A screen version of the great book cycle of Isaac Asimov - with the swing of a Hollywood blockbuster and the performance of a mediocre sci-fi.
A very distant future. A young girl Gaal Dornik (Lou Llobell) leaves her native village for the capital to help the brilliant mathematician Hari Seldon (Jared Harris). He, with the help of mathematical formulas and complex methods, invented a new science - psychohistory; it is something like a large-scale sociology that can predict the future of humanity. Seldon's predictions are depressing - psychohistory promises the Galactic Empire an imminent collapse and a subsequent period of decline and barbarism lasting thousands of years. Seldon proposes a solution: he seeks that his associates be sent to the distant planet Terminus, on which they will create a fund of all human knowledge; this large-scale encyclopedia in the future will help humanity survive the catastrophe and get out of the dark times much faster.
Do not be discouraged if the synopsis of the series seems confusing and incomprehensible to you. The fact is that Isaac Asimov's book cycle has always been considered a challenge even for a sophisticated reader - it is a literature thinking with sociophilosophical ideas and devoid of an integral narrative, the action of which is spread over hundreds of years. It is not surprising that for a long time the series proudly bore the status of "non-screened fiction", although it was clear that sooner or later some daredevil would accept the challenge and say: "Ha, we'll see about that." Viewers of the series, and especially fans of Asimov, were rather unlucky that the potential in this cycle, built on lengthy reasoning and fragmentary stories, was seen by Apple with their unlimited budget and desire to create a new Game of Thrones (streaming services are actively buying the rights to successful book series in order to create a new genre hit, be it fantasy or science fiction). From under the wing of the Cupertinians came out an insanely beautiful, but maximally simplified and convenient for the mass viewer series, which, even apart from the great original source, looks rather unsuccessful.
Let's leave the debate about the ideal adaptation of "Foundation" and its need for fans of the cycle, but let's face it: with the Apple TV + series it turns out to be an offensive ironic situation, either due to belatedness, or due to the lack of creative, original ideas from the showrunners of the project. The adaptation of a book series that influenced Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner and other successful genre franchises ends up looking like a lazy copy of them. However, visual parallels and production design reminiscent of iconic series are still a forgivable detail, because, you must agree, coming up with a completely new space style of planets, ship interiors and armor is an overwhelming work in our time.
The very simplified presentation of the material is another matter. Asimov - apparently, like a real geek - ignored the existence of women, so the book "Foundation" is reduced to kid talk about lofty matters. The showrunners made the most obvious and, of course, the right decision to change the sex of some of the characters, but at the same time, in an attempt to update the material, they eventually turned dry novels about an impersonal historical process into an emotional story about an adventure. Now comes to the fore the chosen heroine who helps everyone, who has both a love interest and an archenemy - a real tyrant, an evil clone of the emperor. It turns out not the most exciting and original spectacle, which does not bear comparison even with the recent fantasy series "Shadow and Bone", which is close in spirit, let alone the conditional "Game of Thrones".
Language will never dare to call "Foundation" a failure, but this is just a faded and nondescript sci-fi that works better as a set of static and incredibly beautiful screenshots than as a multi-layered story about the collapse of the Galactic Empire. If you miss clever science fiction, then watching "Foundation" will definitely be a wrong decision, especially with the existence of the cult "Space" five minutes away - a truly talented film adaptation of the space saga about the dark future that awaits humanity.
This article was sponsored by Venkata Naveen Bhogaraju
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