New Asimov Movies Coming 396
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.
In Other News - Dune Remake (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll never understand why LOTR *the movie* has so many fans!
I liked Bicentennial Man (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought it was a good reflection of being human. I have never read an of Isaac Asimov books though so Im sure it doesnt live up to the book, but i thought it was still a good film on its own.
End of Eternity (Score:3, Interesting)
The Humanoids (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually believed that the ideads not from 'I, Robot' were from The Humanoids [fantasticfiction.co.uk], by Jack Williamson.
Spoilers below:
The plot in which humanoid robots are welcomed into society only to later enslave humanity, in order to protect it, comes right from the novel. Additionally, so does the idea of going to the supercomputer at the center of it all to shut it down.
What you say seems to have some merit as well. I would think that the movie takes ideas from many sources rather than just one, or even two.
I, for one... (Score:3, Interesting)
...would gladly welcome some Rendezvous-with-Rama--The-Movie-producing alien overlords. 3D IMAX, anyone? Just like Morgan Freeman promised, but never delivered. Of course, that car crash might have put him out of this game for good, but there is still a chance that I will live to see another adaptation (i.e., made by somebody else]. It always seemed to me as a more compact story, and there is an opportunity to shoot some marvellous ramascapes.
Concerning Foundation, well...that would be a huge task. Too epic. "Just effects" won't cut it. I'm afraid I do no trust film producers enough to believe that they won't screw it completely.
Re:I liked Bicentennial Man (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose 2001, one of my favorite movies, would be a complete failure if it were to be shown to todays public.
Thank you, you saved my day — and, yes, The Times They Are A-Changin', but not to the better these days.
CC.
Lame? Bicentennial Man lame? (Score:1, Interesting)
How can you say Bicentennial Man was lame? It's one of the most lovely adaptations of a novel I've seen to date. Tasteful, insightful, graceful, and more -fuls, all of them good . Maybe you are american and cannot see a movie unless there are car chases, explosions and sex in it (oh, and terrorists, lots of terrorists). As for I, Robot I agree; I'd rather listen to three hours of elevator music than suffer that crap.
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuff said.
The Will I, Robot movie was pretty darn good (Score:3, Interesting)
115 replies and—as expected—already there's a half-dozen condemnations of Will Smith's I, Robot with only one positive and one mixed to balance them out. Let me tell you that the naysayers are very wrong.
The movie surprised me with how faithful it was to the dozens of Asimov robot stories. Let me repeat: Asimov's themes fill the movie from start to finish. The movie's plot is entirely based on Asimov's four (yes, four) Laws of Robotics. I wonder if those who condemn the movie have actually read any or all of the stories, as I have, multiple times. Otherwise, I don't see how they could have missed (as I posted to Usenet [google.com] a few years back):
Yes, yes, I know Asimov disliked violence-filled "robots run rampant" stories and wrote his robot stories in part as counterpoints to such. But given the strictures of a Hollywood big-budget action movie (and don't expect a science fiction movie to be otherwise), I, Robot is pure Asimov.
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat stories would make better movies than either Tolkien's or Asimov's best stories.
Hollywood takes too many good stories and ruins them with T&A. They should instead be taking marginal stories and improving them as only marginal stories can be improved.. with gratuitous sex and violence.
As for Heinlein, I remember checking out audio tapes of some of his books as an initial act of juvenile choice at the library... and only after they were playing for my whole family to hear did I realize that the dude had some serious issues with waiting till his heroins were menstruating before thinking about their thighs.
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:5, Interesting)
They are ADAPTIONS FFS Why can people not get this through their skulls. For many many reasons movies cannot be the same as the books. I happened to enjoy the LOTR Movies, but only because I detatched them from the Epicness of the books.
Noone, except you it seems, is expecting the movies to be exactly the same as the books, Its just not feasible. We dont know what Tolkien himself would have wanted with regards to these movies, or how he would have felt about them.
The story has been sold, theres nothing you can do about it now. If you dislike these movies, then Dont fucking watch them, Its not hard.
