Are they wanting to make it look and feel like DUNE? - Foundation (2021) Discussion

[–] AmeriGirl26 (12248) 4 years ago

There was one character who was female, who was a child genius. However, her style of speaking was really weird and unrealistic, like she was some kind of puckish poet.

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[–] thingmakersback (1177) 4 years ago

What Amerigirl26 said... The girl in the books turns up in the third or maybe the second novel... There were a couple of less important female characters but it wasn't till he started writing prequels and sequels to the original trilogy that Asimov began adding more female characters.
However.
This series is ripe for gender swapping. It would literally make no difference if Hari Seldon were played by.... Tilda Swinton, for example or Cate Blanchett or Angela Bassett... And any ship captain or trader or politician might be any sex or race, for that matter.

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[–] DarthRoger (867) 4 years ago

And just why is it ripe for gender swapping? It's never been made into a movie or show before. Shouldn't we get an authentic FOUNDATION before SJW's start prying it apart in future interpretations?
And it would make a huge difference to those who've read and love the books. I'm betting if Asimov was alive, he would likely agree.
Have you read the books? If not, how can you say it's ripe for gender swapping? That's not even a credible argument.

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[–] thingmakersback (1177) 4 years ago

Jeeze... Of course I have read the novels. I've read virtually all of Asimovs fiction and some of his non-fiction. I bet if Asimov were alive he would, ego-maniac though he was, agree that changes of sex were not unreasonable.

Because Asimov was always a writer removed from the details of social life. He wrote problem stories, even if the problem was not merely dealing with a specific example of robot malfunction and how it arose from the three laws, but rather a macro-social problem - the fall of the Empire. There is no reason for any of the characters to be male or female or white or black or gay or straight. It just isn't important. Furthermore the stories, like Dune, take place so far removed in time that maintaining any current social divisions is purely a matter of choice. Asimov happened to write these stories in a time and place where he automatically assumed that men, and presumably straight white men, would be the central characters.

How would Foundation be less authentic with genders changed? I can't see that unless you believe the novels were conscious attempts to project a dominant male hierarchy on the far future.

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[–] kukuxu (5409) 4 years ago

Asimov would likely agree. Probably he would be afraid of losing the "progressive" tag. That's a big problem right now with many intellectuals: they're supporting lots of bullshit because they're so afraid of being told that they're not progressive anymore and now they're far-right.

I wish they'd dare to say out loud: this is bullshit, and this is nothing what was progressive several decades ago, before wokeness rising. But they're usually scared of the consequences (professional and social). Most of them bow, with very few exceptions, I can think Dawkins and maybe a couple more, and that's it. I don't think Asimov would be one of these exceptions.

And I love him. He's probably the author I've read the most (him and Jules Verne). He was a person with many amazing traits... courage was not one of them, though.

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[–] thingmakersback (1177) 4 years ago

Holy crap! What is SJW and "progressive" about suggesting that Asimov characters in Foundation, generally characterized by intellectual cleverness, can't be female as easily as male? These are not "warriors"... Asimov believed that violence was very much a last resort and crafted the whole massive tapestry to demonstrate the superiority of careful planning and clever deception over any form of actual aggression.
Sex is unlikely to be and race is definitely not a factor to be considered in Foundation characters.

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[–] kukuxu (5409) 4 years ago

1. It's political.

Wokeness is not about swapping genders for the sake of the story. It's about swapping genders and races to get closer to a distribution where positive characters are either female or non-white, and negative (or pathetic) characters are systematically white males. Check any series last years and check the gender/race distribution among "good guys" and "bad/useless guys".

I'll provide a simpler example: swapping a character and making him Jew isn't bad, is it?. What would you think if suddenly "Jew-swapping" became usual in modern Hollywood, but for some reason they decided to make mean and malicious characters the ones to be swapped to Jew? Do you think that would be OK too?

2. 99% of times, it's bad writing.

Gender/race swapping a key character is most of times a VERY bad idea. People from different ethnic backgrounds have different psychology and behavior. Different genders have different psychology and behavior. You race/gender swap a key character, that character should behave differently and make different decisions, and that would make the story flow in a different direction, which would change the whole story.

