Interesting extract from a longer /Film interview with in-demand director Roxann Dawson.
I appreciate how she speaks with respect for the shows of the new era.
I’m glad she’s getting work, but I wish it wasn’t on that dumpster fire.
Edit: I guess I found the Goyer fanboys. Foundation sucks and is a slap in the face to the legacy of Asimov and classic Sci-Fi. “Foundation can’t be adapted…” Then fucking don’t and leave it alone. I hope Michael Bay gets tapped to start directing 1:1 adaptations of Star Trek I-V, and then they do an animated version of VI with Justin Roiland recording all of the voices.
from a not book reader (actually think I read them, but such a long time, I doubt you were even born yet), Foundation is Excellent fucking Science Fiction, and it’s too bad you can’t enjoy a production of this quality on this scale that just keeps getting incrementally better with every passing episode. it’s really good televison, and the best show on tv right now.
With all due respect, I strongly disagree. I admit my views are coloured by my love of Asimov’s work, and their radical re-write has left a bad taste in my mouth. But when I analyse this show objectively I am left bewildered that anyone could call it “excellent fucking science fiction.”
Most of the actors are TERRIBLE. It was like watching wooden planks act. Instead of developing the story in any meaningful way, the directors chose to focus on disparate and dream-like sequences which appear to have little connection to each other. Bizarre pacing. They took the expansive time gaps and somehow made them confusing and meaningless. The dialogue is atrocious. The CGI is laughable. The accents are ridiculous. This is science fiction of the worst kind.
Lee Pace is the only reason I finished season one. Despite the horrific writing, he somehow pulls it off. The Expanse set the bar very high for sci-fi, but it showed us it can be done well. Foundation is fantasy in space. It’s Wheel of Time and Rings of Power in space bad.
As far as I see it: The series actually reverts the whole premise of Asimov’s vision, which is:
The behaviour of large groups of people can be modelled statistically, whilst in the series, everything hinges on specific events and persons.
If you want to film a long term epic tale about galactic civilisations, be my guest, but don’t call it “Foundation”.
Note: As good as Asimov’s world building is, literarily, he’s only mediocre.
I’m not the OP but I got a bone to pick with the way you wrote this comment.
actually think I read them, but such a long time, I doubt you were even born yet
Lmao what a weird thing to say. Congratulations on being older?
it’s too bad you can’t enjoy a production of this quality on this scale
True, I can’t enjoy a low quality show that focuses on meaningless drivel between poorly written and acted characters.
just keeps getting incrementally better with every passing episode. It’s really good televison, and the best show on tv right now
I wholeheartedly disagree on this. Even if it were good, which it really really really isn’t, shows like The Bear and Severance are on an entirely higher tier.
I’ve just started the show, and I feel like from the outset they made it clear that a LOT of the show is creative fiction to fill in the gaps. I feel like a lot of people forget just how short the original trilogy is. F, F&E and SF, collectively, are like an 8 hour read! I don’t love everything the show has done (and some of the acting is atrocious) but I love how they chose what boils down to allusions in the books and focused whole episodes on what that would’ve looked like in real time.
I also really like how they are not afraid to completely abandon cliff hangers for several episodes at a time, while still keeping you invested in what’s happening. Asimov dwas notorious for that and did it SEVERAL times on the trilogy. Oh you wanna know what happens? Well I’ll tell you eventually, but first, here’s forty pages introducing brand new characters on a completely different planet…300 years in the future. Bitch.
If the books were too short for a series, why not make a film or a series of films rather than stretching it out?
It’s not really Foundation though is it. It’s one plot that has a passing resemblance to Foundation but misses a lot of the point and another plot that’s interesting but has nothing to do with any of the books about the Emperor. I didn’t find the first series enitely unenjoyable, but I’m annoyed they wasted the license to one of my favourite book series for a show that could have been anything.
Asimov’s works are quite hard to adapt to movies or TV series, imo. If you have read him once, you probably know
Then don’t. Not everything needs to be adapted and watered down, sometimes stories just belong in their original medium.
I don’t even like Asimov’s work (his characters are awful) and what I watched of the first season of Foundation was pretty bad. I can’t imagine what fans of his books must’ve thought.
I was hoping an adaption that shored up his weaknesses in characterization while finally showing me what all the fuss was about, and I didn’t get that at all.
I agree. I grew up reading Asimov. It ignited my passion for reading and sci fi. To see how badly they’ve butchered this material is devastating. It bears almost no resemblance. Like so many Hollywood projects, the only thing it has in common with the material is some character names. Everything else is creative writing. Because of course modern writers think they’re better than Isaac Asimov.
English usage varies. That usage of ‘passed’ isn’t top of mind for me.
Regrets to have evoked death for anyone.
Well that’s another cultural difference right there.
I’m Canadian. Expressing regret and saying we’re sorry is a reflexive social necessity.
We even have federal and provincial legislation (Apology Acts) to prevent an express of regret from being used against us in court.
But it’s also true that ‘Sorry, not sorry’ is a thing.
And it’s a quite nice little episode. Foundation really got good in its second season.
Second season is so boring I barely got through first two episodes over a week because I kept falling asleep watching them. I really hope it picks up in E3.
I think I have never disagreed with anyone more in my life then you and your post.
The entire show is a crazy mess IMHO. But then I didn’t really enjoy the books either, so I must be a subhuman. Commence the downvotes! I’ll show myself out.
(It is nice to get an update on Dawson’s career though and I’m excited to see she made the jump to directing - never knew that).
Oh hell. So I’m a little bit tipsy, but I just saw the words “Roxanne Dawson (B’Elanna) passed” and got damn scared for a second
I had the same panic. That’s not even the title of the article (‘Voyager’s Roxann Dawson Had A Chance To Direct Star Trek But Dropped It For Another Show’) so, unless the website changed it, you have to wonder what OP was doing writing it that way.
OP isn’t American. It’s not a universal euphemism.
Even having lived in the US at one point it’s not an automatic connection.
Canadians (at least in my experience) use the expression ‘passed away’ if at all to avoid saying ‘died.’
But also being Canadian, I’ve given my regrets elsewhere on this thread. And I’m sorry for the unintended shock to any and all who don’t share my dialect.
No worries. You regularly comment and post on a variety of topics, always with a steady and non-antagonistic viewpoint. This situation is very, “it’s not you, it’s me.” I have relatives from the southern U.S., and they shorten “passed away” to just “passed.” It’s just what I’m used to hearing.
Woke up, no coffee yet, and saw "Roxann Dawson (B’Elanna) passed … " Startled the heck out of me.
So much better Sci-fi out there that would be amazing for a TV series or three.
Personally I work love to have a go at the Greg Mandel series or if I had all the money the Honor Harrington series.
the Honor Harrington series.
These books are fun, but they’re not good. Bad prose, ridiculous characters, childish storylines. It would almost have to be approached like Starship Troopers and treated as a parody of the genre.
I don’t know which volumes you read in the series or which side series you’ve read but that’s not an accurate description of the series.
Also Starship Troopers isn’t a parody of SciFi is a parody of fascism.
@cygnus The earlier books have fantastic, well-thought out space combat scenes, fairly well informed by physics and orbital mechanics.
Everything around those scenes is cringeworthy, and gets much worse as the series goes on. (Honor may be the most Mary Sue character ever.)
They get worse as they go on, like most Weber series. A few books in and they seem to always devolve to coredumps of exposition and backstory marginally dressed up as meetings. Even the tactics and action diminishes to the point where I’ve read more compelling write ups of tabletop war games.
(And I’m someone who both war games and has read every single book in the Safehold series.)
