The Foundation stories are not hard science, which is good since poor old Emmerich is basically a science illiterate, who randomly grabs up cool ideas. Some are genuinely neat SF and others are just inane. The real problem is that the stories have zero action, but not much more in the way of character story. Emmerich has always managed a few good action scenes with very basic character story (i.e., not as sophisticated as modern soap operas.)
But the most important thing is who does the script.