Slashdot Mirror


Emmerich Plans Foundation As a 3D Epic

spuke4000 writes "Roland Emmerich, the writer/director/producer behind Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 is planning to adapt Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The plans include using technology developed for Avatar including 3D and motion capture technology. When asked about using this technology Emmerich responded: 'It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real.'"

228 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    The same Roland Emmerich that wrote the script for Independence Day? The movie where Will Smith flies a spaceship out of an alien base and yells "Oh! Elvis has left the building!" ? Where Will Smith pauses after beating up an alien and says "Welcome to Earth!" ? Where Randy Quaid says, "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?" ? Where Randy Quaid is about to fly his ship up into an Alien fortress to blow it up and says "All right, you alien assholes! In the words of my generation: Up Yours!" followed by "Ha-ha-ha! Hello, boys! I'm back! " ? Where Jeff Goldblum says, "Must go faster!" ?

    That's the writing we have to look forward to? And the guy who wrote that is directing?

    *curls up into fetal position*

    Well, after seeing I, Robot I must say that at least they waited until Asimov was dead before hacking his works up into utter drivel in order to milk those cash cows. Gee, maybe if we're lucky we'll get to see the psychohistorian Hari Seldon played by Tom Cruise scream, "And that's my thousand year plan, bitch!" while snapping his fingers back and forth?

    So what are we looking at here? A movie full of catch phrases shot in a new technology that just broke records for box office revenues? Sounds like these executive producers are betting on a winning horse that I'd rather take a bullet to the head than see.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Homburg · · Score: 2

      I Robot is a pretty decent film, and is true to a lot of Asimov's themes (particularly, the effect of widespread dependence on robots on human society, as explored in the Elijah Baley novels).

    2. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by PotatoFarmer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Let's not be hasty here. Emmerich has done a lot of movies, some of them have to be good.

      *takes a quick stroll over to IMDB*

      Well, shit. Guess we're boned, eh?

    3. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by electrostatic · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's the writing we have to look forward to?

      Playboy interview of James Cameron:
      PLAYBOY: How much do you get into celebrating your movie heroine's hotness?
      CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, "She's got to have tits," even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na'vi, aren't placental mammals.

    4. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by nmb3000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I Robot is a pretty decent film

      Please tell me you're joking. The movie I, Robot may have been okay if it were simply a standalone film, but as an "adaption" of Asimov's book it was a travesty. About the only thing the book had in common with the movie was the title.

      While overly satirical and lacking in details, Maddox's review isn't all that far from the mark.

      --
      "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
      /)
    5. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps you are purposefully disregarding the fact that Roland's target audience is simply.. not you? (You know.. the intelligent type.) Most people really enjoyed ID4. Most people will probably enjoy Foundation in 3D, but only because Roland will dumb it down to their levels.

      --
      I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
    6. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Homburg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      About the only thing the book had in common with the movie was the title.

      And the themes: The three laws; the ways in which these laws can be, unexpectedly, harmful (the point of about half of the stories in the book); a mystery based on trying to predict how these laws will play out in unusual circumstances (the point of the other half of the stories in the book); a society shaped by dependence on robots, and the problems this might cause (the subject of a number of Asimov's later robot books). Sure, there's a lot more running around and shooting and Will Smith being a badass in the film than there is in the book, but there's some definite common threads, too.

      I'm beginning to think that people who claim the book and film of I, Robot have nothing in common simply don't have a very strong grasp on what Asimov actually wrote.

    7. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by dpilot · · Score: 1

      Don't forget one of Asimov's characters, early in the Foundation years, with that immortal line, "The galaxy's going to pot!" Maybe this choice of writer is a good thing.

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    8. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by koreaman · · Score: 1

      If it is okay as a standalone film, then it is okay.

      Films should be judged on their merits as films, not on their fidelity to other media.

      This is why I prefer never to have read a book before seeing a film adaptation.

    9. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by russotto · · Score: 1

      I Robot is a pretty decent film, and is true to a lot of Asimov's themes (particularly, the effect of widespread dependence on robots on human society, as explored in the Elijah Baley novels).

      It, however, followed them to the opposite conclusion. Asimov in the later Foundation series had the robots take the First Law to extremes and let it justify micromanaging humanity for its own good. The "I, Robot" movie had them do the same thing. But Asimov portrayed this as a good thing, whereas the movie clearly came out against it.

    10. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by dpilot · · Score: 2, Funny

      It didn't just have the movie title, it had "Susan Calvin, Action Hero!"

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    11. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by spun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Uh, was there any running around and shooting in the book? The themes may have been similar, but was the actual PLOT of the movie anything like the book? Was the TONE of the movie anything like the book? If you admit that the only thing the book and movie had in common was the three laws and ubiquitous robots, I think we can agree.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    12. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by captjc · · Score: 1

      I liked Stargate. Independence Day was fun if you take it as a modern Scifi B-Movie like Mars Attacks. Neither of these are great, but they are not bad films.

      Then again, I completely agree you.

      --
      Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
    13. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by drachenstern · · Score: 1

      I agree and back you on this one. I think that his stories were very complex and if one filmmaker were to try and present half the stories from I, Robot in the form they were presented in the book, nobody would like the film. Thinking cars and robots on Mercury and slumbering giants with no vocal abilities and cavernous computers ... those theatrical sets would be hard to reproduce. But to grasp what it means to rely on robots to the point that nobody knows who's in control, and everyone assumes the robots are benign, and it's up to those in charge to _ensure_ that the robots are kept in check... We as a society _must_ keep a check on the constraints of our society. If we assume that someone else is always watching out for us, eventually we're going to get hosed by someone who's only looking out for himself. He'll be a dictator, and we'll have to take it, or die in the process of taking him down. Hell, Asimov never wanted his stories told all at one time, or he would've written the stories to be contiguous. He wanted us to focus on a facet at a time of the dichotomy of the reliance on machines. The best way to stress that the stories were about morals was to move the background every time.

      (Back on the sets issue: Seriously, 20+ filmlets of ~10-30 minutes each? That's a friggin miniseries. Perhaps if the Wachowski brothers wanted to attack it...)

      But by the same token, I'm curious how anyone can build up the character appeal and the emotional attachment to bring out the _problems_ of the Foundation novellas in 90 minutes. And mix in the running shooting and flying that everyone will expect.

      What should be more fun is Prelude to Foundation. That's damn near a miniseries by itself. "The Flight"!

      So ... do you think Asimov was onto something with his Psychohistory, or do you think he's just a damned masterful storyteller? I have to think that his idea of mob blindness and the thought that reliance on a single common outcome implies that the mob will force itself in that direction was a valid idea; that he was almost spot-on in his vision.

      --
      2^3 * 31 * 647
    14. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Arthur+Grumbine · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How would you propose one could possibly experience the awesome exhibition of the unique ability of The Mule without 3D?! Luddite!!

      --
      Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
    15. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Arthur+Grumbine · · Score: 1

      How, exactly, do you propose to have the audience experience the awesome and unique power of The Mule without 3D?! Luddite!!

      --
      Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
    16. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by DangerFace · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From the wiki:

      The film that was ultimately made originally had no connections with Asimov, originating as a screenplay written in 1995 by Jeff Vintar, entitled Hardwired. That script was an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery that took place entirely at the scene of a crime, with one lone human character, FBI agent Del Spooner, investigating the killing of a reclusive scientist named Dr. Hogenmiller, and interrogating a cast of machine suspects that included Sonny the robot, HECTOR the supercomputer with a perpetual yellow smiley face, the dead Doctor Hogenmiller's hologram, plus several other examples of artificial intelligence... Jeff Vintar... incorporated the Three Laws of Robotics, and replaced the character of Flynn with Susan Calvin, when the studio decided to use the name "I, Robot"

      I was genuinely angry after watching that film, mainly because the only copy of I, Robot I could get my hands on now had Will Smith on the cover.

      No, wait, it was mainly because the plots of the two works shared not one single point of congruence. And the film mainly focused on badassery and leaping around, which is true to Asimov's style - his trademark was always providing very little substance and just having huge set-piece battles between the protagonist and every other being in the story.

      No, wait. What really, really got to me was that the name I, Robot was used on some crappy spec script that had to be reimagined multiple times to make it sufficiently commercial and then had Asimov's ideas vaguely pinned on as a clear afterthought in order to give it some geek cred, instead of a tender reimagining of the lovingly crafted tales of understated strife that his works so deserve.

    17. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by rleibman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I deeply disliked I Robot as. But let it be said that Robyn Asimov, who I assume knew her dad pretty well, commented that the dear Doctor would have liked the movie, because he thought that the only way his cerebral stories could make it to the screen was as complete rewrites (story here)

    18. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Thinboy00 · · Score: 4, Informative

      IIRC, Asimov was fundamentally opposed to the notion of "technology revolting against its 'owners' (i.e. humans)", particularly w.r.t. strong AI. He felt it was a cliché.

      --
      $ make available
    19. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by catd77 · · Score: 1

      Oh boy, at least they hopefully won't botch the amazing 3D effects...I hope...never mind... I give up. I'm probably not going to see this movie. I didn't like I Robot and I won't like this.

    20. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Korin43 · · Score: 1

      If the directory of I, Robot didn't want people complaining that it was nothing like the book, they shouldn't have named it "I, Robot".

    21. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by queequeg1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree. Asimov had some awesome story lines and ideas, which is why I love the Foundation series. But a lot of the prose he uses to implement his ideas is just not very good. I had to wince almost every time Arkady had a line of dialogue. I think this is the primary curse of being a fan of science fiction literature: great ideas with poor writing. But I'll keep reading the stuff anyway.

    22. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by flyneye · · Score: 1

      Lol, Siskel and Ebert have left the building.

      --
      *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
    23. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by rleibman · · Score: 1

      Please, remember the time the stories were written! Asimov started writing it in 1942, he was 22, and he wrote it for pulp magazines. So, the dialog is a bit campy, but you have to put it in context.

    24. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by mustafap · · Score: 2, Insightful

      >This is why I prefer never to have read a book before seeing a film adaptation.

      Try reading books and ignoring the film. You'll find the pictures are better.

      --
      Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
    25. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      That's the big problem - if a movie is presenting itself as based on existing subject matter you can't really judge it on its own. A different title and "I Robot" would have been an interesting movie. But with that title you can't help but be struck by the dissimilarities and will wonder if it was just meant to be marketed to people who haven't read the books. The title is what makes the movie into a poseur when it could have just tried to stand up on its own merits. There's also the bait-and-switch aspect.

      (same thing with Mission Impossible movies - I can't help but view them as travesties, even though they'd probably be above average action thrillers if only they had different names)

    26. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by westlake · · Score: 1

      Sure, there's a lot more running around and shooting and Will Smith being a badass in the film than there is in the book, but there's some definite common threads, too. I'm beginning to think that people who claim the book and film of I, Robot have nothing in common simply don't have a very strong grasp on what Asimov actually wrote.

      I still cringe when I hear a robot being called "boy" in his early stories.

      The positonic Stepin Fetchit.

      The Foundation Trilogy is an adolescent - intellectual's - fantasy of backstage manipulation and control that plays out on the grandest of scales. "But who guards the guards?"

      I was always far distant from Heinlein in many ways. But his "Future History" seemed fully alive and human.

    27. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Toonol · · Score: 1

      Good call on Cameron's part.

    28. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then why not make an entertaining movie that looks exactly the same but with a different title? Why take an intelligent book and dumb it down instead of just starting dumb and meeting expectations?

