Roland Emmerich to ruin "Foundation"

[Corydon]

According to Variety, the beloved series will be subjected to the tender mercies of Roland Emmerich, the director of such modern classics as "10,000 BC", "The Patriot" and the remake of "Godzilla."

I'm sure that this will be at least as faithful to the source material as "I, Robot."

[eytanz]

Oh, you never know. It might be that this will be the time where he finally steps up and gives a movie that is both a respectful adaptation of the source material and a good movie on its mer-

Oh, who the hell am I kidding. This is going to suck, badly.

[stePH]

Hasn't Asimov already ruined Foundation?

[Bdoomed]

Hasn't Asimov already ruined Foundation?

yes.

i liked The Patriot!  That should not be in that list.

[slic]

i liked The Patriot!  That should not be in that list.

Yes it should 

[Russell Nash]

Foundation is too slow for a movie.  It could be a series, but not a movie.  Another problem is that SF movies tend to be special effects vehicles.  They'll cut out everything except the battle with the mule.  They'll put Asimov's name in big type on the ads and try to get the people who liked I, Robot. 

It gonna suck harder than an eight year old with a McDonald's milk shake.

[Raving_Lunatic]

I agree with N-sh. People automatically equate Science Fiction movie with the battles in Star Wars, or those action PKD movies. If you stuck to the text, in a lot of Sci-Fi there's more ideas than action.

[Alasdair5000]

According to Variety, the beloved series will be subjected to the tender mercies of Roland Emmerich, the director of such modern classics as "10,000 BC", "The Patriot" and the remake of "Godzilla."

I'm sure that this will be at least as faithful to the source material as "I, Robot."

Proudly the only guy putting his hand up since 1976...

   Emmerich has done some very bad movies, that's certain.  However, he's also done some stuff I've enjoyed (Note I do not say good.  As officially now it seems, one of the four people on the planet who liked The Day The Earth Stood Still I'm clearly, regularly, in a massive critical minority.  Kind of like being back on the island actually...) especially early in his career.

   Case in point; Moon 44.  Lovely little cyberpunk movie made on zero budget and with HUGE energy and fun.  Am I saying Emmerich's going to turn in a pitch perfect adaptation?  Absolutely not because NO ONE will, ever, it's really that simple.  These are unfilmable books and it's inevitable that all the movie is going to be is a couple of big ideas with something that resembles the plot hanging off it.  

   But, Emmerich is either not a hack or a high functioning hack depending on how you feel about his work.  He's not Ewe Boll, he's not Brett Ratner (People, I'm sure, will add Michael Bay to that list.  I like a lot of Michael Bay movies.) he actually shows up for work.  Now, that work may very well be BIG CRAZY IDEAS!  and KUNG FU PSYCHO HISTORY! in much the same way that a lot of his other movies have been but he shows up, and that's something.  Not much, but it's something.

[Corydon]

Having had a couple of days to think it over, I agree that, if the movie is going to work, it will have to be a pretty loose adaptation.  Foundation (I haven't read the sequels) is more like a series of short stories than a novel; there's not a lot holding it together, certainly not anything like strong characters.  So with a good writer and a competent director, you could make a good movie set against the backdrop of Foundation, maybe one that deals with the themes of collapse and rebirth, etc.

Or you could just have a lot of cool 'splosions.  I think that "high-functioning hack" is a very apt description of Emmerich.  Looking over his filmography, he strikes me as a bit of a throwback to directors under the studio system who would put out two or three B-movies a year: competent, entertaining, not especially original.  B-movies are more or less gone (a real shame IMO), but Emmerich will do what he's been hired to do.

[Darwinist]

Foundation is too slow for a movie.  It could be a series, but not a movie.  Another problem is that SF movies tend to be special effects vehicles.  They'll cut out everything except the battle with the mule.  They'll put Asimov's name in big type on the ads and try to get the people who liked I, Robot. 

It gonna suck harder than an eight year old with a McDonald's milk shake.

I also agree with the higher power.  It has to be a Sci-Fi channel series.  You have to base the series on all three books.   But I'm sure it will be full of explosions and dog fights in space with Hari Seldon's Psychohistory Falcon vs. the Mule's Mutant Menace.    Big screen sci-fi is always dumbed down for the masses, there aren't many sci-fi moves like Gattaca made which make you think and are short on special effects.  Are there?

