Foundation

[andrewc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gdm40MPYnw


Trailer for Apple's new adaptation of Asimov.     I've vague memories of reading a few chapters of the first one , but can recall very little about it.     


Comments for the trailer are not very favourable.   


Jared Harris as Hari Seldon.   He was good as Dawes in The Expanse , but thats all I've seen him in. 

[L CC]

Interesting. Some books you read and they immediately feel cinematic. I never felt that way about the Foundation series.
Surely it's a bit too ideas based, rather than action driven?

[spesh]

It's been a while since I've read the Foundation-Foundation and Earth sequence¹ of books, but I'm not really feeling it from that trailer, to be honest.

TBF, it does say "based on Asimov's books", but that covers a wide range of values of "based on"².


¹ With the possible exception³ of Prelude To Foundation, I haven't read any of the prequels. ISTR that there is wildly varying mileage about them.

² See the reactions to BBC America's butchering - er... "re-imagining" - of Terry Pratchett's Night Watch books.

³ If I have read it, it was a long time ago, and it didn't make that much of an impression on me, else I'd be more certain about whether I did read it. IYSWIM...

[Steph]

I started reading adult SF and fantasy when I was four. The Foundation Trilogy (see also HHGTTG) was always lauded as an essential read, so I did.

As FBOAB says, apart from the 'Mule', it is very ideas driven, all tied to Hari Seldon. I really can't see it as a cinematic thing.

[andrewc]

Has anyone else been watching this ?     I've no idea what relation it has to the original books bar the title, but I'm finding it enjoyably done SF. Pretty visuals & decent acting.  Just watched episode 10 & both Lee Pace & Leah Harvey are excellent.

[PaulF]

I’m enjoying it but aside from the first episode it seems to be a science fiction story set in the Foundation universe.  But as Steph said the original isn’t especially cinematic.

[drossall]

I've only seen the first episode so far. It's a long time since I read the books. But I thought it was a promising start. It seemed to begin differently from what I remember in the books, but I could be wrong, and anyway there's no harm in establishing the back story. I'm generally happier when these things stick fairly closely to the original, although I recognise that they are different media and need different treatment.

[Beardy]

Again, like many here, it’s a long time since I read the Foundation books but my observations mirror what Paul F said, it’s a science fiction story set in the foundation universe. In the first episode has the key moments that set up the main structures but it very quickly diverges from finer nuances of the book. It even mentions the Mule in the first episode and I think the suggestion is that Gaal Dornick is the same.

I enjoyed the series as a whole, and will happily watch a second should it be produced, but it’s not the story Asimov penned.