What writers do is to keep the same character, but cast some diversity actor/actress, so you have females written like male characters, blacks written like they were north European whites, and so on. Characters make no sense.

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[–] thingmakersback (1177) 4 years ago

hello

It's about swapping genders and races to get closer to a distribution ... ...A distribution found in the audience. This sounds fine with me up till you claim that I suggest that negative characters all be white males.

I'll provide a simpler example: swapping a character and making him Jew isn't bad, is it?...

What sort of equivalence is that? The notion of gender swapping in film is to provide a sensible array of roles for female characters. If you want your daughters to be shown women who are all followers and not leaders, all house wives and not artists or scientists or capitalists... Well, we disagree.

OK, the notion that different races have different psychologies is simply mad. Humans are all so similar that the notion of race is almost literally skin deep. This is a relic of the days of desperate desire to establish racial differences to justify European superiority. The differences you believe in are cultural. And the differences in gender psychology are not absolute, they are statistical. Yes men have greater aggression and women are more likely to be nurturing... There are violent and non-nurturing women and gentle, nurturing men... Men are physically stronger. Foundation is set in a far future where all cultural factors are up for grabs. Men and women are presumably much as they are today, however, so where there are actual grunts with guns, I assume men predominate. Since the world seems to be more automated than today's and physical labor is very limited, work in general would be done by equal proportions of men and women. This probably means that a higher proportion of child care is done by men. This seems natural to me.
Leadership and the sciences have little if any basic link to any sex based characteristic.

Bad writing is bad writing. Asimov characters rarely need to be male and the race business is goofy.

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[–] kukuxu (5409) 4 years ago

It's about swapping genders and races to get closer to a distribution ... ...A distribution found in the audience.

First and foremost, any theory should fit the evidence. Your theory doesn't explain why negative characters are systematically white males while "diversity" is enforced almost exclusively in positive characters, and a theory that goes against evidence must be dismissed.

I already mentioned that problem before. It seems you're not arguing, you're repeating a credo, a faith.

The notion of gender swapping in film is to provide a sensible array of roles for female characters.

Again, your theory doesn't fit evidence. If the goal was to provide a sensible array of roles for female characters, the focus would be writing good stories with interesting deep characters. That's not the case. Again, you're just repeating a credo, a faith.

If you want your daughters to be shown women who are all followers and not leaders, all house wives and not artists or scientists or capitalists

That a false dichotomy fallacy
https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/logical-fallacies/false-dichotomy-logical-fallacies/

OK, the notion that different races have different psychologies is simply mad.

What matters is whether it's true, and there's whole books about the differences between different ethnic groups.

This is a relic of the days of desperate desire to establish racial differences to justify European superiority.

Again, your theories don't fit evidence. Wokeness is a consequence of European white culture and it's one of the most destructive ideologies ever seen. Your theory about me "justifying European superiority" doesn't explain why I criticize wokeness, which is 100% European.

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[–] kukuxu (5409) 4 years ago

The differences you believe in are cultural.

Right now, nobody knows how much of differences between ethnic groups (differences that a couple of paragraphs before you stated didn't existed, btw) are due to cultural or to genetic causes. It's a taboo subject that can not be properly researched. Again, you're just repeating a credo, a faith.

Anyway, no matter the cause is cultural, genetic or a combination of both, these differences exist.

Bad writing is bad writing. Asimov characters rarely need to be male and the race business is goofy.

I didn't say that they "needed" to male. I said that, once they were writen as male, changing the gender (or the ethnic group) would involve changing their psychology and that would change the story. If a story is well writen (and Asimov was a pro writer), in 99% of cases, changing the gender or ethnic group of key characters will make the story non-sense.

