New Asimov Movies Coming

bowman9991 writes "Two big budget Isaac Asimov novel adaptations are on the way. New Line founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are developing Asimov's 1951 novel Foundation, the first in Asimov's classic space opera saga, which has the potential to be as epic as Lord of the Rings. At the same time, New Regency has recently announced they were adapting Asimov's time travel novel The End of Eternity. Despite having edited or written more than 500 books, it's surprising how little of Isaac Asimov's work has made it to the big screen. '"Isaac Asimov had writer's block once," fellow science fiction writer Harlan Ellison said, referring to Asimov's impressive output. "It was the worst ten minutes of his life."' Previous adaptations include the misguided Will Smith feature I, Robot, the lame Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, and two B-grade adaptations of Nightfall." This reader also notes that a remake of The Day of the Triffids is coming.

The Will Smith movie wasn't based on Asimov's book

[Rix]

It was based on the earlier Eando Binder short story.

Bicentennial Man was great

[QuantumG]

If you're expecting anything better out of Hollywood then you're not paying attention.

"The end of Eternity" exists since 1987

[tftp]

I saw it around that time, and it was great, not much on special effects but excellent in creating the atmosphere of Eternity. Other people want blinky lights and fiery explosions everywhere, but I'd say this movie is similar to "Stalker".

Read here [kinoexpert.ru]

The links there say "AVI,DVD" and "HD,BlueRay" but they do not lead to direct downloads, and there seems to be no digital copy to download, only traces of it... but I haven't looked too hard.

Re:Moon is a harsh mistress

[harlows_monkeys]

That was Heinlein, not Asimov.

Fantastic Voyage

[harlows_monkeys]

A lot of people think "Fantastic Voyage" was an Asimov story that got made into a movie, but it was the other way around. Asimov was hired to do the novelization of the movie. Asimov wrote fast enough that the novelization was published quite a bit before the movie was released. Furthermore, as a condition of taking the job, he insisted that he be allowed to diverge from the script to fix plot holes. So, when the movie came out long after the book, and had plot holes and science errors that were not in the book, people assumed the book came first, and Hollywood botched adapting it!

I have my doubts.

[B5_geek]

Having read the books wfirst when I was young, and then again when I was in University I just can't wrap my head around it being possible to show it _all_ good enough in 1 film. A series of films or better yet, several SEASONS of tv shows might be a better idea. Unlike some other epics, this one just can't be compressed.

Take Wheel of Time for example; if you cut out all the 'braid pulling', Aes Sedai scheming, and repetitive explanations of how wonderful 'The Power' is, but you better not take in too much. I think they could cut it down to 1.5 hrs or 500 pages.

Re:Oh, the potential

[jonwil]

2001 (the book, the film and the story) was basically co-written by one of the best SF authors of all time (Arthur C Clarke) and one of the best filmmakers of all time (Stanley Kubrick). Also, from what I gather, there wasnt a huge amount of involvement in the creative process by MGM (as opposed to the way most films get made today)

Re:Oh, the potential

[ushering05401]

Probably because it's fucking awesome. You and your mongoloid son aren't.

That's just funny. Please read Tales Before Tolkien before ever commenting on this subject again.

Tolkien revolutionized fantastical storytelling, went unnoticed for years because he was not an attention whoring populist writer, and has now been totally dishonored by the massacre that is the Peter Jackson LOTR saga.

If the studios wanted Tolkien without the classical elements they should have paid off Terry Brooks for his stories and been done with it.

I cannot even fathom how a fan of the LOTR books could sit through half of the first movie installment, and I remember telling the friend I saw the first movie with that Asimov would be next... cause Hollywood was obviously running dry if they thought they could pull this shit over the eyes of the educated public.

Related evidence suggests that there is very little left of the educated public, as both the LOTR adaptations and the Asimov adaptations are completely bereft of any intellectual value.

But hey, maybe J.R.R. and Isaac were just fucking off.. they prolly were just in it for the paychecks just like the fuck holes making these shit-ass movies. Right? I mean why else would they be contemplating things like classical linguistics and transhumanist morality when the world is full of redemptionless fuckheads like yourself willing to part with your hard earned dollars over Liv Tyler's minimal tits.

