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Asimov's Foundation series on AppleTV- ** 1st Season is in the books! pun/no-pun (1 Viewer)

I've been looking forward to this. I like Jared Harris and Lee Pace. Unfortunately the reviews I've seen haven't been very good. I'm only a few minutes into it so far. Damn Sopranos marathon distracted me.

 
zoobird said:
Really hoping this isn't great, so I'm not tempted to get Apple TV.
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It's great. The problem with most shows is the pilot episode tends to operate off of a checklist versus practical storytelling.

Witcher with Henry Cavill was a great story but done with some very poorly structured storytelling. ( I.E. as a test case of what can go wrong if you don't use a traditional pilot format) Foundation has clearly good storytelling but this kind of show needs a four episode immediate drop to try to catch their audience. It's one thing Ron Moore did right with the Battlestar Galactica reboot, he entrenched with what amounts to a four episode pilot converted into a mini series.

I find Lee Pace to be grossly overrated. He keeps trying to channel Alan Rickman from Die Hard, well if Hans Gruber had all the charisma beaten out of him. But this kind of typecast will appeal to narcissists. Thus the collection of lawyers in the FBG forums will probably love his character to death.

Jared Harris' career arc has settled in nicely as the thoughtful slightly radical subversive who likes to laugh at his own jokes.

A smart decision was to not give the cinematography the washed out Avengers Endgame "This was 90 percent filmed in an SFX studio" aesthetic.

 
Also fell asleep during the first episode, but mostly because I tried to watch it well after midnight early Friday morning. Enjoyed it so far, although having a bit of trouble separating in my head the things I know from multiple reads of the book vs. what they've revealed so far in the show. I have been really curious how they'll adapt this, a book that spans so many years, one of the questions I have. To me the pacing did feel a bit slow even though there was a lot in each episode.

 
I thought I read the books- or at least some- but I'm remembering bupkis while watching the show.

ep2 certainly ended with a bang.

 
DA RAIDERS said:
this was a bit of a slog.
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Refusing to use a voice over narrator is going to make this hard to get the largest audience possible. Maybe it gets late word of mouth like a Breaking Bad, but there is so much more competition now for original programming. 

The show will have "The David Palmer Problem"  On 24, Dennis Haysbert as President David Palmer could never been a fully formed three dimensional character. In the show's universe, he was the first black President. So he couldn't be shown doing something morally questionable or ruthless or corrupt without major backlash. The show was out and in it's prime right about the time that FX's The Shield was out and television execs saw the massive fallout from the Vic Mackey character and some polarized audience responses.

Lee Pace is openly gay and so he can only be portrayed in some position of strength. That's incredibly limiting in writing a character. Zachary Quinto created the same problem for the Star Trek reboot universe when he came out. No one wants the backlash and inevitable accusations that come with being accused of portraying a character a certain way because of bias against the real life actor.  Sarah Paulson, a thoroughly mediocre actress, gets the same immunity by being Ryan Murphy's new muse via American Horror Story.

There's needs to be more multi-functional use within the writing. A scene should be accomplishing 4-5 things at once - i.e. world building, character development, set up and/or payoff, creating conflict both short and long term, setting up a B storyline, etc, etc.

David Goyer has never been economical and multi functional in nature. But he's in a situation where Apple has made a huge investment and they are going to see this through.

 
Ep 3... I know why they did it. But it seemed redundant to have some much time spent on the concept of Empire- dawn, brunch, dusk, etc. 

And then I fell asleep. Because I was tired, but there wasn't much narrative keeping me awake either.

 
:blackdot:

I've watched two episodes and should get to the third shortly.  Lately I've been listening to the audiobook versions of the Foundation novels to put me to sleep.  Galaxy, Asimov's characters speak oddly.  

 
Going to need to check this out.  I re-read the novels during early stages of Covid when I was sitting around all day.  

 
Meh, great concept, I'm sure the books are fantastic.  The Emperors are way too cartoonish.  Maybe it picks up when they get to forming the Foundations.

@El Floppo "Brunch"   :lol:

 
It is kind of weird... had this been a year ago I would have watched it through regardless.

Now I don't have the time anymore.  Have to pick and choose.

 
TripItUp said:
After 3 episodes I've decided that I'm disappointed with the adaptation.  Sucks.
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You don't want to hang in for another all over the place, lazy episode that ends rapidly in a cliffhanger that isn't resolved or even addressed in the next episode? Are you nuts?!

 
Anyone still watching this? I just started a couple days ago and am through 4 episodes. I like it well enough, but I like sci-fi and space stuff, and I didn’t read the books so have nothing to compare it to.

even with the space stuff, probably the most compelling thing to me so far is the dawn/day/dusk situation. 

 
took 3 tries to watch episode 3.  fell asleep twice, attempting to watch episode 4.  it picked up though!  I'm in.  i loved the books and am a sci fi dork.

 
So far, I feel like the narrative structure has been tough to engage with...going all over the place. I guess I get it- lots and lots to cover to establish a base-level, but I haven't been happy with how the story has been edited to tell the story.

Does feel like it's finally finding it's feet though.

 
Still watching, the show itself is just beautiful but it can be a bit of a slog. Don't watch if tired. I'll probably see it out though, I'm intrigued enough. But I'd probably hesitate to recommend it broadly so far.

