I used AirPlay to watch this on my TV and it played in Spanish, but I thought the first set of characters were supposed to speaking Spanish and it would eventually switch to English. Only when Jared Harris appeared did I realize it was a problem. I had to switch the language to German to get it to play in English.
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Foundation (Apple TV+) - Jared Harris Goes to Space... Again [SEE STAFF POST]
- Thread starter Spectromixer
- Start date
- OT
As someone who has never heard of this series before, I absolutely loved the first couple of episodes.
It's obviously not for everyone, but the story is incredibly fascinating for those interested in politics, Sci Fi, and futurism.
It's obviously not for everyone, but the story is incredibly fascinating for those interested in politics, Sci Fi, and futurism.
The locations/time changes and character perspective changes in the books. It takes place over decades or hundreds or thousands of years. A wider audience might not have the time or interest to invest and follow that.
Thanks for the answer. That does seem like something that will need some big cast resets and tons of exposition for a wider audience to care and be able to follow.
No way this lasts 8 seasons like Goyer wants. I am guessing it will get 4 at best, likely just 3.
Oh shit so unless they do a complete overhaul of this, we're gonna be getting a rotating set of completely new casts?
Watching this tonight, glass of whisky and good tv. Should be gorgeous, expecting Dune but with less adventure and more society/politics/science.
Big part of SCI/fi used to be sciences other than just technology, such as religion, economics and politics. Foundation could be a great example of that!
Big part of SCI/fi used to be sciences other than just technology, such as religion, economics and politics. Foundation could be a great example of that!
That show was on SyFy for its first three seasons, which says a lot, and narrowly rescued thereafter. Amazon not dropping these Applebux on its newer seasons is kinda understandable.
I thought the rumor was that Bezos was a huge fan. Why would he rescue it only to not give it money? If anyone could afford it, it's him.
Not a rumor, for the record -- he proclaimed it rather loudly!
And I'm not sure what to say here, since I do think the fourth and fifth seasons of The Expanse look noticeably more expensive than the SyFy years. I just don't think they look like this, of course -- but Amazon's checkbooks seem to keep things more in... well... check, unless they're absolutely monstrous productions. Tbh, even what we've seen from The Wheel of Time doesn't look like it's got the budget that some of these Apple shows do. I'm sure LOTR will be an outlier there, but yeah.
I thought in an interview somewhere, the showrunners said they were pulling elements from across the entire Foundation cycle. It is remixed into a somewhat different narrative structure - probably to make it much easier and more linear to film. Though there is also the advantage of being able to plan for retcons and additions that happened over the course of the series.
Without giving spoilers, Asimov re-thought aspects of the setting towards the end. He merged in additional elements that were not originally conceived as part of the worldbuilding. I believe the first season of the show already incorporates some of these additions from the start.
Some of the negative reviews have already criticized the first season for being a vague adaptation - only "inspired by" rather than what the critic feels is an actual attempt to adapt the text. The thing is though, Foundation is a somewhat awkward collection of texts - a series of shorts and novellas; stand-alone books, sequels, re-packagings with new chapters, and prequel books.
I'm not sure how you could adapt it to any medium without viewing it as a collection of characters, story arcs, and ideas to be reorganized into something that will inevitably be similar yet very different.
Without giving spoilers, Asimov re-thought aspects of the setting towards the end. He merged in additional elements that were not originally conceived as part of the worldbuilding. I believe the first season of the show already incorporates some of these additions from the start.
Some of the negative reviews have already criticized the first season for being a vague adaptation - only "inspired by" rather than what the critic feels is an actual attempt to adapt the text. The thing is though, Foundation is a somewhat awkward collection of texts - a series of shorts and novellas; stand-alone books, sequels, re-packagings with new chapters, and prequel books.
I'm not sure how you could adapt it to any medium without viewing it as a collection of characters, story arcs, and ideas to be reorganized into something that will inevitably be similar yet very different.
No idea what direction they are going in but one of the big sticking points of adapting the series into film is the lack of central characters the audience can sink their teeth into for several seasons.