[Russell Nash]

Foundation is too slow for a movie.  It could be a series, but not a movie.  Another problem is that SF movies tend to be special effects vehicles.  They'll cut out everything except the battle with the mule.  They'll put Asimov's name in big type on the ads and try to get the people who liked I, Robot. 

It gonna suck harder than an eight year old with a McDonald's milk shake.

I also agree with the higher power.  It has to be a Sci-Fi channel series.  You have to base the series on all three books.   But I'm sure it will be full of explosions and dog fights in space with Hari Seldon's Psychohistory Falcon vs. the Mule's Mutant Menace.    Big screen sci-fi is always dumbed down for the masses, there aren't many sci-fi moves like Gattaca made which make you think and are short on special effects.  Are there?

And since Gattica tanked, don't expect to see anymore.

[gelee]

Foundation is too slow for a movie.  It could be a series, but not a movie.  Another problem is that SF movies tend to be special effects vehicles.  They'll cut out everything except the battle with the mule.  They'll put Asimov's name in big type on the ads and try to get the people who liked I, Robot. 

It gonna suck harder than an eight year old with a McDonald's milk shake.

I also agree with the higher power.  It has to be a Sci-Fi channel series.  You have to base the series on all three books.   But I'm sure it will be full of explosions and dog fights in space with Hari Seldon's Psychohistory Falcon vs. the Mule's Mutant Menace.    Big screen sci-fi is always dumbed down for the masses, there aren't many sci-fi moves like Gattaca made which make you think and are short on special effects.  Are there?

And since Gattica tanked, don't expect to see anymore.

It's a shame, too.  Probably the best SF movie ever made, for my money.
Personally, I thought I, Robot was a bloody disaster.  Ditto I Am Legend.  I'm not holding out much hope for this one.  Frankly, Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with a good piece of fiction.  Then again, maybe it's the audience they're playing to that's the problem.

[DKT]

Foundation is too slow for a movie.  It could be a series, but not a movie.  Another problem is that SF movies tend to be special effects vehicles.  They'll cut out everything except the battle with the mule.  They'll put Asimov's name in big type on the ads and try to get the people who liked I, Robot. 

It gonna suck harder than an eight year old with a McDonald's milk shake.

I also agree with the higher power.  It has to be a Sci-Fi channel series.  You have to base the series on all three books.   But I'm sure it will be full of explosions and dog fights in space with Hari Seldon's Psychohistory Falcon vs. the Mule's Mutant Menace.    Big screen sci-fi is always dumbed down for the masses, there aren't many sci-fi moves like Gattaca made which make you think and are short on special effects.  Are there?

And since Gattica tanked, don't expect to see anymore.

It's a shame, too.  Probably the best SF movie ever made, for my money.
Personally, I thought I, Robot was a bloody disaster.  Ditto I Am Legend.  I'm not holding out much hope for this one.  Frankly, Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with a good piece of fiction.  Then again, maybe it's the audience they're playing to that's the problem.

Well, I think it's worth pointing out that we're not necessarily the audience they're aiming at. And Asimov fans are not the audience they're aiming at. The studios are going for the same audience that went to see Will Smith's I, Robot and Independence Day.  SF book geeks like us are a pretty small minority of that audience, I'd say.

OTOH, I disagree that good SF books can't be adapted into good movies.  It's just often, they don't find an audience. Some of them, like A Scanner Darkly (another SF movie that didn't rely on big battles) are quieter, thoughtful films. Others like Children of Men which seem to have the big effects but somehow still manage not to find an audience.  Neither had a huge Box Office or anything, but I'm just saying sometimes it does get done every right once in a while. 

[stePH]

I also agree with the higher power.  It has to be a Sci-Fi channel series.  You have to base the series on all three books.   But I'm sure it will be full of explosions and dog fights in space with Hari Seldon's Psychohistory Falcon vs. the Mule's Mutant Menace.    Big screen sci-fi is always dumbed down for the masses, there aren't many sci-fi moves like Gattaca made which make you think and are short on special effects.  Are there?

And since Gattica tanked, don't expect to see anymore.