Re: Oh, the potential (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:4, Interesting)
My immediate reaction was, WTF? You are spending millions of dollars to make this thing and you don't even understand the first most basic thing, a thing any American ten year old could probably explain to you? But that's just it; millions of dollars are on line, put up mostly by people who have not read the book and would rather spend those dollars on people who have proven movie experience. And sometimes those people just don't get it, even if they are very good at what they do, and things like I, Robot are the result.
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the masses were already complaining about the ending being too long. Personally, I was amazed that we got as much denoument as we did. Most fantasy novels these days just go "poof" in the last 5 pages, and everyone is happy again, so it's not just movies that suffer from the public's attention deficit disorder.
So I think we got as much LoTR as non-fanatical fans could stand, although I would have liked to see Robin Williams as Tom Bombadil.
Re:If you liked the movie... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Don't read the book, it'll ruin it."
Not true. I liked both the books and the movies. The books are timeless classics and the only problem I had with the movies was the Arwen/Aragorn love affair which probably had Tolkien spinning in his grave. Other than that I thought the movies were excellent and Jackson did an amazing job.
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:4, Interesting)
But omission of "The Scouring of the Shire", THE BEST PART of the whole fucking story, was just asinine.
... or would have been in the book. Movies require different considerations, and the omission of that scene from the movie made sense.
In fact, when they first announced the movies many eons ago the two scenes you mentioned were the first ones I was hoping Jackson would cut, the Scouring because it would have rendered the ending even more long and cumbersome than it was in the final film. Remember, the point is not to make a shot-for-shot documentary of what's in the book, but rather to make a good film that shares the book's concepts, plot and characters. Including the Scouring would have been good from a character development and accuracy standpoint, but it would have failed in the sense that the film's ending would have felt egregiously long. Most viewers new to Tolkein's stories, their attention focused on the destruction of the ring and celebrations in Minas Tirith, would have found an extra battle in the Shire as superfluous as the transparent mechas of the frozen future at the end of Spielberg's AI.
I wouldn't have the book any other way. And of course, none of the above explains why Faramir is temporarily a bad guy, nor why half the scenes in Return of the King were in slo-mo despite its already egregious running length. But Scouring's omission always made sense to me.
You May Not Like It But... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone remember Millennium (1989) based on the excellent story "Air Raid"? Great story. Great SF concept. Great actress (the very appealing Cheryl Ladd). Great enough adaption to the screen. The movie bombed.
Even WALL-E was pretty decent SF that non-SF fans had trouble following.
Not all great SF makes for great movies.
Re:Oh, the potential (Score:3, Interesting)
I, Robot is a collection of loosely related short stories. The only really common element is the general setting and the three laws. The movie can be thought of sort of like another short, similar setting and again using the laws. In that respect it works (although I agree with other posters who say it misses the point of the laws, especially the First Law).
The Foundation series is sequential. They follow the fall of the "Galactic Empire" and the eventual rise of the Foundation over the course of several hundred years (the stories cut out before the projected 1000 year replacement plan). Out of the 8 short stories, only two focus on characters even present in previous stories. With only one exception, there is a gap of decades from one story to the next (and even that one exception still has a gap of a few years IIRC). This works well enough in a book, but adapting it to a movie means one of three things:
- Focusing on one or two of the shorts, which means either an awkward introduction or ending, or both, since you miss most of the story.
- A very disjoint movie, as the cast and setting change completely several times through the movie.
- Rewriting the story from the ground up so it isn't really the foundation story anymore. Fit it into a movie time line, where somehow the empire crumbles and the Foundation takes over in the span of no more then a few years and thanks to the efforts of a couple of lead actors.
Probably the best compromise would be a still somewhat disjoint trilogy, where the characters only change between films.
The first three shorts are close enough in time line to be the first film with Hardin (lead character of #2 and #3) featured in the first story, or simply skip through the first very quickly (it's basically just introducing the premise).
The next two shorts (Traders and General) combine the lead characters into one and shorten the span to no more then a few years.
Of the last three shorts, 6 and 7 are the closest thing to a good movie plot in the series (the longest two stories, following the same set of characters, has the shortest gap mentioned above, and even a decent climax). The last story would have to be bolted on here or combined in some other way. The characters in it share similar goals to those in #7, and a skilled writer could probably make them overlap in time lines and combine characters in a believable way without losing too much.
Enough rambling, hope that answered your question somewhat.