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Member
Posts: 5
| Surprised there isn't a thread on this yet. What are your thoughts on the upcoming Foundation TV series?
My thoughts so far:
Asimov's Foundation series is my favourite novel series of all time (well, the first trilogy and to some extent the prequels. I thought the two additional sequels from the 1980s were abominations). So when I heard they were making a TV show I was really excited - finally a TV show for my favourite novel series!
Plus it's coming off the back of Game of Thrones - that show's production values and scale completely changed how the people and companies involved view TV shows. I had some hope it would be given a good enough budget to do for the Foundation novels what Game of Thrones did for the Song of Ice & Fire novels... assuming it actually got off the ground (sadly seems too many sci fi novel adaptations end up in development hell for decades).
Well get off the ground it did, and it's due to debut in two months' time. The trailers also satisfy on the production front. It looks slick, high budget, and set to have some great visuals and a good atmosphere (not a far cry from the upcoming Dune movie). Hopefully the acting talent is good too. I'm only really familiar with Jared Harris from the cast list, but his acting in Chernobyl has me convinced he'll make a great Harry Seldon.
But... I'm still wary. I don't recognise some of the scenes from the trailers. I thought perhaps it was just my poor memory, but I'm re-reading the series now, partly in anticipation for the show, and although the overarching theme of the trailers matches the novels, some of the stuff being shown doesn't (I'm at the end of Forward and about to start Foundation I).
I also don't recognise about half of the characters in the cast list on IMDb - they simply don't appear in the novels. And some of those that do have been renamed (why??), while others have changed genders (which I can understand - modern TV casting vs. 1950s novels).
I just get a general sense it's set around Forward and the first Foundation, and that it has the same theme of the collapse of a galactic empire and Seldon trying to devise a way of 'shortening the darkness' as they say in the first trailer, but that beyond that it's only very loosely based on the actual novels. Maybe it's a 'reimagining' instead of a formal adaptation, which will probably make it a disappointment story-wise because I seriously doubt the TV writers of today can outdo Asimov. Hopefully I'm wrong about that.
Edited by NIN22 2021-07-23 3:39 PM
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Location: Dallas, Texas | All of the above for me! Though at this stage, having only seen a couple trailers, I'm feeling well disposed towards the show. It's clearly big budget and looks amazing! I love Jarred Harris in everything I've seen him in, including the amazing Chernobyl, and I especially love to see him eating up the scenes in The Expanse! We are living in the golden age of entertainment with so many new content sources and so many hits including many great genre properties. What gives me so much confidence, at least for now, is that so many of these excellent new shows are sticking close to the source material and having great success with book fans while still attracting a new broader audience. I know they're going to add new characters and combine a few and change gender and race and move them around in time etc. etc. etc. but I'm OK with that if it makes the story work for film and keeps true to the author's vision. For my money, Asimov is a genius at big ideas and grand adventures on a titanic scale. Where he's not so great is the small scale character development stuff. I love Foundation and read it several times in my youth and what resonates with me today is the feeling of awe at the hugeness of the empire, the grandeur and horror of Trantor, the massive time-scale of events, the titanic intellect of Harry Seldon, the advanced science etc. I'd be hard pressed to name another character other than The Mule. But that's all world-building and exposition. The show will need strong characters to make it work so I'm expecting that much might be very different from the books while the plot and effects keep it rooted in the source material. There are grounds for optimism these days - seasoned with caution of course. For every LOTR, which was a pretty faithful adaptation in my opinion, there are a dozen Hobbits which miss the mark completely. I feel like we're getting more hits than misses these days though so it feels a little less risky to hope a film is going to be as good as the book I love. I should follow your example and re-read the books again before the show premiers. Though that might jeapardize my enjoyment of the film if the creators didn't do their homework.
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Veteran
Posts: 112
Location: Las Vegas, NV | this series is the only reason i'm considering getting AppleTV+. i'm already subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Curiosity Stream and HBO Max, what's one more, right? and the sad truth is i probably watch more free YoutTube than any those combined. but i digress...
Foundation is one of those series that i have just never gotten around to. blasphemy, i know, but what can i say? i do have Foundation on my to read list (or at least, to listen to list as i mostly do audiobooks). in anticipation of the show, i have the audiobook on hold from my local library but i also recently picked up an old paperback copy at a thrift store.
Edited by devilinlaw 2021-07-24 2:43 AM
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Admin
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Location: Dallas, Texas | For anyone who has not seen the trailer yet here is the latest. | |
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Member
Posts: 5
| Administrator - 2021-07-24 1:13 AM
But that's all world-building and exposition. The show will need strong characters to make it work so I'm expecting that much might be very different from the books while the plot and effects keep it rooted in the source material.
Good point about characters. Hopefully that is the primary reason for the new characters and that, outside of that, they do stick to the same overarching plot as the novel series. | |
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Posts: 202
Location: Sacramento, California | Great thread. I do not have Apple TV+, and probably won't subscribe, so I'll see the series on Bluray next year, but it looks great! It's true that it appears to deviate in a lot of the details to the novels, but that is to be expected. The novels are all plot, and little-to-no characters or action, so I imagine that the showrunners will use the novels as an outline on which to hang a character story. I'm okay with that. I think a page-by-page adaptation would not be good, and hold only the interest of a few thousand Foundation fans worldwide.
As to the gender/race swapping, I've been quite surprised by the pushback I've seen on Youtube. Who cares? These are characters that often had three lines over three pages in the books, so it really doesn't matter what the person saying the lines looks like. Besides, I feel that Asimov himself would have made it more diverse had he written it much later in life (as he tried to do a bit in the later novels). | |
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Foundation TV Series - Excited? Wary? Annoyed? Hopeful? All of the above?