Foundation’s showrunner explains why big book adaptations start so dang slow
Foundation’s showrunner explains why big book adaptations start so dang slow
Season 2 kicks off on July 14th.
Great, now explain why you chose to adapt a book and completely ignore everything that made the book great...
[cries in Wheel of Time]
Yeah I hated how they shrunk Lan's shoulders and made him look soft.
Me too bud, I was looking forward to Jordan's masterpiece getting an adaptation to the small screen but I couldn't even make it through one episode. It's like the showrunner took The Witcher's terrible adaptation as a personal challenge to fuck over the source material in the most fuck you way possible and went at it with both boots.
What are they ignoring in your view?
I have read the Foundation series many times.
The first three books are fantastic ideas but, honestly, the format of small vignettes spanning centuries with no recurring characters works in a novel but is terrible to adapt to the screen.
When I first heard of this adaptation, my reaction was "How are they going to make an engaging story for a TV audience out of them?"
While not perfect, after the first series I am impressed with what they have done.
The inclusion of following the emperors was a good idea that fleshes out the story, universe and gives a good counterpoint to the foundation.
A page perfect adaptation of the books would be visually boring to most people.
Avid fans of the novels must also realise that the show was made to draw in people who have never read the books. If they were to only attract people who have read the books, the show would be a failure as they would never have been able to justify the budget.
I thought the Foundation books were conceited and trite - I know that’s not going to make me popular here. The first ATV season was pretty damn good, building on the main themes that made the books so seminal, but adding a human dimension which helps to make the story feel as epic as people make it out to be.
cries in The Witcher
It is quite different, and I put off watching it out of fear of this until a few days ago, thinking I was going to hate it as I loved the books.
I remember thinking when they first announced making this, how the fuck are they going to make psychohistory and a relentlesly changing timespan into a TV show? Personally I thought what they've made is excellent scifi TV, I mostly binged it. Maybe they tried staying true to source material at first and realised it just doesn't make for a compelling show?
As soon as they went off track I was like "If you didn't want to use the material then why did you license it in the first place?"
Would be like if, I dunno, somebody wanted to make a Care Bears movie and made it about a group of mercenaries with colorfully painted body armor.
I'm not going to automatically say it's awful, it's just not the Care Bears. ;)
I’m still baffled as to why of all of Asimov’s books these were the ones made into a show. The robot novels would’ve been much easier to adapt
I've read foundation and end of eternity, loved both, but never read one of robot books! I don't know why ... maybe I don't know where to start or something, and so it just slipped out my reading.
I highly recommend them. They’re set in the same world as foundation but are crime novels focusing around a detective from earth and dealing with an increasing cultural differences between planets and issues of artificial intelligence and robots that pass for human. One of the things I love is how Earth is in many ways the most foreign planet to the reader.
Start with The Caves of Steel, then The Naked Sun, followed by The Robots of Dawn, and finally Robots and Empire which ties the setting into Foundation
I, Robot and Bicentennial Man didn't exactly ignite.
Yeah, the I robot movie has nothing to do with the I robot book. Similar ideas but different stories, etc… I was super surprised when I read I, Robot.
The Robot series by Asimov are a scifi detective novels centered around a humanoid robot named r. Daneel who works with a earthling detective.
I meant the R. Daneel novels. The whodunnit books about an earth detective dealing with robots.
I just finished watching the first season of Silo. It was good enough to make me get the book series and start reading it. I thought the tv show was a bit slow and got bogged down some. Now that I’m reading the book, yup, I can tell that it really is going much slower than the book.
It's a shame, I think, that so much stuff is high budget and high risk production wise these days (where, as far as I understand, Hollywood is pressed to make profit now more than it used to). You can see it I think, this anxiety to get people hooked and watching but to also draw out as much as possible from them, and it's only harming TV IMO.
Otherwise, I've had Silo recommended to me multiple times now ... so I'll guess I'll give it a watch.
How did you find the show generally? And the books?
I watched the show and then started reading the first book. From what I can tell so far a lot of the weird writing decisions that confused or annoyed me in the show are not present in the book, though there are other aspects of the show I liked a little bit more than the book like how some of the characters are portrayed.
Overall I’d say both versions are good with the book being slightly better. I would recommend the show whether you intend to read the book or not.
I've watched the trailer and I'm not convinced (even though I'll almost cetainly watch it).
- Not sure the broadening of the show is necessary or can work.
- Not sure focusing on carry over characters can work with the gravity of the story, though I thought the emperor clones thing was an excellent way to work in a perennial character that fits within the story and universe.
- I'm not even sure that slowing it down and doing it all over 8 seasons makes sense.
I hope they make it through to the end of all 3 books. It seems like a Herculean task to wrangle these books into something made for tv.
I figured it was obvious: because big books also start slow.