The show did get better visually on Amazon. But it's nearing its end, there not much point investing much in it. At least we are getting the story to the end, and who knows, maybe in a decade or two they will film the last book trilogy.
As a long standing Foundation fan I wasn't blown away by the first episode. I appreciate that the source text is somewhat dry but everything seemed overproduced to the point of pomposity.
Most of the actors seemed uncomfortable in their roles apart from Lee Pace and the editing was really disjointed. The focus should have been tightly on Gaal and her journey for the entire episode. As a outsider she was the perfect character foil to introduce the audience to Trantor and it's political tensions while having other characters come and go around her.
The terrorist attack whilst spectacular was really stupid; the empire would have fallen long ago if it was that easy and the timing was eye rolling.
Why did they inflict that pointless godawful accent on Reece Shearsmith?
That's supposed to be Salvor Hardin?
I'm going to wait for the full availability before I watch anymore.
Most of the actors seemed uncomfortable in their roles apart from Lee Pace and the editing was really disjointed. The focus should have been tightly on Gaal and her journey for the entire episode. As a outsider she was the perfect character foil to introduce the audience to Trantor and it's political tensions while having other characters come and go around her.
The terrorist attack whilst spectacular was really stupid; the empire would have fallen long ago if it was that easy and the timing was eye rolling.
Why did they inflict that pointless godawful accent on Reece Shearsmith?
That's supposed to be Salvor Hardin?
I'm going to wait for the full availability before I watch anymore.
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They're finishing it early so obviously him being a fan was not enough.
OP
OP
ok you win mods I will make an OT for the first post of this thread
I'm guessing this was RatskyWatsky
Watched the first two episodes yesterday. It's interesting, if not fully formed yet. There's some good tension hinted at between the ideals of golden age sci-fi and how white-centric, exclusionary this is towards wide swaths of people, like in that scene with Gaal at the resources allocation meeting talking about how they're deciding what to preserve. I hope there's more of that in the future episodes. I've also never read the book series so I don't know how close an adaptation this is, but I'd like to know how much of the central plot is inspired by nuclear proliferation vs. modern problems like climate catastrophe and 9/11 totalitarianism. Given the time it was written I suspect the dread of this crumbling empire comes from the place of the former, but in the show it was very much the latter and I think that worked well.
Goodness, is this show ever a looker. most stunning TV show this year after Underground Railroad.
Goodness, is this show ever a looker. most stunning TV show this year after Underground Railroad.
The show borrows ideas and characters from the books but this isn't a close adaptation. To be fair, I am not sure how you do that on TV. The original short stories were published between 1942-1950.
I'm not even through the first episode, but I gotta say that this is visual treat. Holy crap it looks great.
Visually I'm getting major Blade Runner, Bioshock and Matrix vibes.
Visually I'm getting major Blade Runner, Bioshock and Matrix vibes.
Second episode was good, but liked the first one more. The dialogue seems a bit unimaginative at some points. Still don't care about the romance... But the Emperor and Seldon are very cool. Will keep watching.
Oh god, don't even suggest it ends up like Raised by Wolves, you'll give me anxiety
The negative reviews say this gets good in the back half so enjoying it now is maybe a great sign!
I liked the 2 episodes somewhat, I think the first is better, it is an interesting premise but some poor acting stands out. Particularly Alfred Enoch the
of Gaal, every time he is on screen he looks like he is about to laugh or his voice should be emotional but it is far from it. Hopefully he grows into his character a bit more but for now I am not buying his portrayal.
Gaal on the other hand, that actress is killing it.
love interest
Gaal on the other hand, that actress is killing it.
lol gawd
Raised by Wolves showed such amazing promise with those first two episodes.
Turned out it was solely due to Ridley Scott's eye for visuals.
You would be lucky if half the people who started watching it don't quit before the end of season.
The overall production, particularly the costume and set design are phenomenal, though that's to be expected for introductory episodes, so I'm interested to see if they can keep the quality consistent throughout with how effects heavy some of the scenes are. Though a slower pace for the show is a good sign. I never read Asimov's story for this, but I'm 100% hooked on the universe and characters in this show from what has been shown. Some really interesting concepts that I'm hoping they'll go much deeper on, like
the whole plot of the emperors all being clones of the same person through generations, hints at repeating events and questioning identity etc.
