I first read Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (the ORIGINAL material) well over forty years ago. It was (to me) a gateway book into science fiction, which I hadn’t really read before. I have since read the trilogy over a dozen times. It’s a dear book to me and I’ve been waiting for someone to turn it into a movie or a TV series for decades. When AppleTV+ announced it was going to be a series, I was stoked. The bar was set high, but I wanted to love the series so bad that I feared I would lose objectivity over it.

Let me get the review stuff out of the way.

  • Outstanding visuals (+1)
  • Decent cast & acting (+0.5)
  • Connection to the source material is LOOSE at best (-2)
  • Standalone narrative isn’t without merit, but isn’t compelling (+0)

I wanted to see Asimov’s Foundation. Instead, it turns out to be Friedman & Goyer’s Foundation loosely based on some ideas from Isaac Asimov. The creators are far more interested in their own take on Asimov’s universe than on the story originally told by the author. I might have appreciated this more had I not seen the movie Dune in-between. Dune is a far trickier adaptation to make, yet it succeeded like no movie since The Lord of the Rings. By comparison, Foundation is a train wreck.

Do not waste your time. It’s bad enough I won’t get mine back.

4.5/10

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