 
I'm trying to watch.  Never read the books.  Hard to keep up with who is who.  Other than Brother Day, and Brother Dusk - and whoever the android is that serves them.

 
I'm reluctantly watching, it's just okay.

Really hope somebody else remakes this again in my lifetime.  This adaptation is subpar.

 
GordonGekko said:
It's great. The problem with most shows is the pilot episode tends to operate off of a checklist versus practical storytelling.

Witcher with Henry Cavill was a great story but done with some very poorly structured storytelling. ( I.E. as a test case of what can go wrong if you don't use a traditional pilot format) Foundation has clearly good storytelling but this kind of show needs a four episode immediate drop to try to catch their audience. It's one thing Ron Moore did right with the Battlestar Galactica reboot, he entrenched with what amounts to a four episode pilot converted into a mini series.

I find Lee Pace to be grossly overrated. He keeps trying to channel Alan Rickman from Die Hard, well if Hans Gruber had all the charisma beaten out of him. But this kind of typecast will appeal to narcissists. Thus the collection of lawyers in the FBG forums will probably love his character to death.

Jared Harris' career arc has settled in nicely as the thoughtful slightly radical subversive who likes to laugh at his own jokes.

A smart decision was to not give the cinematography the washed out Avengers Endgame "This was 90 percent filmed in an SFX studio" aesthetic.
Click to expand...
Lee Pace on Halt and Catch Fire was great. But then again pretty much all the cast was great.

 
Finally caught up. The 5th episode was a bit of a mess, even if we got some new information.

I will say this show is gorgeous, the visuals are off the charts. I feel like there’s a really good show in there somewhere, but the storytelling part is a bit off. 

 
Foundation, the tv series is to Foundation, the Asimov book, as Starship Troopers, the movie, is to Starship Troopers, the Heinlein book.

 
the most recent episode picked up the pace a bit- also didn't jump to any new stories thankfully. feels like it's hitting it's stride finally more to what I had been expecting. and again- looks good, but the story telling... I guess by necessity... had been all over the place and not done in an interesting or compelling way for me. 

I kept thinking about Galaxy Quest during the walk-the-spiral thing... "I see you've managed to lose your shirt again".

eta: and it appears we're in for another time jump with the mathlete girl. 140 years?! 

 
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I think the show is very watchable for sci fi fans. I’d never heard of the book it’s based on before so I had no background knowledge or expectations. 

 
I'm through 5 episodes, it's okay. Not great. Not the worst. It looks nice, they clearly put money into it, but overall none of the characters are really grabbing me and I'm not overly excited to finish it, through I will just to see it through and I love sci-fi. 

I've probably watched Starship Troopers 6 times, love it as a guilty pleasure. Fascist sci-fi at its finest. 

"Would you like to know more?"  :bag:

 
thecatch said:
I think the show is very watchable for sci fi fans. I’d never heard of the book it’s based on before so I had no background knowledge or expectations. 
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DA RAIDERS said:
i don't know...jake busey, some nice nudity, doogie howser...starship troopers is pretty legit.
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foxco said:
I'm through 5 episodes, it's okay. Not great. Not the worst. It looks nice, they clearly put money into it, but overall none of the characters are really grabbing me and I'm not overly excited to finish it, through I will just to see it through and I love sci-fi. 

I've probably watched Starship Troopers 6 times, love it as a guilty pleasure. Fascist sci-fi at its finest. 

"Would you like to know more?"  :bag:
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I think Starship Troopers is awesome... but lots of camp and satire/social-commentary at play in it, similar to Robocop.

a bunch of my gbs from architecture school went into CG (smart) and either worked on the bug attacks, or raved about the bug attacks... which were historic at the time for (I can't remember the term) incorporating lots and lots of different acting creatures in mass shots. I guess they'd usually animate 10-20 and then copy paste them around as blocks to make things easier. if you knew what to look for, you'd see repeated characters and movement. but here, they were all or mostly all animated independently.

 
and it's through Ep 8 of 10. 

again- I think it finally got running here, with backstories in place and no need to generate new stories/characters/timelines.

 
El Floppo said:
and it's through Ep 8 of 10. 

again- I think it finally got running here, with backstories in place and no need to generate new stories/characters/timelines.
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I’m liking it ok so far. Don’t care much for One-Eyed Winnie’s performance though.

 
I also think it's starting to hit it's stride. It's interesting what they are doing (did) with Gaal, but not really sure (if I'm correct) they needed to introduce that this season. At least not in full. I think focusing a bit more on terminus, the crisis and the time vault likely would have led to a bit more streamlined season. Gaal could have been in it but I would have ended once she went into the pod, and picked up the stuff with Seldon in season 2 when they can likely flesh that out even more (again, assuming my understanding is correct).

But, getting to the point now where it is making sense, and coming together into somewhat of a coherent story/season.

 
thecatch said:
I think the show is very watchable for sci fi fans. I’d never heard of the book it’s based on before so I had no background knowledge or expectations. 
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Finished episode 9 last night, and this is still where I'm at with it.  I wouldn't run around recommending it to everyone but I enjoyed it and don't regret watching.

 
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