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[–] thingmakersback (1177) 4 years ago

We are simply living in different worlds. I don't know or care much about some theory of wokeness. I don't know anybody who is "woke". The term may have originated with well meaning progressives, but it now, apparently means something totally extreme and is used mostly as a pejorative to describe a trend I am not even sure is real. I am an SF and horror fan and, particularly in SF, I think greater diversity is still a goal, not something that has been overdone. I'd have to see broad statistics to support the notion that entertainment is solely portraying white males negatively... The last new TV I've seen are Star Trek Picard, 11/22/63 and The Mandalorian. I see no trend there. People bitch about a couple of female superheros and a superpowered character in three forgettable Star Wars films, but... Big deal.
That said, I favor more diverse and leadership roles for female characters in all fiction. There's room for girly romances and gun toting boy fiction. Hell, I am a big fan of old pulp lit. But this is now and if you are saying sex roles of the '50s are appropriate in modern mass media and racist stereotypes (cuz that's what I think when I hear your idea of ethnic psychological characteristics.) are a good idea - then, again, we are in different worlds. All the anthropologists, archeologists and sociologists I read or hear from (books, blogs, podcasts) seem dead certain about the lack of significance of biological racial differences.

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[–] DarthRoger (867) 4 years ago

Because "suggesting" those characters can't be female as easily as male is clearly ignoring the fact that the characters are specifically described as HE not SHE in Asimov's books. Your argument is pure SJW dribble.

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[–] thingmakersback (1177) 4 years ago

Because suggesting that Asimov's characters need to be male because he wrote them that way for a pulp SF magazine in the early '50s is just silly. This is not a story set in a historical period. We are not recasting Julius Caesar as a woman. We are not re-writing Horatio Hornblower as a woman. We are modifying elements of a science fiction story to conform to some sort of reasonable cultural values.
Notice how Star Trek has become more inclusive? Well, science fiction is, more often than not, about the future... This is not about the '50s anymore. It is about the 2020s. The science fiction view of the future is always about the ideals of the present. I think if you retained the male dominated world that exists in Foundation as written, it would be laughed off the screen or seen as dystopian.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

Well said.

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[–] Unicornlord (3) 3 years ago

"Notice how Star Trek has become more inclusive?"

First, Star Trek has always been inclusive.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

>> That's a big problem right now with many intellectuals: they're supporting lots of bullshit because they're so afraid of being told that they're not progressive anymore and now they're far-right.

Is that what Right-Wing radio tells you? It's nonsense. The fact is that the smartest, most up to date, most involved people, as always though history are where the cultures, races and classes come together ... in the coasts where trade was. In the ancient world the Mediterranean sea were the "Blue States" ... not in terms of wokeness or anything, but that was where all the ideas met and sorted themselves out.

What you are whining about ... intellectuals do not even live in the flyover red states, the whole country is centered around the coasts and is mostly progressive because they see no need to hate everyone in order to keep themselves high in their minds in the social and economic hierarchy.

Wokeness is the next step after you know the history, after you understand the initial conditions of the equation of US history, and those who attack or ridicule wokeness are the ones who initially enslaved and stole from people and do not want to acknowledge it or make amends ... i.e. the inhuman anti-American, fascist dupes of the billionaires who are not going to give them anything anyway.

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[–] R_Kane (15828) 3 years ago

Courage? Isaac Asimov? His picture is next to the word “pussy” in the dictionary.

Ray Bradbury, on the other hand . . .

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

OP has a big problem with women ... probably because he wanted to have sex with his mother and she rejected him or never loved him. What you said about ripe for .... "interpretation" is exactly right. The original story, though I never got around to reading that, I did read a lot of Asimov, and they were almost all written to appeal to mass audiences and sell books. It is hardly unreasonable to think an update to this stale book ... and it is stale ... because for one thing the whole idea of psychohistory is so stupid. To think you can predict the mass behavior of humans especially past the steady state hunter gatherer era in real time is way past absurd. They can do whatever they want to make this story interesting, but I doubt they will be able to do that ... it will just be like I. Robot, a rip-off of a few ideas that bears no resemblance to the original book ... but in this case the book is so bad it doesn't matter.

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[–] TandyMan (10334) 4 years ago

Probably. Everything Apple makes looks bleak and horrible. They're for sure gonna woke the hell out if it too. This won't be good.

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[–] Gd5150 (10991) 4 years ago

As does Netflix and BBC. Dystopian is in with the left who control creative content in entertainment. We’ve been in this movement or a solid decade.