Also, loved the FTL scene from the first episode:
I think a lot of Sci-Fi rely too much on the "ship just move very fast suddenly" idea, and so tend to look all the same. Foundation did something different and it's beautiful. I wonder if someone else thought of the Culture seeing that though? How the Universe was "divided" into two reminded me of how ships travel in those books.
I think a lot of Sci-Fi rely too much on the "ship just move very fast suddenly" idea, and so tend to look all the same. Foundation did something different and it's beautiful. I wonder if someone else thought of the Culture seeing that though? How the Universe was "divided" into two reminded me of how ships travel in those books.
I read the books so long ago I barely remember the characters but I can tell it has deviated a lot.
Still, I like what I see and I enjoy this world building they are adding and even the point of view of this new Cleon/Genetic Dinasty (certainly more interesting from what I remember of book Cleon).
Also the show looks... expensive. I hope it does great but I'm not super optimistic.
Still, I like what I see and I enjoy this world building they are adding and even the point of view of this new Cleon/Genetic Dinasty (certainly more interesting from what I remember of book Cleon).
Also the show looks... expensive. I hope it does great but I'm not super optimistic.
Agreed. I have zero book knowledge so I had to watch the first episode twice to get a feel for the story.
Is this hard science fiction? Obviously it has FTL travel but, they said they are travelling to a world by 'slow ship' that's 50,000 light years away, and yet it's going to take eight hundred and something days. Is that taking into account relativistic effects? Will over 50,000 years have passed on Trantor by the time they arrive?
One has to assume Faster than light speeds are still slow for them which could mean not 50,000 years if they would be traveling faster than light.
I did hear them mention transdimensional travel which could mean a non conventional non linear path.
I haven't read the books before but I enjoyed the first two episodes so far. It is a bit hard to follow as there are a lot of concepts getting thrown at us all at once. I liked the first episode better personally. The second episode was kind of jarring because
clearly some time has passed since the first episode. We see Gaal, Seldon and co on their ship and Gaal and Raych are already together. However, I really wasn't sold on their relationships and sure enough, things started happening and there's mysteries there. It is confusing to me why Raych sent Gaal off in some liquid tube along with the incriminating knife… but I guess we will find out later.
I read the first book, and thus I quite enjoyed the first episode, with all the differences of course. But then I watched the second episode and it really dragged on. Will have to wait and see how the show progresses, but so far it's just OK.
I liked that the lifeboat was the same shape as the scroll that she received from the library.
Like she is the personification of a scroll, the last remaining holder of knowledge being cast into hostile space, like the fragile scroll that held the ancient mathematical proof escaped the doomed library.
Like she is the personification of a scroll, the last remaining holder of knowledge being cast into hostile space, like the fragile scroll that held the ancient mathematical proof escaped the doomed library.
I think they are foreshadowing where the books go later on in the series already.
Twice the main character has known something was wrong before it happened - the collapse of the star tower and Harrys murder. Seems to be shouting to me about the second foundation.
The whole three Emperors and them being clones is a creation of this show.
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Only read the first book, but based on that a few reasons. For one it's scale is massive. Not only in space, but in time too. The story literally spans centuries. So you're constantly dealing with new characters taking over from previous generations. The book (at least the first, don't know about the others) is actually a series of short stories, with big time jumps in between them. If you'd want to stay absolutely true to the text, you'd need to make an anthology series with every episode having new characters.
Secondly, it's not really a cinematic story to say the least. It's a lot of talking and theorising, and it's pretty cerebral at times. There is certainly conflict, but there is not a lot of drama and action. It's not the best basis for a screen story.
I like how they adapted it though. It's a true adaptation, in that it takes the basics and adapts it to another medium. So (based on the first 2 episodes) the series takes the broad strokes of the first chapter/story of the book and uses it as both the backdrop and engine for a dramatic story. There are parts of the book that are translated to the srceen, but there is a lot of extra stuff that diverges or fills in gaps. The events and universe of the book are a sort of coathanger for the bulk of the story.