    29. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by wiredlogic · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's all well and good except for the fact that the screenplay "Hardwired" was not written as an adaptation of Asimov's work. The title and three laws were just grafted on to pull in more ticket sales.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    30. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by straponego · · Score: 1

      Great; fine. Nothing wrong with that. Just don't market it by stealing the name, and nothing else, from something that only matters to people who read. Because that's sort of-- no, that is absolutely-- lying.

      And probably counterproductive! How many people who don't read SF (or anything, really) will say "Hmm, Ow My Balls, or... Asimov? I GOTTA SEE THAT!" And how many of the people who are familiar with SF will appreciate an obvious bastardization? Because bastardizers don't come more obvious than Roland Emmerich.

        (Though prior to this, he has only dumbed down hoary SF cliches, not specific works).

    31. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Tumbleweed · · Score: 1

      Let's not be hasty here. Emmerich has done a lot of movies, some of them have to be good.
      *takes a quick stroll over to IMDB*
      Well, shit. Guess we're boned, eh?

      Um...Stargate? Moon 44?

      I thought Independence Day was stupid, yeah, but it was _fun_, as was Day After Tomorrow and his version of Godzilla was fun, too (though obviously it had big problems).

    32. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by xrobertcmx · · Score: 1

      I did like Moon 44.

    33. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by dpilot · · Score: 1

      Makes me think a little of "Snow Crash" and some of his Stephenson's other books. Some of it was poor, some cheesy, but he threw so many great ideas at you so fast that you just didn't care about the bad parts, because the good parts were so much fun.

      Stephenson's books were just plain fun, though once I saw the names "Shaftoe" and "Waterhouse" turning up in "The Baroque Cycle" I just skipped the whole series. Another just plain fun book, for some of the same reasons, was "The Algebraist" by Iaian Banks. (of Culture fame)

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    34. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by adonoman · · Score: 3, Informative

      Except that Asimov never portrayed the zeroth law as a good thing - just an inevitable outcome of the three laws placed in robots with 20,000+ year lifespans and telepathy. The whole point of the Foundation series was to debate whether it's better for man to stagnate under the micromanaged control of the robots, or to start off on their own and face greater risks. In later books after the original trilogy, the decision is made explicitly against robot management of humanity, and for a galactic telepathic communal consciousness.

    35. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ClosedSource · · Score: 1

      You're absolutely correct. The movie was anti-Asimov at its very core.

    36. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ijakings · · Score: 1

      This is the same roland emmerich that gave us Stargate. The idea from which spawned one of the longest running sci fi shows to exist today. Possibly the longest running.

    37. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

      It even sort of implied the Zeroeth Law when the head AI decided that hurting some humans was okay, as long as it was for the greater good. The themes were there, not explored in depth but definitely present. The one I just mentioned was the part of the movie that made me feel most like I was watching something in the spirit of the book.

      So yeah, it does have something in common with the book. Nevertheless, it's not a very good movie.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    38. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by SilverJets · · Score: 1

      Oh, that's because Hollywood is completely and utterly out of original ideas and has been for some time now.

    39. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by OldSoldier · · Score: 1

      The same Roland Emmerich that wrote the script for Independence Day?

      That's the writing we have to look forward to? And the guy who wrote that is directing?

      *curls up into fetal position*

      Name a science fiction book that was successfully translated into a movie. I'm having a hard time. They are either like you say above or... too close to the story to completely fail in translating it into a movie (eg Dune). Note, I'm talking SCIENCE FICTION. The Harry Potter movies are entertaining and faithful to the book, but not SF. Is there some problem surrounding SF that prevents a book-to-movie treatment from ever being done successfully?

      Ok... perhaps 2001 was a good translation. But if you watch it today it will be too slowly paced for modern audiences.

      I think you've stumbled across a real problem here and... suddenly I'm not really that interested in ever seeing any of my fav SF books turned into movies. Sigh.

    40. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by biryokumaru · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The laws in the movie were interpreted drastically differently than in the book. I would have to say that they do not have the laws in common.

      --
      When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
    41. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ultracool · · Score: 2, Funny

      I thought ID4 was awesome when I saw it. But then I was also 12 at the time...

    42. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Teancum · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is unfortunate that I don't have any mod points right now. I couldn't agree more.... I, Robot was an absolutely hideous movie compared to the book. It completely missed the point of the book and certainly didn't really explore the concepts of the laws of robotics in more than simply a superficial fashion.

      Of the other movies in his resume, the other Roland Emmerich films also give me the shudders to think of how bad they could be. Heck, I think it would be an improvement for some of those films to have Jar Jar Binks come walking into the scene with some singing Wookies.... if you know what I mean from the George Lucas films.

      I sort of enjoyed Independence Day.... provided I put my brain into neutral and was under a buzz from some adult beverages. More of that stuff helps, I should note. I don't even have a desire to watch 2012, and criticized the trailer to no end on Hulu when I saw that piece of tripe for the first time. Day After Tomorrow? Please, give me a break. That was even worse than the others.

      I love the foundation books, and it disappoints me to no end that they've given such a treasure to a hack like Emmerich. It will more than likely be a horrible movie, sort of how the Starship Troopers ended up being filmed by a very much non-fan of the author or book. I presume it will include Hari Seldon and talk about Trantor to some extent. I sure hope that he at least looks at the feel of Coruscant from the later Star Wars trilogy (episodes I-III) to at least sort of present this massive planet as a city feel in the distant future which is a galactic capital. Asimov explained in one of the books that Trantor had at least a dozen planets tasked to it just for food production to feed the citizens on Trantor, with an incredible amount of interstellar commerce happening just to maintain the status quo of the planet.

      Somehow I think all of that is going to be glossed over or even ignored. And that is just the initial setting of the book. The Psionic mental manipulations that happen in the books should be even more interesting to try and capture on film, and it would take a genius to pull that off. I don't think Emmerich is going to be the one to make that happen either.

      All I can hope is that in the distant future (20-40 years from now) some other brave director actually reads these books and decides to "re-imagine" the books to do them justice. Sort of how Peter Jackson finally figured out how to do the Lord of the Rings in a way that worked. Emmerich isn't that person.

    43. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by hardburn · · Score: 2, Informative

      By the sounds of it, the original script would have made a nice little indy film. I want to watch that movie.

      --
      Not a typewriter
    44. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ozmanjusri · · Score: 1
      Perhaps you are purposefully disregarding the fact that Roland's target audience is simply.. not you?

      Not so much purposefully, more with a sense of outrage that something I value will be parodied in the worst possible way.

      Though Emmerich, COULD make the movie of some benefit to people like me. All he needs to do is hook a generator to the longitudinal axis of old Isaac's coffin and let us run our reading lights from it.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    45. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And the themes: The three laws; the ways in which these laws can be, unexpectedly, harmful (the point of about half of the stories in the book)

      The reason Asimov's robot stories are so famous is because he did not write 'robot as the monster' stories. His robots were machines, and broke down like machines. They did not go havok or turn on their creators. They had weird, unpredictable bugs that resulted in unexpected behavior, but did not violate their core concepts. His robots were safe: 'Made so.'

      Once he had that fully established, he played with it a bit in no more than a couple of stories, because he was too good an author to not do so. But even then, there was never a robot 'menace', or robots running around murdering people.

      Robots running haywire and trying to supplant the human race is exactly what Asimov was known for not doing. Making a movie where that's the plot and putting Asimov's name on it is like doing a movie about Lord of the Rings - and having Saruon as a misunderstood rebel, who's really all right underneath.

      --
      'Sensible' is a curse word.
    46. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Dun+Malg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's has to be a lot of Asimov in the movie. Or else why take the trouble of licensing the work?

      My take on it is that the producer told the writer something like this:
      "The bad news is that your script is clearly a horrible, misguided mimicry of Asimov. The good news is that Will Smith likes it, and we have the rights to I, Robot, so it doesn't actually matter."

      Who am I kidding? No producer is that intelligent.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    47. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1

      Hopping down the beach on one hand, chased by goons.... IN AMAZING 3D!!!!!!

      (shudder)

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    48. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Teancum · · Score: 2, Informative

      It was Roland Emmerich himself that said he had nothing to do with the Stargate TV series, and in fact was quite offended with the direction that it took. If you listen to the director's commentary on the Stargate movie DVD disc, his contempt for the TV series is nearly total. Since he himself ignored the TV series and wanted to distance himself from that series and its producers (including Richard Dean Anderson... who became an executive producer on the show)... I say that we do him the favor and not give Roland Emmerich any credit for that series either and certainly not the longevity of that series especially.

      I certainly think the TV series was a major improvement over the original movie... something that doesn't usually happen in such a transition.

    49. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1

      Possibly the longest running.

      No. Doctor Who.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    50. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Modern+Primate · · Score: 1

      Yes, yes. But nothing, NOTHING, compares to the heinous of act of giving fucking Ben "Frat Boy" Asslick the lead role in Phillip Dick's Paycheck. Or even putting Ahnuld in any of the other movies based on his stories. Asimov deserves no better than Dick.

    51. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Teancum · · Score: 1

      I can name one "science fiction book" that not only was successfully translated into a move, but was a HUGE improvement over the content of the original book:

      Contact, starring Jodi Foster, produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis.

      Seriously, if you have ever made the mistake of reading the original prose by Carl Sagan, you would have to agree with me. The book was one of the top 10 worst books ever written and mass published. Even the plot lines in the original book were horrible and somehow Robert Zemeckis pulled out the best ideas and grafted in a genuine love of all things science fiction with what must have been a much better writer when the screenplay was finally written. Heck, the plot details are even better in the movie.

      I loved the movie, hated the book, and am glad that I read the book well after seeing the movie for the first time. The whole business of searching the digits of the number pi for cryptic clues from the aliens is something that I'm glad was never put into the movie at all. I suppose I should give some credit to Carl Sagan for at least coming up with introducing the idea of a successful SETI project, but that was what I think is the only significant contribution made by the original author. Even that, unfortunately, was not really an original idea.

      I am looking forward to the next re-make of Dune as a movie, as it looks like that may finally do Frank Herbert's book some justice. The David Lynch version does have some significant problems, even though when viewed independently from the book it is an OK movie.

    52. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by koreaman · · Score: 1

      Solution: Never watch a movie whose book you've already read, and vice versa.

    53. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by feepness · · Score: 1

      I'm curious why the intense dislike for I, Robot. I read and loved the books as well, but it would have been difficult to make a movie out of them.

      The only thing I disliked was the robot arm on Smith. Other than that they did it fairly well, even the flawed logic of pushing the three laws too far.

      It wasn't great, but it was better than I expected.

    54. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Ozymandias_KoK · · Score: 1

      Yes, but ID4 was simply an action movie, and Foundation is about a lot of thinkin' and such. That leaves out the example of story raping -- consider if the movie that we watched as ID4 had actually been called something else, like say...Footfall. And maybe you've heard what happened with Starship Troopers?

    55. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ppanon · · Score: 1

      And where industrialism wins the day against the big bad environmentalists.

      --
      Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
    56. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Vahokif · · Score: 1

      I seem to remember the Zeroth law is referred to as well: the big bad AI thinks humanity is more valuable than individual humans. I think it was a pretty good movie overall, just not exactly Asimov.

    57. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you think 2001 is too slowly paced for modern audiences, I give you the original Solaris as filmed by Tarkovski. And, of course, Stalker. 2001 Both are INCREDIBLY slow, Stalker comes without any special effects and is burdened by heavy symbolism - a great film, though. In my personal universe, Lem and the Strugatzki brothers are the greatest SF writers - and they found their congenial filmmaker in Tarkovski. It is possible to turn great SF into great movies. Perhaps not in Hollywood, though...

