SO BAD. I’m not even going to give this epic fail the solace of calling it an adaptation. I read the article this morning about “All the things that had changed” in it from the book – and be real, I knew there would be changes. But you can change things without BREAKING THEM. This is the difference between the Lord of the Rings movies and the Hobbit movies. One was epic and well done and a classic, the other was an aped version of the book that everyone pretty much universally did not appreciate. One was done from love, the other? I would argue it was made from greed and should have been one, maybe two, films long. But no. No no no no no. They pulled badly from the Silmarillion to create and “fill in” the Hobbit. Except they didn’t. No Silmarillion story had a dwarven/elven romance. Frankly it didn’t do as well as the LOTR not because of any problems with the original story but because of the additions to the story. They are two different types of literature and Hollywood refused to understand that fact or care. The Hobbit was a fairy tale. But it was presented as an epic in three parts, huge mistake. Huge. But I digress.

Foundation had many of the same issues in adaptation. Instead of following the Star Wars model used in Clone Wars and Rebels, which would have worked, they followed the same trail as the Hobbit. They could have woven as the basic story of Foundation as told by Asimov, unchanged… the basics left untouched. As the author meant it to be, they could have simply added to it. Clone Wars did that. New settings, new characters. Clone Wars was fine.

Instead they chose to replace the story by Asimov with a new story. Same places used in the original book. Same names. But Seldon had a son! And oh, he murdered his dad! And I’m DONE.

It got worse. They gender-swapped roles, invented roles, added sex and violence and in general wrote fan fiction. And they made it kinda woke. The way religion is treated in general is laughable. Religion is “superstition” from a backwater place which silences science and math. Kills those who use it. Is that what people think of religion????

I’m an Asimov fan. I am not as into sci-fi as I was into fantasy but I read Foundation and I loved it.

This fan fiction? The fan fiction is a thinly-veiled assault on Western Civilization (A big tower falls? REALLY? Hello 9/11.) The main person who talks about violence being the last resort of the incompetent, when we meet…her (She is gender swapped)… is wearing a gun. This person who rewrote this story did not care about the books or the characters. At all.

Fail. Unbelievable expensive fail. It’s very pretty garbage. I hate it. Say it was “inspired by” the Foundation books and call it something else. Do not presume to “adapt” Asimov’s work.

Skip it. Or watch it with zero reference to the book. Don’t read the book first if you haven’t read it or you will be disgusted.

The next two adaptations to drop will be the Wheel of Time (streaming series) and Dune, which is a movie, rumored to run 155 minutes. I am desperately hoping for better in both of those cases. While I do expect the Wheel of Time to be completely rewritten (because I expect that showrunner to not truly respect the author’s work) I do have hope that he cares enough to keep the main things close to the original story. I know the fanbase would hate the adaptation if he drifted too far off course. He claims to be a fan. We will see. I’m trying to be hopeful about it despite the many variances I already see. Yes. I care a lot about things that seem trivial to others. But I hope he captures the heart of the series despite the changes he has made. I am clinging to that hope.

Dune looks amazing and the showrunner seems to be staying absolutely true to the original story. YAY. I’m most hopeful about this one. I’ll report back. Either way, it shall be an interesting year for me.