It’s lazy and uninspiring but a nice view into their self loathing psyches.

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[–] TandyMan (10334) 4 years ago

"It’s lazy and uninspiring but a nice view into their self loathing psyches."

This. This. This. It's the only thing I find compelling about this kind of programming.

Normally i'd write it off as just another artistic movement that doesn't interest me. The creative arts of history is full of such phases. But if these maniacs successfully remold society in their image, history will be rewritten and this will just be the new normal. Terrifying stuff.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

> Dystopian is in with the left who control creative content in entertainment.

Where do you come up with this garbage.

The Movie industry is not Leftist any more, like the music industry or the publishing industry, it's all been taken over by the financial industry ... and that is what explains why it is all so bad, and there is no value in most of it but killing time ... if that is of value to you. Sound like you are not using your time to exercise your intellect either though.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

Gaal and Hardin went from being white male characters to black females? LOL Why even bother making a series like this if they are going to totally ignore the source material. Gaal I can accept, to a degree, since he doesn't play that prominent of a role but Hardin? A black woman? Liberals always find ways to ruin things.

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[–] Ed (522) 3 years ago

Just saw the recent trailer for Foundation. I think I will pass. The original books were cerebral. The show appears to be all flash and action.
No trailer yet for the TV lord of the rings show either, but I will pass on that, too, for likely similar reasons.
Not sure about the upcoming Dune. I liked the director’s previous scifi films, but not sold on this version of Dune. I’ll wait for the reviews.
Trying What If on Disney. It’s a travesty.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

Kinda depressing. Three of my all time favorite works are the original Foundation trilogy, Lord of the Rings and Dune. The trailer for Foundation looks pretty bad. Dune looks even worse, thanks to the odd casting of Zendaya. I am done with anything related to LOTR, except the original novel. And even though I like the idea of What If, I haven't heard anything good about that.
This is why I am currently watching the original Gilligan's Island.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

> This is why I am currently watching the original Gilligan's Island.

That sounds like being disgusting with politics and voting for Trump in reaction. ;-)

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

I am disgusted with liberals. Trump is one of the few bright spots in politics in recent years. He actually does what he says he will do. That's rare. Especially from the White House.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

> I am disgusted with liberals.

You are frustrated because Republicans have screwed your chances in life, but with the money they have brainwashed you to hate those who like you are getting a raw deal, but you are too stupid to see it because you are a simple immature braindead model of the world that you will find out soon enough will disappoint you and that you were used to help other people who you thought were your brothers to screw you over, along with all the other Americans you stabbed in the back by siding with Republicans.

The only --- YES, THE ONLY THING TRUMP DID WAS TO PUT US DEEPER IN DEBT AND GIVE THE MONEY TO THOSE WHO FUCKED YOU OVER ... and is going to make you pay for it. It really is a masterpiece of brainwashing to get someone to put the truth and enlightenment so far out of their mental capacity to understand it that they are effectively beasts of burden for their masters.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

No, you are completely wrong.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

You don't know enough to make any statement of any import on any of this, you are just blathering out the garbage you have been programmed with like a Chatty Donald doll who has had his string pulled and spits out one of a few canned idiocies.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

I used to be a liberal so I have seen it from both sides.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

You are a broken person, not a smarter one.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

I am not smarter but more informed. I reject modern liberalism completely.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

I don't care because you don't know what you are talking about.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

Stop responding then.

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[–] TrentnQuarantino (8391) 3 years ago

Shut up then .... your liberal insults have nothing to do with anything but showing how ignorant you are.

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[–] brux (14666) 3 years ago

The first scenes are lifted out of all of the sci-fi movies out there. Starts out with a hovercar driving over the countryside ... like Luke Skywalker. Then on to the obligatory faster than light ship with special effect ... spinning globe ... then key the despotic emperor of the universe who kills people when they make him mad. I am so, so very tired of stupid movies ... especially stupid science fictions movies that really if they were science fictions should be less stupid than other movies.

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[–] johnmiller (3327) 3 years ago

But...with less sand. A lot less sand.

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