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I died a little bit inside
Freejack
Jake the Not-so-Wise
in Zocalo v2.0
I just learned that Roland Emmerich has been tapped to direct the Foundation series (or movie as I am sure it will be)...as Asimov has always been one of my favorite writers, I am saddened to learn that a hack such as Emmerich will be doing this movie. I just cannot see any way that this can be anything but a failure.
Yes, I know that this has apparently been known since July of last year, but my life would have been better not knowing.
Jak
Yes, I know that this has apparently been known since July of last year, but my life would have been better not knowing.
Jak
Comments
That tells me all I need to know. He's directed the occasional good film (such as [i]Stargate[/i]), but he's not really the right sort of director for something like Foundation.
That said, I am not entirely sure the foundation series is terribly film-able anyway.
Jake
Oh, and while we're talking about Asimov, I just have to state once again how much I hated Foundation and Earth. Why oh why did Asimov have to write those awful Foundation books after the trilogy was done?
[url]http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2010/02/11/exclusive-roland-emmerich-plans-foundation-as-3-d-motion-capture-epic/[/url]
Well, as long as I can still see movies in 2D I guess that's fine.
The original Foundation trilogy was great.
I also disliked Asimov's sequels. The second prequel was OK, the first was not. The "new foundation trilogy" sequels by Bear, Benford and Brin were good actually (these are novels set between Asimov's "Forward the Foundation" and the first book of the original trilogy).
By coincidence I'm reading currently [B]Psychohistorical Crisis[/B], the true spiritual heir to Foundation. It's a true sequel to Second Foundation but it was not written by Asimov, alas, but by Donald Kingsbury. I found a [URL="http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/psychris.html"]non-spoilerish review[/URL] of the book. I'm about 2/3 through and I'm liking it.
Back to the movie: I don't believe this will be a good adaptation. Even if the script was any good the interview with the director indicates that he not only doesn't get the series, he seems to have no frakking idea what it is about.
Maybe I'm in the minority about liking "I, Robot"... mind you I agree with everyone that it sucks as an adaptation of the book. But I believe it works as an action movie that captures some themes in Asimov's robot stories (the three laws and the zeroth law, the interactions of humans and robots). If only they had not named it "I, Robot" and had not named the female roboticist Susan Calvin it wouldn't have been much of an intellectual rape of a beloved memory.
In any event, I doubt I'll even like Emmerich's take on Foundation as movies.
Nvidia have their 3Dvision gadget on the market, but it needs a monitor that can run at 120Hz, which are unfortunately slightly out of my price range at the moment. I'd want to see for myself what they're like before buying them anyway