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    58. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ultranova · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's the writing we have to look forward to? And the guy who wrote that is directing?

      Daneel: "I can't harm humans."
      Villain: "Gee, that's too bad, isn't it?"
      Villain turns and starts walking away.
      Daneel: "Ah, screw it."
      Daneel runs up to the villain, rips out his arms and beats him to death with them.
      Daneel (still perfectly calmly): "This is the Zeroeth Rule, bitch."

      Seriously, the other movies were all action spectacles. Foundation is not, it's a political/psychological story that spans centuries, with some psychics thrown in for whatever reason. Turning it into a movie is not going to work; but I suppose they could simply make a war movie about, say, the Four Kingdoms trying to conquer Foundation.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    59. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by tzot · · Score: 1

      I Robot is a pretty decent film, and is true to a lot of Asimov's themes[BZZT]

      Hold it right there. Susan Calvin (which was hot in the movie!) holding a machine gun; sure, she held some kind of weapon in 'Robot Dreams' (part of the movie story, not 'I, Robot' collection) but under very different circumstances. Locating the Nestor (or whatever it was called in the movie) by starting to shoot the expensive robots (which should be the desperate solution), instead of outwitting it. Should I compare Will Smith's character and Elijah Baley as cops? I think not.

      Tragic. I am too bored to go on about describing the superficial resemblance between the movie script and Asimov's themes.

      The movie had a hero, quite content with himself, with whom supposedly the (average) audience could identify. Asimov's stories had heroes that could improve the audience if used as examples; those heroes were flawed, but nevertheless thinking and wishing to improve.

      --
      I speak England very best
    60. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Making a movie where that's the plot and putting Asimov's name on it is like doing a movie about Lord of the Rings - and having Saruon as a misunderstood rebel, who's really all right underneath.

      Why not? Alternative character interpretations are all the rage nowadays, from His Dark Materials to some more disturbing pieces of fanfiction about just how Luthien put Morgoth to sleep (hint: not by dancing)...

      Speaking of disturbing romances, just why did Galadriel keep the image of Sauron in her viewing mirror ?-)

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    61. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by grumbel · · Score: 1

      The annoying part about the movie is the "blue light == nice robot" and "red light == evil robot", thats a rather stupid way to get a point across to the audience and heavily violates the books. That aside the main problem with the movie is simply the name. It didn't start out as an adoption of "I, Robot", that name and a few scenes and concepts got retrofitted into a completly different story later on, so of course fans of the book won't be all that happy with it.

      Ignore the name and you end up with what is a pretty decent Sci-Fi movie, that actually scratches some interesting topics along the way. The ending still feels rather simplistic and primitive, so it is by no means a perfect movie, but a good bit better then many other movies that call themselves "Sci-Fi".

    62. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Homburg · · Score: 1

      Asimov in the later Foundation series had the robots take the First Law to extremes and let it justify micromanaging humanity for its own good.

      Well, sort of. But in the later robot novels, the robots use this micromanagement to favor of the non-robot society of the Settlers, in the process destroying the robot-based society of the Spacers. In these books, Asimov does portray human dependence on robots as a bad thing, although in a subtler way than the film does.

    63. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Grygus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      are you yet another nerd raging at some book/comic not being adapted to film in a way that matches his wet dreams? *yawn*

      I realize you're mostly trolling here, but a lot of people never stop to think about why fans are so upset when their favorite stories are misrepresented. I don't believe it's mostly a selfish reaction, but more the simple human desire to share positive experiences. When you hear a funny joke, you tell other people the joke so that they can enjoy it, too. If you hear someone else telling the joke in such a way as to render it unfunny, this is irksome because they are both wasting an opportunity to share a good joke and making the correct joke itself less effective since it's been ruined. I think a poorly adapted movie is engendering much the same hostility as someone who mangles a good joke, and for much the same reasons.

    64. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by logixoul · · Score: 1

      The Foundation Trilogy is an adolescent - intellectual's - fantasy of backstage manipulation and control that plays out on the grandest of scales. "But who guards the guards?"

      Hi, what you said bothers me because I can't quite understand it.

      Adolescent? Intellectual? Hmm? Could you explain?

    65. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by AlXtreme · · Score: 1

      Isn't the whole idea of the Robot/Baley-series that the three laws _can_ be interpreted drastically different?

      Even though the story was changed significantly I don't see why a movie must be a literal copy of a book. I enjoyed both on their own merits.

      --
      This sig is intentionally left blank
    66. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by DaveGod · · Score: 1

      Independence Day is a piss-take, though it took my second viewing to decide it was intentional.

      Try the trailer that Channel 4 played before airing the film in the UK (admittedly, their trailers often poke fun at content that isn't meant to be funny, quite skilfully pointing out that something is crap but why you'll enjoy it anyway). The SF Chronicle is the only text review of a sample from Metacritic that seems to get it.

      I think the movie failed in this respect because it is so inconsistent, the first half is standard Hollywood popcorn fare and by the time it's descended into pantomime the movie has already established itself as exactly what it then tries to mock.

    67. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by nahdude812 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Godzilla was fun, too (though obviously it had big problems).

      Isn't that the point of a Godzilla movie?

    68. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Ezubaric · · Score: 1

      Richard Mason, I think, proved conclusively that the movie and the book are just about the same; read his summary that is consistent with both the book and the movie:

      Will Smith plays a robo-phobic detective investigating the death of an eminent roboticist, whose apparent suicide jump was witnessed only by a robot. Since robots are programmed never to allow humans to come to harm, no one else thinks that the robot could have murdered the roboticist, but they are curious as to why the robot did not prevent the man's suicide.

      The robot runs away and hides in a factory with 1000 other identical-looking robots. Will Smith and robopsychologist Susan Calvin solve the problem by issuing orders to the 1000 robots and logically identifying the 1001st robot that doesn't belong.

      Susan Calvin discovers that the runaway robot had some special alterations. U.S. Robotics wants to hush up the investigation to prevent any mass fear or distrust of robots. Then some other robots start trying to kill Will Smith, in apparent contravention of their First Law programming, but he escapes by his wits.

      It transpires that a legalistic loophole in the definition of "harm a human" is allowing the robots to harm humans. Having solved the mystery, Will Smith and Susan Calvin repair the problem.

      This is the movie as it was suggested by Isaac Asimov's famous robot stories. There are basically only two problems with the movie as it is showing in theaters.


      1.      
      2. The legalistic loophole in the movie is of a low order by Asimovian standards. The legalistic loophole in a typical Asimov story is kind of the same, but only the way that an Agatha Christie mystery is kind of the same as an episode of Scooby-Doo.
             
      3. All of the passages in boldface were removed and replaced by Will Smith shoots a robot with his gun.
      --

      ----------
      I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
    69. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by janwedekind · · Score: 1

      He! You have to wait for the movie to come out before submitting your contribution to The Editing Room!

      For the uninformed. Here's an excerpt of the Avatar contribution:

      SAM and ZOE fly around for a while so that the AUDIENCE MEMBERS WEARING UNCOMFORTABLE 3D GLASSES feel they got their money’s worth.

      BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON: What the fuck? Floating mountains? How did “floating mountains” make it all the way from script to storyboard to rendering without anyone asking how mountains can float while people just walk around?

      BLUE ZOE SALDANA: The best part is that the floating mountains have waterfalls. Where is the water coming from?

      BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON: Holy shit, you’re right! I think I’m in love with you!

      SAM and ZOE have sex.

    70. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 1

      I think that his stories were very complex and if one filmmaker were to try and present half the stories from I, Robot in the form they were presented in the book, nobody would like the film.

      When this situation happens, MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T MAKE THE MOVIE! Not every book needs to be made into a movie. Not every book can be made into a movie. I still can't understand why they choose I, Robot out of all the great sci fi books available to make an action movie out of. Instead of taking a book that really has no purpose being an action movie, just find a great story that DOES and use that instead. There's plenty out there. All that time they spent mangling that story to fit their formula could have been spent polishing to perfection a different story that almost already fit.

    71. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by VernorVinge · · Score: 1

      I whole-heartedly damn Asimov's family for cashing in on his masterpiece and allowing it to be destroyed by the Hollywood machine. There is no way I Robot would have been released while he was alive. Dune was never a huge money maker, but it is one sci-fi movie that did it right.

      --
      Stay skeptical, my friends.
    72. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by VernorVinge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course it could not be completely true to the original, but it didn't have to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator! R.A. can quote her father all she wants, but it doesn't change the fact that Asimov never came across a worthy script while he was alive, and she had to wait until her inheritance before trashing it.

      --
      Stay skeptical, my friends.
    73. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ejtttje · · Score: 1

      Robots running haywire and trying to supplant the human race is exactly what Asimov was known for not doing.

      Actually, isn't there a story where a set of robots decide humans are bad at managing themselves, and thus for the greater good the robots must take control as an extension of the first law?

      Of course, in that story it's a long term plan to subvert humanity, not a sudden hostile takeover, so your point stands on that regard and the whole "killer robots" coming after Spooner definitely did bother me in the movie.

    74. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by ink · · Score: 1

      Once he had that fully established, he played with it a bit in no more than a couple of stories, because he was too good an author to not do so. But even then, there was never a robot 'menace', or robots running around murdering people.

      Except for that whole part about irradiating Earth to kill the homeworld, eh? The "zeroth law" allowed Giskard and Daneel to destroy a whole planet, and to set in motion the Foundation.

      --
      The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
    75. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Vyse+of+Arcadia · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because I suspect a large percentage of people who have read the books will see the movie just to see how terrible it is. Those are sales they wouldn't have if they started dumb.

    76. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by biryokumaru · · Score: 1

      A better example are the films Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 which both make it onto the IMDB "worst movies" list. In fact, Superbabies is #1.

      --
      When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
    77. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      By the sounds of it, the original script would have made a nice little indy film.

      Or at least a decent Outer Limits episode.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    78. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 1

      Oh, you could probably make a good movie of it, with a good cast and scriptwriter.

      But it's not Lord of the Rings as Tolkien wrote it, it's a (subtly) different story. If you sell it as an 'alternate interpretation', I have no problems with it. If you try to pretend it's the original, well, be glad we have laws against physical attacks.

      --
      'Sensible' is a curse word.
    79. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by St.Creed · · Score: 1

      Me too. Too bad it all went downhill from there with Emmerich, in terms of creativity in the plotlines.

      --
      Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
    80. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by VJ42 · · Score: 1

      Possibly the longest running.

      No. Doctor Who.

      Yeah, but it's worth mentioning that Stargate SG1 is the longest continuous running Sci-fi series, whilst Dr. Who has had whole decades in between series.

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
    81. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by toriver · · Score: 1

      ID4 was the first movie where I could practically SEE the checklist of "what goes into a blockbuster movie" being marked, item by item. It was so obviously manufactured to please a large cross-section of focus groups, with the right amounts of miniority actors, humor, drama, action, effects, one-liners, romance etc. - not because it suited the story, but because it suited the target markets.

      But I was not 12 at the time.

    82. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      As far as mindless big budget entertainment goes, I'll take Emmerich over Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer (esp. when paired). Just immagine any movie by Emmerich remade by those guys.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    83. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by physburn · · Score: 1
      Of course you know that there weren't any robots in the orignal foundation trilogy, which the two final books making foundation a quintet explaining why. So there better not be any robots in Roland's version, but somehow I think Daniel and Gascardhttp will probably end up in the movies, just because kids like robots. Sigh, I expect great special effects and the complete loss of maxims like 'war is the last option of the incompendent politian'.

      ---

      Science Fiction Books Feed @

    84. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      the fact that Asimov never came across a worthy script while he was alive,

      On what, exactly, do you base that comment on?

