posted
There's later Foundation books I vaguely recall where one dude gets to decide the fate of humanity's future and goes on a quest to find Earth and figure out why he picked what he did. Those have stable characters and real plots and things. If they go with that, they'd have a real movie. Emmerich would be fine with that, in my opinion.
If they mean the original three, though, I'm lost. That's not a movie. It's not even a very coherant story by any traditional measurement. It's only a classic because it somehow works despite its lack of everything it's supposed to have.
Maybe Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) could pull off the vignettes as one connected, emotional whole. Emmerich I'm not optimistic about. Much as I love Stargate and Independance Day, I don't really see those as the training grounds for this sort of plot-light experiment.
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posted
I think the first Foundation book would be the hardest to make into a movie. The first test will be whether they decide they want to tie everything together by putting all the vignettes in the same time period and using the same set of characters for each one. If they do that, they really have no clue what Azimov was doing.
But I have a feeling that'll be an option that - at the very least - will have some serious discussion.
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posted
Just remember the "I Robot" movie. Most likely this movie will be "Asimov's Foundation" in name only.
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posted
I'll agree, I don't see the Foundation series as making a good movie. There's some potential for the last two books in the series, but I'm questionable even on those.
Of course, if this does come to fruition, I'm going to have to watch. And then likely poke my eyes out with a hot wire.
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Oh sure, give a books series that is pretty much *all* dialogue to a director that is incapable of well ... pretty much anything that is not a big budget action spectacle.
Oh well, I guess we might get some pretty pictures out of it.
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quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: ... Maybe Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) could pull off the vignettes as one connected, emotional whole.
I think he's busy with the 60 year anniversary of the CCP and other various tourist attractions in China including Hangzhou and Guilin. Besides, he doesn't really do English.
If we must go Asian, then Wong Kar Wai would seem to be the obvious choice since he actually does do English language stuff and pretty much all his films deal with separate but slightly related short stories. Of course filming would take forever ... but meh. (I don't really see much of an advantage in going Asian for science fiction anyways)
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posted
Some series really call for a miniseries at the least. You just can't do them justice in 100 minutes, even if you get a screenwriter who can get the ideas across.
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posted
Someone on that site said they should make a movie out of "Pebble In The Sky" instead. I'm all for that idea - I think PitS would be much easier to convert into a movie.
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quote: I don't really see much of an advantage in going Asian for science fiction anyways
I wasn't thinking Asian specifically. I just really couldn't come up with anyone that I'd seen do something like that before. (I've never seen Wong Kar Wai, but he sounds interesting.)
I don't just think they picked the wrong director, I think they picked the whole wrong kind of director.
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quote:Originally posted by Jeorge: Someone on that site said they should make a movie out of "Pebble In The Sky" instead. I'm all for that idea - I think PitS would be much easier to convert into a movie.
I agree! that book is great
now that I think about it it seems made for film, ... but I guess it's not mainstream enough
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As a kid, Pebble was my favorite Azimov book. It would be interesting to read that again now and see if I still like it so much.
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