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- Apple TV+
- Sep 24, 2021
- Apple TV+
- Sep 24, 2021
Summary Dr. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) and a small group of believers seek to preserve human knowledge and save civilization after he predicts the end of the Galactic Empire in this sci-fi series based on the novels by Isaac Asimov.
Created By: Josh Friedman, David S. Goyer
- Apple TV+
- Sep 24, 2021
- Apple TV+
- Sep 24, 2021
Summary Dr. Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) and a small group of believers seek to preserve human knowledge and save civilization after he predicts the end of the Galactic Empire in this sci-fi series based on the novels by Isaac Asimov.
Created By: Josh Friedman, David S. Goyer
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
62
40% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
60% Mixed
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
62
40% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
60% Mixed
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
It's world-building without the world having already been built in countless other movies, TV series and comic novels. Watch and you have the feeling that you are at the outset of a momentous journey. ... Spectacular.
Yes, it can be self-indulgent, meandering and more complicated than need be. But that feels somewhat inevitable, given the scope of the task at hand. That “Foundation” is otherwise nimble and engaging, even for those unfamiliar with the work that first inspired it, is down to its willingness to buck the Cleons’ line of wisdom and change with the times.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 96 User Ratings
5.7
50% Positive
48 Ratings
48 Ratings
14% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
36% Negative
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 96 User Ratings
5.7
50% Positive
48 Ratings
48 Ratings
14% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
36% Negative
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
For the uninitiated, early episodes of Foundation can be a chore to get through, let alone understand. (Be prepared to replay scenes in order to catch snatches of rushed, whispery or conceptually opaque dialogue.) Which is a particular shame considering how beautiful every single frame looks. ... The storytelling improves markedly beginning in the fourth episode. ... We shouldn’t have to sit through hours of TV that makes our heads spin to get to stuff like this, that entertains and challenges us. But in this case, the patience does pay off.
The results stride with a sense of purpose, pomp, and grandeur; individual scenes are small enough to cut through the excess, but the excess is nearly stupefying.
Despite a deep bench of acting talent (including Lee Pace, who heads up the trio of clone brother emperors) the writing itself lets them down time and again. Not one line of dialogue grabbed my ear as clever or memorable. Very few distinct personalities pop out.
The individual parts of this Foundation equation add up to something that’s very pretty and slightly dull. Asimov’s books have long been considered impossible to adapt. This version is a noble effort that can’t quite solve the problem.
That nagging sense that the whole thing isn’t quite working builds to a more overarching complaint: it may be unfair to judge Foundation on its first couple of hours but at the moment it lacks a throughline.
This series is a must-have for anyone claiming to be a science fiction fan. Isac Asimov is one of the fathers of sci-fi. Apple went all out in everything. Don't mind the negative reviews, it's haters. It is one of the most extraordinary and difficult adaptations ever made. It is a long story, centuries old, with several characters, without focus on any one of them. The series covers several interesting points, such as artificial intelligence, future of humanity, forecasting the future, possibilities, revolutions, evolution and problem solving, and geopolitics.
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SEASON 1
While you normally expect a TV show to not follow the original material completely, here we have a unique phenomenon where the showrunners are literally only using a few names of characters and planets and just the idea of psychohistory and then they simply ignore absolutely everything about this legendary series and write something completely different. It is like Peter Jackson took a few of the names from LotR but in the end the trilogy he made was The Godfather but with Tolkien's names for the characters.
And it is a pity because the production values are incredibly good. But there is absolutely no respect to the original material whatsoever and it is simply taking advantage of its famous name, thats all.
Not even 1% of the original book series has been translated here.
And to add insult to injury, the huge reveal at the end of the books, a reveal towards which Isaac Asimov built up over 44 years of writing the series, is casually disregarded and revealed within the first few episodes of the show, and of course with a lacklustre and zero impact way...
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SEASON 1
I'm personally finding that there seems to be some miscommunication or something off going on behind the scenes.Story plots are being opened left, right and center without ever really FULLY being closed.
The editing feels really off as well which could potentially be due to direction. For example there is a scene where a piece of rubble falls on one of the actors and she yelps in pain as one of the ruling class walks off screen, that scene is immediately followed up by shots of the exterior with no further emphasis of why that was important until much later.
This is a common issue with the series so far... it tries to, at length, spend all this time building up these characters by showing you a lot of the things they will be doing but they don't do any actual character building for any of those characters until you're 5 episodes/hours in and have just accepted that the show has decided to skip over and not finish the background for a character that it initially started.
This is also a problem with all of the twists and turns of the plot, it doesn't go anywhere quickly and once it arrives at the conclusion it was trying to make it's usually incomplete and non-conclusive until many episodes/hours later to the extent that you've pretty much given up on any answers since the ones you do get... aren't worth waiting for and then you have to wait even longer for the full answer.
It's frustrating to watch and now you have to wait EVEN LONGER because they decide to leave things on a cliffhanger at the end of the episodes and it doesn't pick up where it started.
Set design, art direction, costume design, vfx, makeup(sfx), etc. are all great but between the direction, editing, and everything else... it's a big let down.
Also, without subtitles, added voice effects, multiple accents that add sounds to words that don't actually exist and the plethera of fictional words and places... it's almost impossible to understand what the actors are saying most of the time and it's clear the director did not ask them to enunciate.
Despite all of that, I keep watching hoping there will be satisfactory answers to the various plots they have seemed to of abandoned; hopefully Season 2 is put together nicer because I feel like this should be an anthology instead of jumping back and forth between times, places, characters, plots, etc.
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SEASON 1