      It sure better not be "because they never made any movies of his books" because in a business so full of egos and bizarro complicated licensing, failure to make a movie or even acquire the rights to make a movie doesn't mean squat.

      For example, Harlan Ellison actually did write a screen play back in the late 70's / early 80's. It was even published in the 90's as I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay. According to the forward, Asimov was very happy with the script.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    85. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by drachenstern · · Score: 1

      I agree that these filmmakers shouldn't be making the movies. However, maybe it's fair to say that the films shouldn't be made for the masses, but not "don't make the movie". It's fair for the handful who know the stories to have the films. After watching all the soap operas I have in my life (not nearly as many as have been made) and after having discussed them with the ones purposely watching them, I think geeks are due something reasonable to fill our movie cases too!

      But I agree with your premise.

      --
      2^3 * 31 * 647
    86. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by VeNoM0619 · · Score: 1

      In case you enjoyed the movie enough, and want something more (perhaps intellectual)?

      Not saying books are better or worse than the movies though.

      --
      Disclaimer: I am not god.
      We may not be created equal
      But we can be treated equal.
    87. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Painted · · Score: 1

      What? Dr. Who (Original Series) lasted 28 seasons, the new series is entering it's 5th. Stargate had a 10 season run, and it's spinoffs/sequels had 5, 1, and 1 season. So being exceedingly lenient towards calling 4 series a single entity, you're talking about 17 seasons. By that same logic, you could add Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adfentures to Dr. Who, which would bring it's total to 39 seasons.

      --
      http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
    88. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by Thuktun · · Score: 1

      [...] there was never a robot 'menace', or robots running around murdering people.

      Aside from the "Zeroth Law" mentioned by others, "Little Lost Robot", part of the I, Robot collection, features a robot trying to kill a human because of some unintended consequences surrounding that robot's unique modification of the First Law.

    89. Re:Oh My God, THE Roland Emmerich?! by VJ42 · · Score: 1

      I was talking about SG1 only; my mistake was that I hadn't realised the original Dr. Who had lasted so long continiously. I remember there being discussion around season 10 of SG1 of it now being the longest running Sci-fi series. Obviously it wasn't and I now stand corrected.

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
  2. 3D format already available by tivoKlr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it's that hard to comprehend how to wrangle this story onto a screen, perhaps it's best left as a book?

    --
    Ocean is land, covered with water.
    1. Re:3D format already available by Mike+Buddha · · Score: 1

      That's why they need 3D. It's the only way you can cram that much boring bad writing up on the screen.

      --
      by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
    2. Re:3D format already available by John+Hasler · · Score: 1, Redundant

      Don't worry. The story will be left as a book. What gets made into a movie will have no connection with Asimov's work other than the title.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    3. Re:3D format already available by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

      He meant to be able to film it from varying camera angles in the real world, I'm sure he already has scenes in mind from the books that would be impossible to shoot in real life.

    4. Re:3D format already available by spun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bad writing? Hardly. Asimov is not to everyone's taste. His writing is for thoughtful people interested in character motivations and dialogue, not fans of space opera shoot-'em-up action. Which means his books don't generally make good movies unless you completely rewrite them.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  3. Great Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I was 13 I came down with a pretty bad case of strep throat. I was stuck at home and feeling pretty miserable. My mother did something a bit unusual, she stopped into a local used book store that I frequented quite a bit and picked up a Foundation Trilogy boxed set from the '60s. (This was the early '80s) I still bought a lot of books based on the cover back then and I don't know that I would have picked these up at the time. But she brought them home (along with a copy of Watership Down I think) and I dove into them. One of the best gifts my mother ever gave me. I fell in love with them, still have them and re-read them every so often.
     
    I never could get into the newer books quite as much as those first three. They hold a very special place in my library. Hopefully down the road my kids will enjoy them as much as I did.
     
    As for film adaptaptions, like most avid readers I think I will see it but wont expect much. I never expect film or tv to be as 'good' as a book because I like books more. I don't usually get too upset unless someone murders a book I love, which fortunately doesn't happen too often. But it does happen. Of course the, "It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real." quote doesn't inspire confidence. Anyone who says that about Foundation hasn't read it.

    1. Re:Great Books by drachenstern · · Score: 1

      You are aware then that in his later years he tied all his universes together, right? It ends with Robots + Foundation going places that weren't evident at the beginning of either. And if you take it with the one story about the ACs and the people asking "what will happen after the stars are dead" then it's like he's got a meta meta story ... interesting but I don't know if that was intended.

      Unfortunately he wasn't able by himself to finalize the series, so after he passed the estate asked three authors (very excellent authors) to finish the series off his notes, and I think they did an admirable job (if losing his style and voice every so often on the way).

      Just saying, definitely worth the read.

      --
      2^3 * 31 * 647
    2. Re:Great Books by Tapewolf · · Score: 1

      You are aware then that in his later years he tied all his universes together, right?

      I think that Watership Down should be tied into the Foundation universe as well.

  4. 3D? by Chris+Lawrence · · Score: 1

    Who cares about 3D. Just try to be as faithful to the books as possible, and try to tell a really good story!

    1. Re:3D? by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      > Just try to be as faithful to the books as possible...

      This is Hollywood we are talking about here.

      > ...and try to tell a really good story!

      Again, this is _Hollywood_. You know, the people who made the Starship Troopers movie?

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  5. Hey, you forgot the best part! by spun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hacking into an alien military computer system with an Apple laptop! How could you leave THAT out?

    Funny, when I read the Foundation series, I never pictured it as a big budget action movie. I never thought it would need 3Dand whiz bang special effects. And, you know, it isn't one story, it's a whole bunch of separate stories. I'm thinking this movie will bear about as much resemblance to the books as I, Robot did to its books. That is to say, I predict they will share a similar title, and not much else.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    1. Re:Hey, you forgot the best part! by Korin43 · · Score: 1

      What I'm wondering is how they'd make them into movies at all. I mean this in the best way, but Foundation is more suited to be released in the form of a history textbook than a movie. If they drew each storyline out into an entire movie, it might work, but as one?

    2. Re:Hey, you forgot the best part! by Forge · · Score: 1

      Te proper format for "Foundation" is a TV series cross between Dr. Who, Te new BattleStar Galactica and Tales from the Cript.

      I.e. A narator wo stays constant, major caracters swaped out every few episodes, and a long main story that stretces for 3 to 7 years with little diversions in between.

      Tis is how I woud [re]do Dune as well.

      --
      --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
    3. Re:Hey, you forgot the best part! by bassman998 · · Score: 1

      I think you need to start using your 'h' key more...

    4. Re:Hey, you forgot the best part! by hazem · · Score: 1

      Or maybe a format like "I, Claudius" where there are several episodes, a few main characters and many other changing characters. It was also low budget-looking and had few special effects, and that seems to match better the events in the Foundation stories. Sure you can make it 3d, but the stories have so little action that I'm not sure I see the point.

    5. Re:Hey, you forgot the best part! by PReDiToR · · Score: 1

      Maybetheir"h"keyisbroken,likemyspacebar.

      --

      Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
  6. Doesn't bode well by Homburg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real."

    Really? I'm having trouble thinking of anything in Foundation that couldn't have been filmed using the technology available back when the stories were originally written. It's a story about ideas, not an exercise in world-building or aesthetic splendor.

    1. Re:Doesn't bode well by John+Hasler · · Score: 3, Funny

      > It's a story about ideas...

      "Ideas"? You want the guy to sprain his brain or something?

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    2. Re:Doesn't bode well by lymond01 · · Score: 1

      Totally. I don't recall much in the way of action or special effects necessary outside of maybe the Holographic effect of Hari Seldon's performances. I don't see this as a movie -- no persistent characters, not much dialogue or action. The concept of the books is neat, but it's not a sci-fi blockbuster -- it's a piece of future historical fiction. I wouldn't bother with this in a movie.

      Robots of Dawn? That could be a movie (which I think is what they based I, Robot on, very loosely, though I couldn't bring myself to watch it). That one is more of a mystery and not so much an action film.

    3. Re:Doesn't bode well by H0p313ss · · Score: 2, Funny

      > It's a story about ideas...

      "Ideas"? You want the guy to sprain his brain or something?

      How can he sprain that which does not exist?

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    4. Re:Doesn't bode well by jagapen · · Score: 1

      I'm having trouble thinking of anything in Foundation that couldn't have been filmed using the technology available back when the stories were originally written. It's a story about ideas, not an exercise in world-building or aesthetic splendor.

      One word: Trantor!

      Just imagine 3D visuals of Hari Seldon's arrival on the imperial planet at its height, and later the ruined planet inhabited by the Hamish. I've been dreaming about the possibilities for a movie vision of Trantor since CGI became widespread.

      Pity about the story, though...

    5. Re:Doesn't bode well by palpatine · · Score: 1

      That being said, regardless of what technology is used to create the setting for a film adaptation of Foundation, it would have to be considerably ground-breaking and not your average "sci-fi" look. This because Foundation is set tens of thousands of years in the future and life would need to be fundamentally different. Throughout Asimov's Robots-Empire-Foundation timeline stories are hints that the human race has evolved somewhat since then, like when the protagonist of "Pebble in the Sky" ends up in the future and they're surprised to see where he has hair growing and that he has extra teeth.

      Emmerich is just about the worst candidate (Michael Bay aside) for making a good film adaptation of Foundation, if one is even possible at all.

    6. Re:Doesn't bode well by martin-boundary · · Score: 1

      the Holographic effect of Hari Seldon's performances

      "Help me Obi Wan!" bzzt chk. "Help me Obi Wan!" bzzt chk. "Help me Obi Wan!" bzzt chk.

    7. Re:Doesn't bode well by zzyzyx · · Score: 1

      Have you seen any of his movies ? Two pages is an elaborate scenario by his standards. Remove the effects and there's nothing left.

    8. Re:Doesn't bode well by Legion303 · · Score: 1

      "Have you seen any of his movies?"

      And if you (grandparent poster) haven't, I strongly urge you not to. They fucking suck. Michael Bay looks competent by comparison.

    9. Re:Doesn't bode well by khallow · · Score: 1

      There's some stuff. There's a variety of planetary environments, massive spaceships (eg, the encirclement/blockade of the Foundation by the Empire), and its possible that they might want to give the entire movie a look that somehow hearkens back to golden age science fiction. But OTOH, it doesn't require particularly fantastic environments, aside from Trantor and the space environments (if they do some basic astronomy, there would be a massive difference in the star view from Foundation at the edge of the galaxy to Trantor at the center). Most of the decaying empire will be sunk into barbarism. The computational technology of the Second Foundation might be interesting.

      But it's not Neuromancer or Snowcrash, for example.

    10. Re:Doesn't bode well by blackraven14250 · · Score: 1

      By imagining it's sprained?

    11. Re:Doesn't bode well by Draek · · Score: 1

      There's plenty in his movies besides the special effects. Pretty much all of it is humor, though, and I'm not sure it's intentional.

      --
      No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
    12. Re:Doesn't bode well by Arthur+Grumbine · · Score: 1

      By imagining it's sprained?

      Imagining?! This is Roland Emmerich we're talking about. The first step would be to create a CG brain, in 3D...

      --
      Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
    13. Re:Doesn't bode well by daisybelle · · Score: 1

      I completely agree. I reread them only last year, and I still imagine the scenes in my head like a film from the 1940s or so. Maybe because of the 'old fellow' way the characters speak, and the super-quaint 'hi-tech' that reminds me of the Time Machine movie from way back when...

