Sony Pictures Has bought "Foundation"

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yes, it's unusual - and no, it doesn't have to be complex or justified in any depth at all in order to work.

It's a way of predicting the future, that's all. It's dressed up as scientific in nature - the predictability of the behavior of human beings in humongous groups compared to the laws of physics, etc.

In one of the occasional actually dramatic scenes in the books, everyone realizes quite suddenly that it's not working when it fails to predict the appearance of the Mule. Then they spend some unnecessary time rationalizing why it failed.

To dramatize this in an appealing way for TV or the movies it's almost going to have to be from the POV of some characters who are questioning the whole edifice of psychohistory and the society founded on it - neither Seldon nor psychohistory itself are adequate protagonists or motivating forces as they stand.

 

[Greg Cox]

Francis.

In a nursing home somewhere, the one resident who knows how to use a computer is laughing.

My work is done.

(You know, I was wondering how many people would get that.)

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The nearest UK equivalent to Francis would be Muffin, but Muffin the Mule now sounds like a sexual offence.

 

[Kegg]

It's a way of predicting the future, that's all.

Quite. Psychohistory is prophecy given a neat sounding name - just like telepathy becomes psionics in the hands of other writers.

It's prophecy with a blind spot, and that blind spot is the Mule.

Also, yeah, the books aren't terribly good with character. Character wise I remember Hari Seldon - who is solely a plot device - and then just the Mule and Arkady, and I remember Arkady mostly because I disliked Arkady.

But I wouldn't expect a lot of fidelity from a Foundation movie and even less from one with Emmerich involved. Stripping away all the extraneous plot? It's the fall of Rome IN SPACE and some clever planning to try and save civilization. A good Foundation movie I think would boil the concept down to that essential and try to build an interesting story out of those building blocks.

 

[Owain Taggart]

The psychohistory stuff has to be reducable, dramatically, to technobabble that's used to set events in motion or motivate people. It's a macguffin - and in fact, despite Asimov taking some time to rationalize it in an interesting way, that's the function that it serves in the original stories.

If it's a MacGuffin, it's a very unusual one...

Spoiler: psychohistory

...since part of the trilogy is concerned with the realizations by some of main characters that that MacGuffin is really a MacGuffin, in that Seldon's plan has been using the myth of psychohistory's effectiveness at long-term prediction on the whole Foundation as a distraction to keep their attention away from his actual plan.

This is a significant part of the intellectual content of the trilogy, so completely reducing psychohistory to the usual kind of non-self-referential "first order MacGuffin", if you will, would actually strip the trilogy of some of its content.

To keep this content, the supposed nature of psychohistory has to be clear enough for it to be realized as not living up to its expectations.

Yeah, I think it's a bit more than a MacGuffin, to be honest, since it's such an integral part to the way the story unfolds. Without it, you don't really have a story.

 

[Chaos Descending]

The big question- Who's going to play The Mule?

Jack Black.

Nah. Dane Cook.

Joking aside, I think DJ Qualls could pull off The Mule, maybe with a little prosthesis to make his nose longer, for example.

http://images.starpulse.com/Photos/pv/DJ Qualls-7.jpg

 

[RJDiogenes]

I have dim hopes for a Foundation movie. The story is mostly talking heads, so it would work best on Masterpiece Theater. For a movie, they'll dispose of all the ideas and bring in all the off-screen space battles.

I remember a few years ago when a Foundation movie was being planned, the writer was quoted in a magazine as saying something like, "Asimov was great, but, as a writer, I need the action." That's Hollywood for you.

Francis.

In a nursing home somewhere, the one resident who knows how to use a computer is laughing.

My work is done.

(You know, I was wondering how many people would get that.)

I got it, but I'm about halfway to that nursing home.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm roughly Greg's age and watched the Francis movies as a kid, so I probably shouldn't be casting stones.

 

[Greg Cox]

I'm roughly Greg's age and watched the Francis movies as a kid, so I probably shouldn't be casting stones.