Gattaca was cut off at the knees, IMO, by entirely too much exposition at the beginning.  I think the voiced-over intro about the protagonist's humble beginnings was about fifteen minutes long.  If they could have shortened that down to five minutes or less, it would have been much improved.

[Darwinist]

Foundation is too slow for a movie.  It could be a series, but not a movie.  Another problem is that SF movies tend to be special effects vehicles.  They'll cut out everything except the battle with the mule.  They'll put Asimov's name in big type on the ads and try to get the people who liked I, Robot. 

It gonna suck harder than an eight year old with a McDonald's milk shake.

I also agree with the higher power.  It has to be a Sci-Fi channel series.  You have to base the series on all three books.   But I'm sure it will be full of explosions and dog fights in space with Hari Seldon's Psychohistory Falcon vs. the Mule's Mutant Menace.    Big screen sci-fi is always dumbed down for the masses, there aren't many sci-fi moves like Gattaca made which make you think and are short on special effects.  Are there?

And since Gattica tanked, don't expect to see anymore.

Yeah.  I live in a country where Paul Blart: Mall Cop was the #1 movie last week.  Freaking pathetic.

[Alasdair5000]

See, there's a chance that small scale, big idea SF may be pushing to the ehad of the line.  Two of the hands down smashes at Sundance this year were Moon, starring Sam Rockwell as a lunar miner who finds something very unpleasant waiting at the end of his tour and Cold Souls, starring Paul Giamatti as a man who voluntarily has his soul taken out.  Similarly, movies like Franklyn, The Knowing and Richard Kelly's upcoming adaptation of an old Rod Serling story are all pushing the idea over the effects.

(Admittedly, The Knowing is pushing the effects pretty hard too but it's an Alex Proyas movie).

   There's an interesting piece io9 put up a few days back exploring this very thing, that the economic crisis is forcing studios to think a bit cleverer and a bit smaller.  No idea if it'll work, but hey, we can hope.

[izzardfan]

Richard Kelly's upcoming adaptation of an old Rod Serling story

I'm looking forward to this one immensely.  I loved the short story ("Button, Button") by Richard Matheson, and enjoyed the Twilight Zone version, but what I've read about Kelly's version is that it takes the plot way beyond the basics of the story.

[DKT]

Al, one thing I dig about you is that you're a Perservering Optimist.

[Alasdair5000]

Thanks, man:)  It's either that or I'm easily pleased so we'll go with your definition I think:)

[Heradel]

I also agree with the higher power.  It has to be a Sci-Fi channel series.  You have to base the series on all three books.   But I'm sure it will be full of explosions and dog fights in space with Hari Seldon's Psychohistory Falcon vs. the Mule's Mutant Menace.    Big screen sci-fi is always dumbed down for the masses, there aren't many sci-fi moves like Gattaca made which make you think and are short on special effects.  Are there?

And since Gattica tanked, don't expect to see anymore.

Gattaca was cut off at the knees, IMO, by entirely too much exposition at the beginning.  I think the voiced-over intro about the protagonist's humble beginnings was about fifteen minutes long.  If they could have shortened that down to five minutes or less, it would have been much improved.

You are going to hate Benjamin Button then.

[stePH]

Gattaca was cut off at the knees, IMO, by entirely too much exposition at the beginning.  I think the voiced-over intro about the protagonist's humble beginnings was about fifteen minutes long.  If they could have shortened that down to five minutes or less, it would have been much improved.

You are going to hate Benjamin Button then.

You assume I have any intent to see it. 

[Bdoomed]

You are going to hate Benjamin Button then.

You assume I have any intent to see it. 

ugh its such a good movie!  Directed by the dude who directed Fight Club and Seven, written by the dude who wrote Forrest Gump... cant go wrong!

[stePH]

You are going to hate Benjamin Button then.

You assume I have any intent to see it. 

ugh its such a good movie!  Directed by the dude who directed Fight Club and Seven, written by the dude who wrote Forrest Gump... cant go wrong!

You had me, then you lost me. 

[Heradel]

It's a really solid piece of fantasy. A little long, but more than a little great.

There's a really good Youtube parody mashing it up with Forrest Gump.

[Planish]

Hasn't Asimov already ruined Foundation?

Aw, you beat me to it.

It was way too talky.