An update that fundamentally lacks the essential element that allowed the original to exist at all.
What's missing? (Spoiler: It's intelligence)
It's a dumb action show with philosophical pretentions, that sometimes manages compelling scenes, with extremely expensive visuals that show off truly excellent CGI (because it doesn't 'look like' CGI), and has some great cinematography and production design (but also some pretty weak/generic/nonsensical production design, mainly in the abysmally stupid Hardin/Terminus bits.)
What about the actual source material?
Asimov grew considerably as a writer throughout his career, addressing his weaknesses of having rather dry dialogue and matter-of-fact storytelling, and, more specifically, kind of flat characters, and weak female characters. Foundation itself saw a considerable upgrade in its depth and focus on women and girls as main characters, as it went on, but it is still dry by comparison to his later works such as Nemesis, which is still one of my favorite books (the main characters of Nemesis are a plain, probably autistic teenage girl and her mother. So, yes, there are a number of different ways a Foundation adaptation could have gone, stylistically. Although, there's really only one option nowadays with the current trend of dark, overly self-serious, and frankly suffocating mid-brow pretension in "serious" "science fiction", the formula could have definitely benefitted from a transfusion of dramatic lifeblood.
The problem is that they forgot (actually, never understood) the core ethics and dynamics of the story, and the story told therein ends up as a confused mess of incoherent melodrama that completely and utterly slanders and wastes its core concepts. They also frontload and spoil two of the biggest reveals of the book series within the first few episodes, for absolutely no narrative reason, and absolutely zero payoff. They also utterly assassinate every single aspect of arguably the most important character to the centuries-spanning plot as a whole. So do yourself a favor and read the books before getting more than five episodes or so in.
Yeah, Lee Pace is a dead sexy beast as a charasmatically domineering and ever-young Cleon. Lou Lloubell is also a great actress and Gaal and Hari compelling characters until they make her and Hari into idiotic telenovela characters because modern Hollywood (non)writers don't understand how to write stories about the conflict of empirical and religious values without making it into incoherent emotional nonsense, likely due to working out their own personal issues without actually having read or understood, or likely even been exposed to decades-old knowledge and exegesis on the subject.
And it was predictable. Friedman showed he had a surface-level attention to and understating of SF concepts with his Sarah Connor series. I liked that at the time, but even as a twenty-something I could tell he didn't understand basic computer science, and didn't bother to consult with anyone to write it properly. One look at Goyer's filmography and it's clear that he doesn't do anything but dark, pulpy action fantasy. We got children without sea legs and hacks sailing this boat.
Review by LNeroBlockedParent2023-12-03T02:16:19Z
An update that fundamentally lacks the essential element that allowed the original to exist at all.
What's missing? (Spoiler: It's intelligence)
It's a dumb action show with philosophical pretentions, that sometimes manages compelling scenes, with extremely expensive visuals that show off truly excellent CGI (because it doesn't 'look like' CGI), and has some great cinematography and production design (but also some pretty weak/generic/nonsensical production design, mainly in the abysmally stupid Hardin/Terminus bits.)
What about the actual source material?
Asimov grew considerably as a writer throughout his career, addressing his weaknesses of having rather dry dialogue and matter-of-fact storytelling, and, more specifically, kind of flat characters, and weak female characters. Foundation itself saw a considerable upgrade in its depth and focus on women and girls as main characters, as it went on, but it is still dry by comparison to his later works such as Nemesis, which is still one of my favorite books (the main characters of Nemesis are a plain, probably autistic teenage girl and her mother. So, yes, there are a number of different ways a Foundation adaptation could have gone, stylistically. Although, there's really only one option nowadays with the current trend of dark, overly self-serious, and frankly suffocating mid-brow pretension in "serious" "science fiction", the formula could have definitely benefitted from a transfusion of dramatic lifeblood.
The problem is that they forgot (actually, never understood) the core ethics and dynamics of the story, and the story told therein ends up as a confused mess of incoherent melodrama that completely and utterly slanders and wastes its core concepts. They also frontload and spoil two of the biggest reveals of the book series within the first few episodes, for absolutely no narrative reason, and absolutely zero payoff. They also utterly assassinate every single aspect of arguably the most important character to the centuries-spanning plot as a whole. So do yourself a favor and read the books before getting more than five episodes or so in.
Yeah, Lee Pace is a dead sexy beast as a charasmatically domineering and ever-young Cleon. Lou Lloubell is also a great actress and Gaal and Hari compelling characters until they make her and Hari into idiotic telenovela characters because modern Hollywood (non)writers don't understand how to write stories about the conflict of empirical and religious values without making it into incoherent emotional nonsense, likely due to working out their own personal issues without actually having read or understood, or likely even been exposed to decades-old knowledge and exegesis on the subject.
And it was predictable. Friedman showed he had a surface-level attention to and understating of SF concepts with his Sarah Connor series. I liked that at the time, but even as a twenty-something I could tell he didn't understand basic computer science, and didn't bother to consult with anyone to write it properly. One look at Goyer's filmography and it's clear that he doesn't do anything but dark, pulpy action fantasy. We got children without sea legs and hacks sailing this boat.