Yeah, they ran constantly on tv when I was a kid.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I've never thought of Asimov as particularly cinematic. Don't get me wrong. I devoured his books as a young fan, but, like Diogenes said earlier, they're basically talking heads and don't seem to particulary lend themselves to film. They're more about clever intellectual puzzles and thought experiments than characters and emotion . . . .

 

[Silvercrest]

Donald O'Connor just turned over in his grave.

 

[Greg Cox]

Donald O'Connor just turned over in his grave.

Actually, he danced up the side of his coffin, then did an amazing backwards flip . . .

 

[propita]

Donald O'Connor just turned over in his grave.

Actually, he danced up the side of his coffin, then did an amazing backwards flip . . .

You'll die laughing when you see it.

 

[Set Harth]

I have a bad feeling about this.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Getting back to the topic at hand, I've never thought of Asimov as particularly cinematic. Don't get me wrong. I devoured his books as a young fan, but, like Diogenes said earlier, they're basically talking heads and don't seem to particulary lend themselves to film. They're more about clever intellectual puzzles and thought experiments than characters and emotion . . . .

Yeah, exactly. They're brilliant books, but this is something that lends itself better to the written form. They aren't very visual. The problem is in trying to convey the intellectual into a visual format. It's also why psychohistory which helps in conveying visually is so important to it, because if you remove that, you don't have much of a way to tell the story.

 

[Greg Cox]

Then again Hollywood has been turning Philip K. Dick's high concepts into scifi blockbusters for decades now so maybe it's Asimov's turn . . ..

 

[The Lensman]

Foundation can't be done for mainstream movie audiences without sacrificing story.. all the main action parts, the fleet battles are just mentioned in passing because they're not very important to the main story.

It was entertaining, and fairly "low budget" with all the big stuff happening off screen.

This is one of those properties that Hollywood doesn't know what to do with, but feels it should be something big. I'd like to think it would work just fine at the level of a movie like "Moon". Lower budget without all the bloated marketing and hullabaloo.

To be honest, at this stage, I'd prefer it be done as "fan film", if that's the right term, to keep the story as true as possible to the original trilogy. Could care less about the stuff from the 80's.

Looking at stuff like "Starship Exeter", the upcoming "Starship Polaris", and HPLS' soon to be released "Whisperer In Darkness", I'd have no problem with a group of dedicated fans getting a shot at the material.

I'd prefer it actually.

 

[Klaus]

The tension between Seldon's predictions and the Mule's interference might be interesting to see, but it would be hard to do as a movie... maybe as a miniseries? There are some sequences, like the arrival at Trantor, that would be spectacular in modern CGI, but the problem of characters to identify over time would be a nagging one, methinks.

...and as for Francis, a talking mule beats a field-goal-kicking one, hooves down.

 

[The Lensman]

Then again Hollywood has been turning Philip K. Dick's high concepts into scifi blockbusters for decades now so maybe it's Asimov's turn . . ..

Good point. I remember twenty years ago a friend handed me "A Scanner Darkly" and said they'd never make a movie out it, it was just too fucking out there.

I was pretty stunned when they announced the movie. Still haven't seen it yet. The book was depressing IIRC.

 

[Set Harth]

The theatrical audience applauded at the end of the movie, and that doesn't happen all the time.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think A Scanner Darkly is a fabulous movie. However, I connected with it on a personal level, as someone close to me had just died of an accident while high on drugs. Also, over the course of my life I have known several other casualties, in some way or other, of drug abuse. I can see that not everyone can connect with that film, because it's outside their experience. But then again, I'm not ever going to read the book, because it hits too close to home. The movie is gut-wrenching, but I think it's also extremely important. The ambiance of the film is correct, which is a remarkable achievement.

Back on topic, if there's anything missing from Asimov's work in general, it is compelling emotional tension. Dick's work seems to have that in spades, from all the movies I've seen and the few books of his I've read. On the other hand, Foundation unfortunately lacks that. The Mule stuff is the only possibility for something with emotional impact.

Spoiler: spolier

Although I think the scene when the personal body shield is revealed is neat and could be somewhat tense and suspenseful if played properly.