Re:Oh, the potential

[Anonymous Coward]

Faithful to Asimov's Laws? Did I miss something? I could have sworn that there were robots deliberately killing people with malice aforethought in that movie.

Asimov was as much - or more - a detective writer as he was a science-fiction one, and he always anchored his stories firmly in his conjectured reality. No deus ex machina (no pun intended), no violations of the ground rules. Or, to quote Holmes: "No ghosts need apply". Many of the robot stories, in fact, were about how neurotic robots became when faced with conflicts of the laws.

In only one of them did he actually have a robot deliberately committing murder, and even there it wasn't gratuitous, much less wholesale slaughter.

I enjoyed the movie in general, though I've had enough of the conflict-over-the-abyss cliche, thanks very much. However, the hook in Asimov's stories was always how this could happen without breaking the 3 Laws. The movie took the easy way out and broke the First Law without compunction.

Asimov's robots were soulless, but they were never evil. And they had a lot more personality.

Re:Oh, the potential

[Daniel_Staal]

>>>misguided Will Smith feature I, Robot, the lame Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, and two B-grade adaptations of Nightfall.

I have to disagree with this statement. Yeah the B-grade movies were bad, but I thought Bicentennial Man was faithful to the original text, and I Robot was an original non-asimov story, but still stayed true to Asimov's original Four Robot Laws (1,2,3, and 0). I saw that movie three times and enjoyed it every time. I wish they'd go back and adapt a few more (but this time stick to the text).

Bicentennial Man is probably fairly faithful - to the book, which wasn't actually by Asimov. (It was inspired by a short story he wrote.) I liked it, mostly.

I Robot... It may have been true to the wording of the four laws, but it completely missed their point: To have a world where robots weren't the enemy, and weren't running amok all the time. Which is where SciFi was when he started writing, and where SciFi movies still are. Instead he had robots who were machines, went wrong in predictable (non-destructive, usually) ways, and could be fixed.

Sure, he eventually went back and subverted that, but only after everyone else had started to write good robot stories, and it was then a subversion of his own rules.

So, to me, it just completely missed the point. If they'd called it what it was: Just another Hollywood robot movie, I'd have thought it decent, and liked it. But it wasn't an Asimov story, and calling it that was just a shallow marketing ploy.

Nightfall by far the Worst

[Foobar of Borg]

In the first place, the story Nightfall is about the best one written by Asimov. The movie version made in 2000 is so bad, it is as close as you can get to blasphemy for something anti- (or at least non-) religious. The basic idea is there, but you have the white scientists against the Indian temple religious people in an utter horror of bad acting and downright stupidity. It is one of the few movies on Amazon that doesn't even have a single 4-star review, let alone 5.

In fact, my favorite all-time review is one for this movie, which also references the despicable 1988 version (and no, it was *not* written by me):

Torture to endure from start to finish..., December 17, 2000

Okay, okay, this movie was as rotten as a reeking week old carcass under the blazing sun. I can lament for hours about the MANY horribly done 'effects' and the fact that it did not match the original tale, clinging only to several very BASE-ic threads to what was an Asimov Masterpiece. I could also go on and on about how this horrific movie was cast with what I would think are the dregs of the Screen Actor's Guild (if not just ordinary passers-by abducted off the streets of Calcutta and forced to perform in this heinous waste of celluloid under the threat of their demise) -- but I can only say this... As horrid as it was... as tasteless, and wasteful of cash and human life-moments as this travesty of film has been, it is not half as horrid as its 1988 predecessor. *That* movie was some product of a bodily function from a mushroom-dazed idiot, and like some movies & games have been known to induce epileptic fits, this movie nearly caused me catatonia. Anyway... this movie bites the big one, but if you enjoy MST3K as a show, and like to do as they did... it's the perfect candidate for such activities. For anyone who enjoys Sci-fi, and is looking for good entertainment, find the book by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and read that... These film adaptations of the story (probably spawned from some evil parallel universe) should be shot into the sun.

So please, for the love of good literature, leave Asimov alone. Most of his good works cannot be properly adapted to the screen.

Re:If you liked the movie...

[lekikui]

The 'Arwen/Aragorn love affair' is also there in the books, it's not like Jackson pulled that out of thin air. They make it more obvious in the film, but that's a change I can live with.