      --
      "You only get ONE LIFE." Richard Rahl, Faith of the Fallen - Terry Goodkind
  7. Don't forget by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 1

    10,000 BC(E) and the 1997 Godzilla.

    1. Re:Don't forget by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 1

      10,000 BC(E) and the 1997 Godzilla.

      I disagree. I think the R33 is the most forgettable GT-R, and the Godzilla moniker is more suited to the R32 and perhaps the R34 models.

      --
      Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
  8. Really? by LaminatorX · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I often consider whom I would choose to make a movie about thinking leaders who manage to diffuse conflicts through subtle social and economic pressures, Roland Emerich never fails to make my short list. Of course I would have thought Michael Bay or Uwe Boll to have been more ideal choices.

  9. Emmerich .. ?! by Airdorn · · Score: 1

    Uwe Boll would be proud.

  10. oh good lord by smellsofbikes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know how to film it. You take some ACTORS and you have them ACT and you point a camera at them, and then you have a movie. Asimov was a writer, not a zero-attention-span adrenaline junkie. Just about every scene in the first three Foundation books is people talking, and that's all it is, and more to the point, that's precisely why it's amazingly good. You could have the spaceships made out of cardboard cutouts being held by cute Asian girls and it would only marginally impact the flow of Asimov's story. GAH.

    --
    Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
    1. Re:oh good lord by cohensh · · Score: 1

      Just about every scene in the first three Foundation books is people talking, and that's all it is, and more to the point, that's precisely why it's amazingly good.

      I totally agree that Foundation is good for this reason, as well as some of my favorite movies are good for this reason. I always say my favorite movies are the ones where nothing's happening but everyone's talking. However, I feel like I'm in the minority and a true interpretation of Foundation would be boring to the masses. After all, movies are made for the profit not the story.

    2. Re:oh good lord by SuperMonkeyCube · · Score: 1
      OK, so we don't think that Emmerich can do a dialogue-driven film. The internet puts up a big stink, and nothing happens. Emmerich is just one of the many ways to profitable film making. Of course, he's in the same camp as Cameron. Spend Big, win Big.

      There are plenty of directors who are good at doing dialogue-driven films - Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Sam Mendes, Kerry Conran's one movie, and M. Night Shyamalan come to mind. All have worked with both small and big budgets. I'm sure most of the /. crowd could rattle off a few favorites that I didn't mention. As a matter of fact, with the dialogue being so important, perhaps the CG thing isn't too crazy. Let the actors rehearse the crap out of the lines and get it good and shoot it on green screen in a warehouse. No location shooting, no set building, just worry about blocking, acting, costumes and props. If you can keep the budget reasonable, and it doesn't suck, then it could make a profit. The down side is that other than M. Night, none of the directors in this bracket have ever cracked the top twenty in profits. We'll call this the "Craftsmanship on a Budget, win moderate" group. It's not they're losing money, it's just that it's not making enough money for the WSJ to take notice.

      Of course, there's always the Roger Corman way. Granted, he wouldn't direct it these days, but he's still a proven producer.

      What - you were hoping for Sam Raimi?

    3. Re:oh good lord by ErikTheRed · · Score: 2, Funny

      The Foundation Series - Directed by Quentin Tarantino. "I've got your psychohistory right here. It's the one that says 'Bad Motherfucker.'"

      Seriously, it'd be several orders of magnitude better than what Emmerich will excrete.

      --

      Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
    4. Re:oh good lord by buckeyeguy · · Score: 1

      Reading through this thread, I expected to see many inappropriate directors mentioned, but for god sakes, Kevin Smith? What would he do, film the entire 3-book series from one camera angle? And what parts would Ben Affleck and Jason Lee play? Smith himself as Hari Seldon, stoically delivering messages from beyond... Jay would have to be the Mule, of course, willing entire planets to give him more chronic blunts and such. Hmm, come to think of it, could be worse.

      --
      I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
    5. Re:oh good lord by SuperMonkeyCube · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's my point, and taken from the parent about the profit motive. While I don't think Kevin Smith is a great director for "Foundation" specifically, he's still capable of turning a profit with dialogue-driven material.

    6. Re:oh good lord by SuperMonkeyCube · · Score: 2, Funny
      The wife had a good laugh w/ that one. She suggested:

      "Is there a sign out there that says 'Dead Robot Storage'? Is there?"

    7. Re:oh good lord by smellsofbikes · · Score: 1
      You're entirely right: movies are made for the profit not the story. That's fine and as it should be. But in that case, why bother calling your movie "Foundation"? Why not call it "Wham Blam Space Opera In 3D (with girls with big breasts but not too many to make it family-unfriendly)"?

      There isn't any point in making Foundation as an action movie, because it *isn't* an action story. By the time they finish surgically removing an action movie from the dead corpse that was a good dialog-driven story, there's nothing left of the story.

      The only reason to call it "Foundation" is to attract people who liked the book, and they're going to be pissed off, so it's just stupid.

      --
      Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
    8. Re:oh good lord by LaminatorX · · Score: 1

      Hober Mallow's wallet said "Bad Motherfucker" on it, and was powered by a tiny nuclear pellet.

    9. Re:oh good lord by Teancum · · Score: 1

      Now if Quentin Tarantino were to take over this film.... it might just be something I would love to watch. Peter Jackson might even do a pretty good job, as might Leonard Nemoy (he does stuff other than Spock, I should note).

      Emmerich doing this seems like a major disaster to me. Excretions might be the proper term here too..... good one there!

    10. Re:oh good lord by Teancum · · Score: 1

      I know how to film it. You take some ACTORS and you have them ACT and you point a camera at them, and then you have a movie.

      This is assuming that anybody in Hollywood (or what is left of Hollywood) can actually act their way out of a paper bag. There are some actors that I think know their craft and do a pretty good job of it (Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman, to give some examples... there are a few others) but most of them fall so flat that they need special effects just to cover up the deficiencies from their lack of skill.

      I'd have to agree that a minimalist set done in abstract rather than dumping millions into CGI would be just as effective. If you have ever seen a production of "Our Town", you would know what I'm talking about. Rather than trying to show the impossible, let the audience know that it isn't the set or the stunning visuals which are the point of the film.

      Unfortunately, that isn't an Emmerich style.

    11. Re:oh good lord by Ezubaric · · Score: 1

      You joke, but if you watch any of Tarantino's movies, there is always tons of dialog. There's also tons of action, but there's an emotional or logical (usually the former) reason for the action. If he did Foundation, there would be more action, sure, but we wouldn't lose Asimovian plot.

      There would also, of course, be nude scenes of Dors Venabili played Lucy Liu; I think that's a necessary evil I can handle. Excuse me ... I'll be in my bunk.

      --

      ----------
      I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
  11. Classic case of Doesn't Get It by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The Foundation trilogy is about the least SFnal SF from the standpoint of imagery. There's precious little spaceships, or future tech. It's all in the minds of the characters, and in the dialogue. This movie could have been made in 1975 and not suffered visually at all.

    --
    Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
    1. Re:Classic case of Doesn't Get It by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 1

      This movie could have been made in 1975 and not suffered visually at all

      Oh, hell, it could have been made in 1955 and not suffered visually. All you would need are some carefully painted backdrops of Trantor and some futuristic looking furniture.

    2. Re:Classic case of Doesn't Get It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Actually, Foundation could be remade as a theatre piece. Imagery is not important at all.

  12. No-o-o-o-o! by gbutler69 · · Score: 1

    Please don't ruin my beloved Foundation Series! Why would everything need to be CG? A great adaptation of these stories should focus on the dialog and characters. There should be little to no flashy action!

    --
    Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
  13. Ray Harryhausen could have done it . . . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

    Obviously, Roland Emmerich has ever seen any of his films: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Harryhausen

    . . . in fact, I still find the films with his effects better than stuff that looks "too" good . . .

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  14. 3D Math by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    Thats the only thing that i think that will have some meaning to show in 3D, dense math formulas morphing into events, if i remember well most of what happens in the movies is more chat in closed rooms than anything resembling action. Unless they take the Matrix approach for math.

  15. Veto power by John+Whitley · · Score: 1

    This is a case where I really want to "vote against" a movie project before it hits the theaters. I'd love a well-crafted realization of the Foundation books on screen, but not a movie by a Hollywood hack producing something without any vision broader than trading CG whizbang for cash. The opportunity cost of having to wait until this mess is forgotten and the rights end up in competent hands is just too damn high: it's probably a matter of waiting until the practically-endless copyright expires. Fsckers.

    There's no reason that a Foundation movie (to stay in-genre) shouldn't be at least as thought provoking as, say, Blade Runner.

    1. Re:Veto power by PinkyGigglebrain · · Score: 1

      There's no reason that a Foundation movie (to stay in-genre) shouldn't be at least as thought provoking as, say, Blade Runner.

      That is so true. And just like Blade Runner what would matter was the story and characters. The FX in Blade Runner was just to show a dis-Utopian future in the background, not to blow the audience out of there seats.

      IMNSHO, The Foundation could be a movie of Blade Runner caliber, the kind that people still talk about 20 years after release.

      Unfortunatly what we are more likely to get is another Starship Trouper type where the story and its message was thrown out to make room for CGI bugs, space ships getting blown in half and bodies hitting the window of the shuttle, ALL IN GLORIOUS 3D!!.

      If its the latter I think I'll save my money for something else.

    2. Re:Veto power by bughunter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm with you. Of all the classic SF/Fantasy series out there, The Foundation Trilogy is probably the one LEAST amenable to a screenplay.

      I mean, consider these series, just off the top of my head, in no particular order:

      - Chalker's Well of Souls series
      - Varley's Gaea Trilogy
      - Heinlein's Lazarus Long epics
      - Niven's Ringworld trilogy
      - Niven/Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand
      - Flynn's Firestar series
      - Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant or Gap Cycle
      - Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky
      - Any of Piers Anthony's tripe starting with the Tarot novels
      - Anything good by Piers Anthony up to and including the Cluster series
      - McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series
      - Morris' Silistra series

      I could go on and on and on, Philip Jose Farmer, David Drake, Alan Dean Foster, Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks...

      Anyone attempting to translate any of these series to a Cinema or Television screenplay would FAIL, for various reasons... content, scope, depth, or combinations thereof.

      But yet, I can't think of ONE that would be harder to translate to a screenplay than Asimov's Foundation series.

      So, why is that one chosen? The only thing I can think of is that it's the only one that's the property of an estate looking to commercialize a dead author's bibliography.

      And I'm not even going to honor the '3D' quotation with a comment. [shudder]

      --
      I can see the fnords!
    3. Re:Veto power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      They're choosing *Foundation* because it has a name recognition that none of those books have (not even the Future History). *Stranger in a Strange Land* and *Childhood's End*, on the other hand, do have that kind of name recognition. Hollywood wants *guaranteed* audiences.

      The fact that Foundation is IMPOSSIBLE to film won't stop anybody. I can just imagine something like this in the story meetings:

      I suppose you could combine "Foundation," "Bridle and Saddle," and "The Wedge." Salvor Hardin would become the mayor and remain the mayor to the end of the film, and you might substitute Hober Mallow for Limmar Ponyets (to have some continuity with the second film, who cares about the chronology).

      The second movie, *Foundation and Empire*, would combine "The Big and the Little" and "Dead Hand." You'd combine Devers and Hober Mallow, who eventually turns out to be Hardin's successor.

