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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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
"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.
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.
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.
If there really is a secret force out there influencing events to preserve civilization I'm counting on them to prevent this.
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!
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
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?
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
Were the members of the jury men? Were they angry? Were there twelve of them?
-- $SIGNATURE
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.