re: The Foundation

quote:

---

I could do this all day!

---

But we really wish you wouldn't.

That user's statement doesn't make much sense when compared with Rings, though.

RoP was changing details, filling in others, but overall making relatively minor changes. Those minor changes are significant, though, when the author wrote thousands of pages devoted solely to the world-building of his literary universe.

Foundation, and Asimov, had very little interest in minute details of characters or worlds. He plowed through hundreds of years of history and plot, without any memorable characters outside of Seldon, in service of his ideas. The idea of a "faithful adaptation" of Foundation for television is ridiculous. The show has created characters and worlds and villains (The empirical genetic dynasty is awesome, by the way) so that it can function as a normal, modern prestige show.

While I don't give a frick about Tolkein's obsessive world-building (and I wont pretend to know every detail that was changed in the show), it definitely lends itself better to adaptation than any Asimov I've read. Unfortunate that rights holders aren't actually interested in letting the TV show adapt what was fleshed out by Tolkien.