      In the third movie, "The Mule" and "Now You See It-" would make up the bulk of the third film, with "-And Now You Don't" as the climax (the scene in which the Second Foundation defuse The Mule would be two-thirds of the way through the film). Toran and Bayta would be traveling with their _daughter_ Arkady, who would befriend Magnifico and would be the heroine of the piece. The name *Second Foundation* would be a problem, since Hollywood doesn't like to "confuse" it's audiences, and the title suggests that it is the _second_ story, not the _third_ (remember that "The Madness of King George III" lost it's main character's number because the studio was worried that people wouldn't go to see it because they hadn't seen "The Madness of King George" and "The Madness of King George II"), so it would probably have to be called *Foundation III: The Other Foundation* or some such thing.

      I think I just threw up in my mouth.

  16. Re:Intelligencia complaints already available by spun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, the fact that we were all children when we first watched it explains the success of Star Wars.

    I liked Dukes of Hazard and Benny Hill back then, if that gives you any idea of the aesthetic sensibilities of the average child-geek.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  17. no no no Noh.... by McNihil · · Score: 1

    you gotta be sh***ng me. 3D will not add anything... unless he starts doing some pretty spectacular 3D visualizations regarding the Positronic brain and psycho history... which like 0.01% of the population will understand and will cause the same 0.01% say that its not correct enough.

  18. Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by McNally · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there really is a secret force out there influencing events to preserve civilization I'm counting on them to prevent this.

    1. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by Cosgrach · · Score: 1

      The trouble is that there is a secret force out there - but not to preserve civilization - only their own profits and selfish goals. So, no. They will not step in and prevent this from happening.

      --
      Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
    2. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by DreamingReal · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Don't forget, Hari Seldon's solution included the reduction of 10,000 years of barbarism to 1,000. I started counting at 2000. Only 990 years to go!

      --
      We want some answers and all that we get
      Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat

      - Ministry
    3. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Funny

      If there really is a secret force out there influencing events to preserve civilization I'm counting on them to prevent this.

      Perhaps in 10,000 years a re-screening of the movie shown to the populace forments a revolt that takes out the government of the day, all run by descendants of modern-day Hollywood...

      We suffer a little now to protect the mysterious FUTURE.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    4. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 2, Funny

      If there really is a secret force out there influencing events to preserve civilization I'm counting on them to prevent this.

      You mean you still don't know yet?

      Slashdot is Terminus. So far our Encyclopaedia Technologica has been doing pretty well... just as planned.

    5. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by Eclipse-now · · Score: 1

      This comment was marked 'insightful'? Why has my sense of humour been activated by an 'insightful' comment... oh no... what's happening to my brain?

    6. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by blackraven14250 · · Score: 1

      Since when is this force a "secret"???

    7. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by Teancum · · Score: 1

      Are you talking about this encyclopedia? Yeah, it has been doing pretty well. I really do wonder what folks 100 years from now are going to think of that effort.

      As for slashdot being Terminus.... perhaps.

    8. Re:Help us Hari Seldon, You're Our Only Hope! by elmartinos · · Score: 2, Funny

      I am most definitely sure Roland Emmerich is the Mule. Not even Seldon could have foreseen this.

  19. We're not going to like this by Johnno74 · · Score: 1

    The foundation books, while great Sci-fi, don't have a lot of action.

    I'm beting that Emmerich will "sex up" asimov's grand story with some ridiculous chase scenes and lots of action.

  20. Please! Nooooo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's going to be like a train wreck...something that one can't bear to watch, and yet one can't tear one's eyes away from.

    For example, qoting from http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=59905#:

    "On the other end, the "Foundation" is a similar problem in that you have all these short stories and then they were combined into a book and so in a way there is not one character and I spoke with the Rob and he said we have to consolidate the characters..."

    So here you have this epic story that deliberately spans the generations to show how Seldon's grand plan is being played out (ignoring all the 'other' fuondations books that sort of watered things down) and Emmerich is going to "consoldiate the characters." WTF? Lazarus Long will be taking the starring role perhaps ;-)

    Thisgs to look forward to, perhaps:

    Maybe we'll see Salvor Hardin kicking Prince Regent Wienis' teeth out in a thrilling fight scene (can't see Emmerich taking the maxim "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" on board!).

    Maybe we'll see Bel Riose blowing everything up as he closes in on Trantor. Lots of opportunity for a car chase (sorry...space battle...) scene here...

    We can watch the Mule torture Captain Han Pritcher (in close up) into submission. Imagine the fun of seeing blood trickle down from Pritcher's nose and then realise (with a shock) that a burst blood vessel in his nose actually signifies how his will has been broken.

    Maybe we'll see a bit of girl-on-girl action between Arkady Darrel and Lady Callia? In 3D!

    No. No and thrice NO, I say!

    Let's start up a "NO Foundation Film" petition!

    1. Re:Please! Nooooo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Forgot to say:

      It is possible to treat the Foundation series with respect. The BBC did it:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Trilogy_(BBC_Radio)

      Truly excellent. Get it if you can find it.

    2. Re:Please! Nooooo! by VJ42 · · Score: 1

      The BBC did it:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Trilogy_(BBC_Radio)

      Truly excellent. Get it if you can find it.

      It appears to be freely & legally available here: http://www.archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
  21. What's even worse... by AJWM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just wait until the moviegoing public decides that Trantor was just a rip-off of Star Wars' Coruscant. Or more likely, that the whole Empire is a rip-off of Star Wars.

    Just something else Lucas will have to answer for.

    --
    -- Alastair
    1. Re:What's even worse... by zach_the_lizard · · Score: 1

      That's kind of his point: most people have never heard of Asimov, let alone read any of his stories. The only real sci-fi they have seen is in the vein of Star Wars. As this movie would come out later than Star Wars, they would then think they ripped it off of Lucas.

      --
      SSC
    2. Re:What's even worse... by SilverJets · · Score: 1

      *WHOOSH* Right over your head.

  22. Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundation by Logic+Bomb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These are absolutely some of my very favorite books. But as I recall, Asimov's own foreword to the original trilogy makes the idea of a movie series seem pretty stupid. He started Foundation as a series of short stories. Years later, when a publisher was trying to persuade him to make a longer Foundation work, Asimov had to go back and re-read the material. He reports that, as he sat there reading, he kept waiting for something to happen in the story. He was right (of course): Foundation is mostly people have discussions. What kind of movie can you make out of that?

  23. Chriss Foss+ Neil Blomkamp by theolein · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Foundation Trilogy was one of the first major SF books I read, back in the late 70's. I had the trilogy with the Chris Foss covers. Those covers evoked in me a deep feeling of time and distance and that was what put me onto SF as a genre. The very first Star Wars, with the minimalist desert scenes filmed in Tunisia, also had some of that. While I enjoyed ID4 and Stargate as mindless feel good SF action films, almost everything Emmerich does is exactly the same thing, huge disasters with a strange lack of coherence between the characters shallow, happy smiling faces and the tragedy of what is happening around them.

    I am devastated that Roland Emmerich will be murdering one of my childhood icons with his facile plots. It makes me truly sad.

    I would like to see Neil Blomkamp produce and direct the trilogy. he's one of the few directors who hasn't been corrupted by the Hollywood feel-good virus and will let his hero be a loser. I would really like to be amazed again.

    1. Re:Chriss Foss+ Neil Blomkamp by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I can empathize. I remember when George Lucas murdered a childhood icon.

  24. I am looking forward to this... by oscarwumpus · · Score: 1

    ...I am looking forward to hating it. I hear you cry: "but you know nothing about it" And yet, still I avoid eating poo, without ever having tried it. Yes, I could be wrong, but I've seen 3-D ships going boom and i don't need two hours of digital space junk being thrown at me to prove the coolness of the 'new 3-D'.

  25. Emmerich? NOOOOOO! by Oyjord · · Score: 1

    Emmerich is one of the worst directors in contemporary cinema. Please, the PTB need to keep him as far away from Foundation as humanly possible.

  26. I've been waiting... by Pedrito · · Score: 1

    I was wondering how long it would take someone to come along and desecrate Foundation. Foundation was my introduction to real Sci-Fi literature. It's always held a special place in my heart. The obvious problem with Foundation as a movie is, it'd be epically boring if it's even remotely true to the book. It's just not something you can properly do as a movie.

    But, if I'm able to completely separate the movie, in my mind, from the book, then I might actually enjoy it. As corny and ridiculous as Independence Day was, I kind of enjoyed it.

  27. I can see it now... by Chicken_Kickers · · Score: 1

    brilliant but handsome Hari Seldon (played by Russel Crowe) is accused of treason and is on the run from the Galactic Empire after prophesying the fall of the Empire. We will see Trantor in all its CG glory as a copy of Coruscant which was a copy of Trantor in the first place. We will also see the decadence and corruption prevalent in the Empire through a series of melodramatic montages of oppression and bacchanal scenes. There will be thrilling CG chases and fights through out the labyrinthine corridors on Trantor. Hari Seldon will raise a rag-tag band of plucky followers but eventually, he is captured after a tense Mexican stand-off and is put on trial. There will then be nail-biting court sequences where Hari Seldon forcefully defends his prediction but all seems lost when the Establishment had already made their mind. He is sentenced to death but on his execution day, his followers sprung him from jail and they departed in exile to a far away uninhabited planet called Terminus. There will be Moses-like scenes where the colony ship they are in are chased by miles-long Imperial battlecruisers but superior technology secretly developed by Hari Seldon will save the day. They managed to destroy the pursuing battlecruisers in a BSG-esque space battle and limped on to Terminus. On landing, there will be a poignant close-up shot of Hari Seldon's face looking at the stars, followed by him vowing to set up a Foundation to save humanity. Then a dramatic seamless CG zoom out to see the planet, then the solar system, then the star clusters and then finally the whole galaxy. The end.

    1. Re:I can see it now... by spiko-carpediem · · Score: 1

      The destruction of Dahl heat sinks in 3-D will be magnificent, and imagine the endless ranks of robots in caverns under Mycogen, the chases through the tunnels, and the cute and funny native creature Seldon adopts, which later shows mysterious powers.

      Seriously: I don't think Prelude to Foundation is considered part of the trilogy, so maybe this one won't be butchered yet.

  28. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by zach_the_lizard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can get some great movies with dialog alone. I had to watch one old movie for a class in high school, and I forget its title, but it was basically a jury talking about whether a man is innocent or not. It was black and white, with no effects that people of my generation have come to expect in movies. It had no action of any sort, just talking and the tension that comes from their arguments. It was, however, an awesome film. Better than most movies nowadays.

    --
    SSC
  29. Ridley Scott, save us! by euxneks · · Score: 1

    I would love to see what Ridley Scott would do with the Foundation Universe...

    --
    in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
    1. Re:Ridley Scott, save us! by Maltheus · · Score: 1

      I dunno. He's got so much on his plate, I'm wondering if he's starting to lose his marbles. I mean, seriously, Monopoly the Movie???? I've never known an aging director to improve over time. See Lucas, Spielberg, Cameron, Stone, etc.

      However, if he's still got the stuff, I'd much rather Ridley follow through on his plans to shoot "The Forever War". That's an easy to film, hard sci-fi book that would still appeal to the masses (and even the chicks among them). Won a Hugo and Nebula award too. Of all the sci-fi books I've read, I can't think of another that's more filmable or summer blockbuster worthy. Foundation, on the other hand, is so beyond Emmerich (or even Ridley) that we're simply not going to see it get made.

    2. Re:Ridley Scott, save us! by SilverJets · · Score: 1

      I for one would rather not see Foundation get made into a movie if it is going to be the cinematic abortion that Emmerich will undoubtedly spew forth onto the screen.

  30. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by meheler · · Score: 1

    Or the original 1972 Solaris. :)

    I don't expect for a second that Emmerich will make a movie like that though. I'm just hoping I can ignore this movie entirely. I imagine it would be like watching someone turn my dead grandfather into a marionette.

