, as expressed in his later books, was pro-feminist and liberated, or simply a dirty old man.

Re: Oh, the potential

[u38cg]

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?

Re:Oh, the potential

[dbolger]

I would have enjoyed the movie if it wasn't for long minutes of 'nothing' repeated time and time again.

Um, you have read LoTR right? Quite frankly I was impressed by the sheer quantity "nothing happening" that Jackson managed to cut out.

Re:Oh, the potential

[localroger]

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.

Re:Oh, the potential

[Daniel_Staal]

>>>misguided Will Smith feature I, Robot, the lame Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, and two B-grade adaptations of Nightfall.

I have to disagree with this statement. Yeah the B-grade movies were bad, but I thought Bicentennial Man was faithful to the original text, and I Robot was an original non-asimov story, but still stayed true to Asimov's original Four Robot Laws (1,2,3, and 0). I saw that movie three times and enjoyed it every time. I wish they'd go back and adapt a few more (but this time stick to the text).

Bicentennial Man is probably fairly faithful - to the book, which wasn't actually by Asimov. (It was inspired by a short story he wrote.) I liked it, mostly.

I Robot... It may have been true to the wording of the four laws, but it completely missed their point: To have a world where robots weren't the enemy, and weren't running amok all the time. Which is where SciFi was when he started writing, and where SciFi movies still are. Instead he had robots who were machines, went wrong in predictable (non-destructive, usually) ways, and could be fixed.

Sure, he eventually went back and subverted that, but only after everyone else had started to write good robot stories, and it was then a subversion of his own rules.

So, to me, it just completely missed the point. If they'd called it what it was: Just another Hollywood robot movie, I'd have thought it decent, and liked it. But it wasn't an Asimov story, and calling it that was just a shallow marketing ploy.

Re:Oh, the potential

[FlyingBishop]

Bicentennial man screwed up two things about Asimov's text. The first was really bad: In Asimov's version, after the robot has himself surgically altered so he dies, he tells the human congress that he did it because he had concluded that they would never accept a human who could live forever. In the movie adaptation, the congress flat-out tells him "Sorry, you're immortal. Men aren't immortal."

It ruins the poignancy of it, because man intentionally drives the robot to death, whereas in Asimov's end, it's unspoken bigotry that drives him to death.

That, and they made his desire to become human all about sex. Honestly, if that's your thing, cool, but don't turn Asimov into stories about robots that want to have sex.

As for I, Robot, I think misguided is an excellent word. They should've done an Asimov work. The result wasn't atrocious, but it wasn't Asimov. When Asimov's robots took over the world, humans though they were in control, and so were quite fine with it (because the robots were, after all, only there to serve humankind.)

Re:Oh, the potential

[Random BedHead Ed]

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.

Re:Oh, the potential

[residieu]

No, some Fans of Tolkien hated every minute. Some Fans of Tolkien recognized the difficulty of shooting the movie, and were happy with what they got on the whole (though most have their lists of parts that bug them)

The Will Smith movie wasn't based on Asimov's book

[Rix]

It was based on the earlier Eando Binder short story.

In Other News - Dune Remake

[schneidafunk]

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

Re:foundation

[TheKidWho]

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.

Bicentennial Man was great

[QuantumG]

If you're expecting anything better out of Hollywood then you're not paying attention.

No way...

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have made a movie adaptation of Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. THAT would be epic.

foundation unfilmable?

[circletimessquare]

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

This is good...

[CryptoJones]

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.

Re:This is good...

[xstonedogx]

I'll call Keanu Reeves!

Re:This is good...

[owlstead]

Yes, the problem with him is that he can't be anybody else than himself. It's as much acting as Arnie did. The role in which Arnie excelled was basically himself: a muscular robot. That does not mean that the movies are not fun to watch, Will Smith can be amazingly funny. But he'll be Will Smith all of the time. Now take a look at an actor like Depp. Sure you can recognize him, but you could watch a whole movie without actually really noticing that he's in there.

So indeed, don't put him in there unless it really fits his personality. Maybe that's what they are doing though. Many SF novels are written around one or a few heroes that play out fantastic voyages.

Are you kidding me?

[Badge 17]

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.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[schneidafunk]

Badge, you got me thinking about this. I want to disagree with you because the Foundation Series is probably my favorite SciFi book. However, my favorite SciFi movie is definitely Total Recall and I think you nailed the reason down for me. I'm wondering how much action there is going to be in this. I'm not sure I'd enjoy watching a bunch of scientists arguing around a table about the inner workings of psychohistory.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[MichaelSmith]

Asimov's writing wasn't very visual and it doesn't translate well to the screen. Larry Niven on the other hand...

Re:Are you kidding me?

[Rob Simpson]

Yeah, this might turn out even worse than I, Robot. The only book of Asimov's that struck me as having the potential to make a decent movie was The Caves of Steel.

Re:Hari Seldon and Psychohistory

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I'll be seeing that first run in theatres and buying the DVDs.

They predicted that, you know.

I liked Bicentennial Man

[Intrinsic]

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.

Re:I liked Bicentennial Man

[spandex_panda]

I too thought the movie was good, perhaps not amazing but it lived up to the book. The whole idea of an artificial intelligence being recognised as human is very cool. The other interesting point was that the manufacturers thought the robot was defective when it was discovered it was interested in art!!

Fantastic Voyage

[harlows_monkeys]

A lot of people think "Fantastic Voyage" was an Asimov story that got made into a movie, but it was the other way around. Asimov was hired to do the novelization of the movie. Asimov wrote fast enough that the novelization was published quite a bit before the movie was released. Furthermore, as a condition of taking the job, he insisted that he be allowed to diverge from the script to fix plot holes. So, when the movie came out long after the book, and had plot holes and science errors that were not in the book, people assumed the book came first, and Hollywood botched adapting it!

Re:"The end of Eternity" exists since 1987

[tftp]

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.

zzz

[circletimessquare]

you could go to a sports convention and say football is insipid

you could go to a chess club and call chess stupid

but you will go to slashdot, and call lotr boring

so whether you are a troll or a retard, you are most certainly a masochist

Oh, the Grand Vistas.

[Ostracus]

"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".

I want some Elijah Bailey!

[Pugwash69]

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.

Re:Movies which missed the very point of their sou

[AGMW]

I remember hearing a (possibly apocryphal?) story of Terry Pratchett having a meeting with Hollywood film producers to chat about possibly making a film of his book Mort.

Apparently the producers said something like that it was a great book, with a brilliant story, yada yada yada, but could he tone down the DEATH angle a bit?

Now this is an epic workload

[McNihil]

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

[Animats]

"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.

Re:2001

[Evil Pete]

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.