Now that the season has concluded, I suppose I have to talk about “Foundation,” don’t I? *sigh*
You all know I favor an optimistic, positive outlook whenever possible. So here’s the positive! The production values are incredible, and the show is visually stunning. Several of the performances are very compelling (Lou Llobell as Gaal, Lee Pace as Day, and Jared Harris as Hari Seldon, in particular). More sci-fi on TV is always a good thing, and I give the showrunners props for spending a lot of money to tell a complex, long game story in a thoughtful manner. Also, Seldon’s “crisis” appearance was definitely more exciting than it is in the books!
If you enjoyed the show on its own merits, that’s awesome. I’m not here to harangue you in any way. Continue loving it.
BUT.
Someone on Twitter said, “They’ve always said that Foundation is unfilmable. It still hasn’t been.” I am forced to agree. I knew going in that there were going to be significant differences, but…damn. (Note: I don’t have a problem with the gender-swapping, as a rule; the cast of the first three novels is 99.9% male, so something had to change.)
But…damn. It’s as if they plucked a bunch of character and location names from the novels, threw them all into a blender, dumped the results out onto the counter, and stitched them all back together into something I like to call, “Not Foundation.”
But it’s not really about all the (many) discrete plot changes. It’s that the show doesn’t “feel” like Foundation in any discernable way. In a thousand small ways but two really big ones:
(1) In rereading the series recently (obviously), I was struck anew at how colorful and vivid Asimov’s writing is. His dialogue is over-the-top, often veering into purple prose. The characters are overdramatic, cocky and confident, making grand declarations with a flourish of a hand and a swish of a sash. It’s wonderful.
The show, though? It’s so…heavy. Ponderous. Weighted down. The dialogue is Very Serious, always. This frankly feels like an adaptation of an Arthur C. Clarke story, not an Asimov one (though they were relative contemporaries and share space on the Great Sci-Fi Masters shelf, their writing styles are very different). They should have gotten someone like Joss Whedon to write the dialogue—his style isn’t a perfect match, but it would have gotten much closer to the feel and dynamic of Asimov’s writing.
I hope they never bring in Arkady Darrell, because the writers have shown themselves completely incapable of capturing her ridiculous spirit, gumption and spunk.
(2) The story violates the fundamental underpinnings of psychohistory. At least twice, someone declares that the fate of the Seldon Plan rests on a single, special individual. Hari himself says this!
Look, we all love the “Chosen One” trope (well, some people do), but the Foundation novels do not. It’s stated repeatedly—really, ad nauseum—in the books that psychohistory only predicts the behaviors of great masses of people. It can’t predict the actions of a single person (this is why the Mule nearly wrecks the whole thing).
Because I’m such a ridiculous nerd and always have been, I wrote my AP English paper on the tension between free will and determinism in the Foundation series. And it isn’t only a tension—it’s arguably a fundamental flaw in the books. It IS individuals who solve the Seldon Crises. The main character of each story arc saves the day because they’re clever and smart and think their way through a seemingly unwinnable situation. Psychohistory posits that it was inevitable that someone would do so, but it doesn’t care who it would be.
This contradiction(?) is a totally reasonable criticism of the novels—but it IS what the novels say. The show abandons an excellent opportunity to play with this tension in favor of going all in on the “Chosen One.”
So, yes, I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed at the stories that aren’t being told here, and at the opportunities being passed by. Honestly—and I hate to say this—the experience makes me even more reluctant to option Amaranthe for the screen (should the opportunity ever arise). I’ve always been terrified of what Hollywood might do the characters, the story, the soul of Amaranthe. This show embodies exactly why I’m right to be worried. On the other hand, Dune is a beautiful adaptation of the source material, so I’m not saying never. It can be done—which is why it’s so disappointing it wasn’t done in this case.
(By the way, I could have written another 1,000 words here. In fact, I did, but #MrJennsen came over, put his hand on the keyboard, and said, “It’s time to stop posting.”)
Originally posted on Facebook.