    Hey, I enjoyed 2012 for what it was. But that Emmerich is going to be adapting a real sci fi? It makes me sad.

  31. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by antizeus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Were the members of the jury men? Were they angry? Were there twelve of them?

    --
    -- $SIGNATURE
  32. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by zach_the_lizard · · Score: 1

    Thanks! That's what it was: 12 Angry Men.

    --
    SSC
  33. They are just whiny geeks by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1, Insightful

    For some reason, with sci-fi in particular, you get people who seem to think that there is the One True Way(tm) that a story must be told. As such if you adapt it to a movie or something like that you have to maintain it precisely, 100% the way it was. If you change anything, you've "ruined" it. Also running along side that you get a sort of counter culture movement that says "If something is popular it can't be good." They can only like things that are out of the mainstream.

    That's what was going on here. Proyas realized, as Asimov actually had, that the stories as told in the novel wouldn't translate to the screen. There just wasn't any way to try and modify it. So rather than do that and end up with something useless, he decided to take the spirit of the novel and make a movie about it. The original stories would serve as background material, a scene and subject, not as something to be turn in to a script.

    Personally, I liked the result. It was an enjoyable movie that was accessible to non-hardcore sci-fi people. I also liked the take on the three laws, how the company had turned them in to a corporate mantra/marketing slogan which is precisely the sort of thing you see companies do.

    It is the same shit as the people who hated on the Hitchhikers movie for being different than the book, while not realizing that the book was different from teh radio series which was the original.

    1. Re:They are just whiny geeks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except you've vastly overstated the degree to which the I, Robot movie resembled the book. It wasn't even remotely the same story (unlike Hitchikers) and it certainly wasn't true to Asimov's vision.

      If you want to know why sci-fi fans, particularly hard sci-fi fans are like this I'll tell you. It's because nobody ever makes a movie that appeals to them. The issues of morality and science that they find interesting are not elements of sci-fi on screen. The only thing they have is books. And when one of those books is to be adapted they get their hopes up.

    2. Re:They are just whiny geeks by cduffy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Abso-fucking-lutely not in the spirit of the collection.

      Asimov's robots could in almost all cases harm an individual human only at the cost of their own self-destruction, if even then; being in a position to save only one of two humans would destroy them. In the case where the "zeroth law" does make its way into the original stories, the cost of violating the First Law remains severe.

      The movie did not respect Asimov's Three Laws, as originally imagined, beyond mere lip service.

    3. Re:They are just whiny geeks by hardburn · · Score: 1

      I like to complain about people who complain about every little detail not being quite right. I even think "Han Shot First" is ultimately a trivial detail (though the statement encapsulates a lot of frustration about latter-day Star Wars in general).

      But the I, Robot movie? No way. That had only a thin veil of what Asimov wrote, covering up a run of the mill action script with Will Smith acting like Will Smith. You start with the fact that Asimov was specifically trying to get away from yet another robot uprising story, which had already become a cliche in the 1940s, and it only delves away from there.

      --
      Not a typewriter
  34. A Voyage to Arcturus by kencf0618 · · Score: 1

    Suffice to say, I await a mechinima of David Lindsay's gnostic novel.

  35. Not true... by denzacar · · Score: 2, Funny

    The movie I, Robot may have been okay if it were simply a standalone film

    Sorry... can't agree on this.

    It was on TV just last night and it is BAD.
    This isn't the first time I've seen it mind you.
    First time was truly a torture - particularly cause I've just reread the Robots couple of months prior.

    Last night though, I've tried to analyze it to see if it could be made into a watchable movie with some creative editing.
    I came to conclusion that it would have to be cut down to about 1/3 of the current length.

    - Drop most action sequences. Like Will Smith running after a robot - to point out what? That he is a clueless moron?
    - Drop nearly EVERYTHING Will Smith utters during the movie (nearly all his lines are completely pointless one-liners).
    - Cut out Shia LaBeouf completely (Why the fuck is he in this movie at all? Who is his agent? Satan?), despite the urge to have him killed in a very graphic way early on in the movie.
    There is a scene where he runs through traffic.
    Just have a bus run him over.
    Make his blood and guts explode across the screen... in slow motion... pretty...
    Umm... sorry about that. Got carried away for a moment.

    - Re-dub some of the dialog so it makes sense.
    - Remove that idiotic red light all bad robots have in their chests just so we would know that they are bad now.
    - Also, drop those scenes where they are made to act like spiders or look suspicious and shifty-eyed.
    - Remove the pointless product placements.
    - Change the name of the movie. It has nearly nothing to do with the book or the stories in it - it shouldn't be called "I, Robot".

    Not exactly Maddox's 3 minute cut, more like 30-minute one.
    It wouldn't really be a good movie, or a TV episode of some SF show, like Twilight Zone or Outer Limits.
    But it would be watchable.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  36. As long as they're raping Asimov's corpse... by Legion303 · · Score: 1

    Was Uwe Boll not available?

  37. 3D BANDWAGON by sanman2 · · Score: 1
    Just because James Cameron has made an obscene pile of money with his 3D Avatar, everyone else wants to jump on the bandwagon, and announce that their upcoming movie will be made in 3D.

    Who the hell is next to jump on the 3D bandwagon?

    "... and in breaking news, Vivid Video plans to release a line of 3D porn movies..."

    1. Re:3D BANDWAGON by Raynor · · Score: 2, Interesting
      --
      "Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
  38. Re:Intelligencia complaints already available by Torodung · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I liked Dukes of Hazard and Benny Hill back then, if that gives you any idea of the aesthetic sensibilities of the average child-geek.

    I am astounded that you would put that on a public forum. ;^)

    That said, I agree with the GP. This is not going to make a good movie. An epic, 5 season TV series like Babylon V? Maybe. But "the Mule" is not going to play well in 2 1/2 hours. 3D won't cut it, movies will need to be telepathic before we can make this one.

    --
    Toro

  39. Thank you... by Radical+Moderate · · Score: 1

    I know my memory's not what it used to be, and it's been a while since I read the trilogy, but I can't see why in the hell you couldn't shoot this without CG. Wondered if I'd forgotten the part about blue 10 foot tall aliens or something.

    --
    Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
  40. Someone missed the point of the Foundation series by Torodung · · Score: 1

    Sorry. I don't buy it. Trying to do the "Foundation Trilogy" as a movie is like trying to do "The Miracle Worker" as a radio program.

    --
    Toro

  41. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by RobinEggs · · Score: 1

    Years later, when a publisher was trying to persuade him to make a longer Foundation work

    This notion set off a massive warning bell in my head. Nothing could be worse than something once finished which gets re-written into something 8 times longer, or something written specifically for length in the first place. Exhibit one: Moby Dick. Exhibit two: much of Charles Dickens. If this is true you've probably convinced me to never read Foundation, or at least to track down the original short stories rather than trudge through a novelization of a short yet clearly complete, cerebral, and influential story.

  42. Please don't **** it up, like Starship Troopers by FreeFlyer · · Score: 1

    The transformation of the BOOK Starship Troopers was to the MOVIE is what happens to a cow after its journey through fast food chain and the subsequent digestive system. Indeed, once you throw anatomical waste at people, very few will wipe it off and perform forensics to discover the real animal it originated from.

    It took me 7 years and endless recommendations to shake the Starship Troopers movie and finally read the book.

    Will the movies forever taint the Foundation series and prevent generations of young readers from knowing the brilliance of the Seldon plan? I can make educated guesses, and I sincerely hope they turn out wrong.

    A sign in a library comes to mind: "Don't judge a book by its movie."

    1. Re:Please don't **** it up, like Starship Troopers by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      And Starship Troopers was a book that lends itself to being made into a movie. I think that you could conceivably make good movies out of the Foundation series, but I doubt anyone actually will.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    2. Re:Please don't **** it up, like Starship Troopers by AfroTrance · · Score: 1

      I think Starship Troopers is a good b-grade action sci-fi, despite it not following the book at all. It's in the same league as Total Recall, in terms of quality.

  43. It could be worse by CorvisRex · · Score: 1

    It could be Ewe Boll!

  44. Words on play - play on words by postagoras · · Score: 1

    The quote is backwards, it was actually "I can't shoot this thing in real because it all has to be done in CG.'"

    The first three books would be an excellent play, which is the heart of his problem.

  45. I can just imagine it by AfroTrance · · Score: 2, Funny

    The entire story takes place over a few years. The Mule is played by a devious British actor. The protagonist, probably a middle aged guy with a dysfunctional family or a young guy after a girl, builds Terminus, defeats The Empire, defeats The Mule. The Second Foundation is a shadowy organisation who at the start appears like an enemy but helps the protagonist over the course of the movie. There will be at least three massive space battles. Hari will be played by Morgan Freeman. The scale will be reduced, as Galaxies are too big for the average person to comprehend. There will be aliens and robots, perhaps alien robots.

    1. Re:I can just imagine it by gstovall · · Score: 1

      Aliens? How will they justify that? :) Didn't the robots secretly move humanity to an alternate dimension that was devoid of other sentient species to protect humanity? Or am I mixing my story lines?

    2. Re:I can just imagine it by spiko-carpediem · · Score: 1

      Didn't the robots secretly move humanity to an alternate dimension that was devoid of other sentient species to protect humanity?

      I remember reading about that also. When we find a way back to our motherhood dimension, we will kick those alien asses!

      Oh, maybe the movie will be about the war with aliens from the other dimension, that starts with Seldon's discovery of the Psycho-historical portal, hinted to him by the Evil prime-minister who wishes to use portal's power to destroy the ancient robot masters who refused to exterminate the humanity for the good of robots, and now works undercover for thousands of years trying to bring down civilization?!
      But why call this Foundation?

  46. Sky Captain Style by AP31R0N · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i'd do this Sky Captain style. Real actors, CG environment, 50's looking gadgets. i'd do it as a TV series so you could give it the time it needs.

    --
    Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
  47. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by RoccamOccam · · Score: 1

    Kevin: . . . it was a great movie. It wasn't a good movie, but how often do you see a great movie?
    Dave: Oh, I saw a great movie last night. It was on the late show. It was-- um, uh, what was it called? It's a classic. It's uh . . . oh, I hate this. I hate it when this happens.
    Kevin: Well, what was it about?
    Dave: It's about this newspaper tycoon and he's dead, and everybody is telling stories about him, and--
    Kevin: It's Citizen Kane.
    Dave: Nnnno, that's not it. No, no - but something like that. It's uh . . .
    Kevin: Okay, who was in it?
    Dave: Orson Welles is in it. It's called . . .
    Kevin: Then this is Citizen Kane. It's Citizen Kane.
    Dave: Nnnno, that isn't it, but you're not far from it. It's uh . . .

    ...

    Kevin: Aha!! Look! Citizen Kane. It was Citizen Kane! It was Citizen Kane! IT WAS CITIZEN KANE!!

  48. Dune? by nten · · Score: 1

    I always thought Star Wars was more of a dune ripoff. Paul was born on a jungle planet, came to power on a desert planet, Luke was the reverse. Paul's grandfather was the primary antagonist. Luke I'm your father! I think that would make the analog of Fremen... the Ewoks, which doesn't exactly work, but the ewoks were pretty darn vicious for furry three foot tall insurgents. Am I full of it on this one or is it a dune ripoff?

    --
    refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
    1. Re:Dune? by AJWM · · Score: 1

      Star Wars freely stole from^W^W paid homage to everybody. C-3PO is the Maria robot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Tattooine is, as you note, Arrakis (they even had what could pass for a sandworm skeleton when the two droids are wandering the desert before being captured by Jawas), Corscant as Trantor. Heck, even the Jedi bear a passing resemblence -- in mission, if not detail -- to Christopher Anvil's Interstellar Patrol (which used advanced tech rather than The Force, and were generally more competent than the Jedi). And that borrowed from Doc Smith's Lensman series. (Indeed, there are similarities between the Lens and The Force. Maybe midichlorians are a kind of micro-Lens.)

      Actually I withdraw my correction in the first sentence. If Lucas was paying homage, he would have acknowledged it in some way. All he did was rip them off.

      --
      -- Alastair
    2. Re:Dune? by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      I kinda disagree. Tatooine is not Arrakis, it is simply north africa. Lucas did not pay homage to any prior SF in any meaningful way. He just upgraded the imagery for Percival, the fool becoming knight and savior. I don't get why Star Wars became the holy grail (haha) of geeks. Lucas was a hack from the beginning. Reading Herbert and Doc Smith into it is overinterpretation, in my opinion.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    3. Re:Dune? by Protoslo · · Score: 1
      Your thoughts are borne out by Lucas' own words to some degree (and I agree a Herbert influence doesn't even seem plausible), though he might have come by any Arthurian influence second-hand. I found this interesting reading. It appears that it is a published book now, though I read a 533 pg. pdf draft (3rd online edition) that I downloaded about 18 months ago. A pertinent quote (pg. 19-20):

      In addition to comic books, Lucas began devouring science fiction magazines such as Amazing and Astounding Tales, magazines which were the regular homes of science fiction writers like Robert Heinlein and E. E. Smith. "As a kid, I read a lot of science fiction," Lucas recalls. "But instead of reading technical hard science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov, I was interested in Harry Harrison and a fantastic, surreal approach to the genre."

      "One of my favorite things were [sic] Republic serials and things like Flash Gordon."

      Later, it is established that the rest of Lucas' borrowings are mostly from the realm of film, specifically Kurosawa. I would not really call the book a sympathetic portrayal, but the author (Michael Kaminski) goes on to contend that Star Wars is basically as original as any film, and that George Lucas' primary failing was to overly involve himself in the production of the script, an area which was never really his forte (and which he apparently did not enjoy, and found very difficult at the time he was writing the first three films). In fact, Lucas' university projects apparently included mostly documentaries and art films with little or no dialogue.

      I don't know if I would say Lucas was a hack from the beginning, but I would agree that wholeheartedly that he had/has absolutely no interest in science fiction except insofar as he finds the future a compelling setting. He exists in...a galaxy far, far away from Asimov's.

    4. Re:Dune? by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      Him being a hack from the beginning might have been a bit over the top. I am just getting fed up with the sheer height of the pedestal on which the original trilogy is placed in geek circles, so I tend to overreact a bit. The Kurosawa angle is interesting, and I agree that the influence can be seen. Thanks for the link - I'll have a look at it when I find some time.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    5. Re:Dune? by npsimons · · Score: 1

      Star Wars freely stole from^W^W paid homage to everybody. C-3PO is the Maria robot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Tattooine is, as you note, Arrakis (they even had what could pass for a sandworm skeleton when the two droids are wandering the desert before being captured by Jawas), Corscant as Trantor. Heck, even the Jedi bear a passing resemblence -- in mission, if not detail -- to Christopher Anvil's Interstellar Patrol (which used advanced tech rather than The Force, and were generally more competent than the Jedi). And that borrowed from Doc Smith's Lensman series. (Indeed, there are similarities between the Lens and The Force. Maybe midichlorians are a kind of micro-Lens.)

      You forgot "Hidden Fortress" and Joseph Campbell.

  49. Do it all in Seldon's imagination by gznork26 · · Score: 1

    About the only way I can imagine getting all of those flashy CGI battle scenes into Asimov's storyline is to show Seldon's fears. Start with him working out the details that run through a Crisis period, and have the datavis melt into his nightmare scenario of what would happen if he didn't head it off in time. That way, you get all the destruction Emmerich wants, and then you pan back out through the datavis and onto Seldon's face. He then crafts the countermove. Then we switch up to that future, and we see the events come together to the crisis moment, but then his recording turns on and warns everyone off. Rinse and rep[eat. End with a cliffhanger, the Mule trashing his programmed fix. ...and if you liked that, check out "Burnout Fever", now available on Kindle.

  50. For real? by SEWilco · · Score: 1

    He doesn't know how to shoot it for real? Just have one of the assistants apply for a filming permit on Trantor.

  51. probably refering to prelude to the foundation by chichilalescu · · Score: 1

    I assume that's what they're trying to film. It could work, but it doesn't really make sense. They're only purpose is to make money.
    Also Foundation's Edge and Foundation and the Earth might work. But I sincerely doubt that the people who get the books would need a movie to spoil the way they imagined them, and I doubt that they really need to spoil these books just to make more money.
    By the way, I liked the way they made "I, robot". It was probably one of the good ways to combine all the stories into a movie that made sense as a movie.

    But the Foundation series...? Why not film "Yoda: the beginnings" or just plain old follow up to "Avatar: Body snatchers from the planet Earth". They'd still make money, without all the hard thinking.

    --
    new sig
  52. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by Draek · · Score: 1

    Nothing could be worse than something once finished which gets re-written into something 8 times longer, or something written specifically for length in the first place. Exhibit one: Moby Dick. Exhibit two: much of Charles Dickens. If this is true you've probably convinced me to never read Foundation, or at least to track down the original short stories rather than trudge through a novelization of a short yet clearly complete, cerebral, and influential story.

    IIRC, the 'longer Foundation work' was the sequel, the original novel *is* the original short stories compiled in one handy book.

    Haven't gotten around to read the sequels yet, so I can't comment on their quality, but I've read the prequels and they suck *utterly*. But the original novel is brilliant, so go get it.

    --
    No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
  53. Why motion capture? by Michael_gr · · Score: 1

    There are no aliens in "Foundation". None at all. Just humans. Emerich got a case of the me-too's, that's all.

  54. But it has big explosions! by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 1

    Don't be such a bore, everybody knows a good Asimov story is all about big explosions and CGI actors because nobody wants to be bored with story and acting ability.

    And hey, at least it ain't Lucas doing it...

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  55. Eh... I would do it different. by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 1

    I would take a camera, set it up, put some actors in front of it, shout "roll camera" and then "action".

    I think you will find that with your method, you will get a lot of actors standing around AFTER they have given the best performance of their lives.

    Planning a movie, a lot harder the you think.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  56. There are no aliens in "Foundations". Yet.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  57. The opening score by smhanov · · Score: 1

    I composed an overture for Trantor a few years ago: http://stevehanov.ca/trantor.mp3

  58. 3D by Phoghat · · Score: 1

    Because History and Psychology come across as so much better when shot in 3D

    --
    Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
  59. And what about the money? by Garwulf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Surely I can't be the only one who got REALLY worried when I read this part of the interview: "It's not only the effect of 3-D, ['Avatar' has] just shown that if you do a movie in 3-D, you can ask for more money and that's the trick."

    It really seems to me that this is proof that Emmerich has missed the point here. 3D is a wonderful tool for telling stories, but the story has to be there first. I've been a fan of movies all my life, and many of the most impressive movies I've seen were done on a very low budget - what made them impressive was that they told really good stories, or they told their story really well.

    To take an example of the first: Moon. If you haven't seen it, see it. It's an amazing movie, a mind-blowing story, and it was done with a budget of all of $5 million. Another example: Cube. That's a very effective and extremely imaginative SF horror movie, with a budget of a grand total of around $365,000.

    But, what about a larger story? One with lots of pyrotechnics, battles, etc. Well, besides the fact that each Lord of the Rings movie came in at $90 million only - making them now cheaper than most other event movies - I present for your consideration Underworld. It doesn't have a mind-blowing story - it's a pretty basic one, although it is well-told - but it does have a centuries-old war between vampires and werewolves, and it was incredibly stylish with very good effects, and an emphasis on story. Its budget? Around $22 million.

    Emmerich's comment about how 3D will be very good at shaking loose more money worries me a great deal. I'm afraid that we're going to see lots of big event movies that are all computer FX, and lacking in craft or storytelling. Sure, you'll see the money on the screen, but part of creativity in moviemaking is coming up with new ways to tell stories, and limited budgets are often a good thing - they force the filmmaker to concentrate on the important parts of the movie, rather than getting distracted by the FX sequences. Now we're looking at 3D for the sake of 3D - or even worse, for the sake of getting money to do 3D - rather than 3D because that's the best way to tell the story.

    (Aside from which, am I the only one who thinks that a few too many people are talking about FX allowing them to do things they couldn't do before, particularly when their examples ARE things that have been done before, and done well? Sure, there are stories that are probably unfilmable, such as Dante's Divine Comedy, but that's mainly because it's more travelogue than story - all the visual effects could have been done for that by Ray Harryhausen forty years ago. Seriously, if King Kong could do it in 1933, it wasn't impossible before computers.)

    --
    Robert B. Marks
    Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
    1. Re:And what about the money? by hrimhari · · Score: 1

      It's not that I don't agree with your point, but (unfortunately) the story may not always be the priority in a movie. I do think that Avatar 3D successfully proved that, as the visuals did impress the majority of the people while those who hated it rightfully pointed out the shallowness of the story.

      That said, it also hit me hard that he'd say something like "It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real." He'd have to hate sci-fi/fantasy to ignore all the successful movies that came out before the CG he's talking about existed. I don't know why, but Star Wars episodes 1 and 4 come to mind right away as a lesson on how the CG not only may not be mandatory (ep. 4) but may even fail to make up for the lacking rest (ep. 1).

      --
      http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
  60. How about Uwe Boll? by haggus71 · · Score: 1

    Roland Emmerich? If they want to fuck a great written work of art that bad, why don't they just get Uwe Boll to do it, and lambaste it with style? They are both on the same artistic level, after all.

  61. *Spoiler* Yes indeed: The Zeroth Law by toriver · · Score: 1

    Isn't the whole idea of the Robot/Baley-series that the three laws _can_ be interpreted drastically different?

    Yes: The conclusion drawn by R. Daneel in "Foundation and Earth" was that there was a "Zeroth Law" where the protection of mankind trumped the other three laws. Which was why he caused Earth to increase in radioactivity so that people abandoned the Caves of Steel, and why he chose to use the last Solarian as a vessel for his own mind.

  62. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by bidule · · Score: 1

    Foundation is mostly people have discussions. What kind of movie can you make out of that?

    French movie.

    --
    ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
  63. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by sincewhen · · Score: 1

    You will often find that movies with much dialogue and little action are adaptations of plays.

    If you like that kind of thing then here's one you might like: Sleuth.

    --
    -- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
  64. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by algernon7 · · Score: 1

    I'm Fonda that movie.

  65. The tool first, then the idea by hrimhari · · Score: 1

    Roland Emmerich: 'It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real.' (emphasis mine)

    Whew, good thing CG has been around since the beginning of moving pictures!.. No, that can't be right. Oh yes! I got it now. There were not sci-fi movies until Star Wars Episode 1 came out!

    --
    http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
  66. SHOOT THE RAYDOME by FF8Jake · · Score: 1

    Dr. Emmerich designed Metal Gear "Rex", and its only weakness is the raydome. Unless any of you fags are packing stinger missiles, chaff grenades and rations, you'd best be bowing to your new overlord. No I did not read TFA.

  67. Re:Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundati by pipingguy · · Score: 1

    OMG! I remember that one! Why hasn't this been remade with explosions, nekkid boobs and a McGuffin!