The Foundation: Refocused and Restructured - A Foundation Film Saga — Page 2

revel911 said:

How much do you feel was cut from your series? There are still like 8/9 movies you have.

Not much footage was left out of the original series, to be honest. However, to be fair, my intention was never to turn each season into one or two films (as smudger9 does with his Disney+ Star Wars edits, or as I did with Stranger Things), but rather to reorganise the whole plot into cohesive chapters to serve as a more focused retelling of the same story.

AceWolfe said:

I’d love to check this out, please

PM sent

themurray said:

I would like to see you work on one of my favorite book series.

PM sent.
I would love to hear back from you!

Its impressive work for sure, although it did not work for me. This is essentially still Apple’s Foundation and that really is far removed from what Foundation should be.

Vidmaster said:

Its impressive work for sure, although it did not work for me. This is essentially still Apple’s Foundation and that really is far removed from what Foundation should be.

I thought I was very clear about that in my description.

ThanosM. said:

DISCLAIMER

I have not read Asimov’s novels. But I have read many reviews and seen many video essays explaining how the series is loosely based on them and how the creators missed some of the key points of the original story.
I do not want to disappoint the book readers among us, but these fanedits do not try to fix that.
The purpose of this project is to approach the content of the series in a more engaging way while providing an alternative viewing experience.

It saddens me that you didn’t find what you were looking for, but I want to clarify that I never tried to ‘sell’ this project as something that it isn’t.
Anyway, thanks for spending the time to watch my work and share your thoughts.

Of course you were. No expectations were mismatched and no intention of communicating an inherent dissatisfaction was intended on my part. I do see however how my post can be interpreted that way and apologize for that.

Expanding on what I wanted to say: For me, Apple’s Foundation is maddening in so many ways - It is a visually beautiful and well designed series, partially filled very clever and thought-provoking writing and full of clearly hard-working professionals doing a great job. And then there is the other half, filled with bizarrely primitive plots and absolute nonesensical writing which I cannot get my head around (like e.g. the commander of a giant space fleet personally deplopying onto a clearly dangerous planet on an absolutely bullshit mission, and do not get me started on anything involving the prime radiant). This show is like an ongoing train accident, I cannot look away and continue to stare at it but it is an ongoing disaster.
Your edit restructures the show in interesting ways, often improving on the shattershot style of storytelling by providing clearer and more focused individual stories. These are, however, still filled with too much nonesense for my liking. I found your version more acceptable, but it is honestly hard to state how much came from my knowledge of the original version of the show without doing a really detailed comparison by rewatching both your work and the original again.

For future readers: Focus on the “impressive work” part of my original post 😉

There’s no need for an apology, as you’ve made it clear that your intention was not to be disrespectful.

While I obviously enjoyed Apple’s adaptation enough to bother and spend endless hours making these fanedits, the flaws you mention were not lost on me. As I’ve stated in a previous comment, my pure intention was to just reorganise the overall plot, removing very very little of the fluff. I guess that decision came down to my lack of knowledge of the original material or the fact that this is still an ongoing series and we still don’t know how it will all come together in the end. I may revisit this project when the series is over, and I may have read Asimov’s books by then to see how and if I can bring the series closer to what it should have been.

I think I heard in one of Goyer’s interviews that the showrunners intend to tell a 5-7 season story, but I highly doubt that will happen. I am just hoping for a decent Season 3 for now, although I read that the production is having several problems. Despite its many flaws, I really hope we get a definitive ending, even if it comes in Season 3.

Anyway, thanks again for watching and sharing your thoughts, even if they weren’t entirely positive.
To be honest, I’ve already shared this project with a dozen users and have yet to get any feedback, so I’m glad you actually did it.

rabbitscooter said:

I’m very late to this party but would love to check out your restructuring. I gave up watching - too all over the place and slow for me - but what you’ve done looks amazing. Bravo!

PM sent!

Gaberaltar said:

I am excited about the upcoming new season and wanted to prepare by re-watching the series. But I’m dreading to go through the official edit. So I love seeing that you did this amazing work of structuring the whole series!
I’d love to see your work if possible. Thanks so much 😃

Thanks for the kind words!

PM sent.

This edit desperately deserves a glowing review! I’m finally picking this up and only two movies in, but absolutely loving it so far. Common consensus of the show, especially through season three, seems to be that the decision to deviate from the source books has borne out. And I certainly enjoyed season one in its original form for what it was, though found it extremely disjointed, with a lot of character revelations (especially their motivations) often being revealed after their actions. For me, the two movies I’ve seen so far completely remedy this, allowing the available content to be enjoyed in the most digestible manner. It’s a great effort and really well executed, and definitely the way I’d propose a first-time viewer watch this show.

One minor nitpick is that in the first two movies at least, some of the on-screen text (‘X years ago’ and planet names) is inconsistently sized/positioned relative to each other, and in one instance in the first movie some of that text is actually cut off by the new black bars at the bottom of the screen. This didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the content, though.

And one other question: Does season two jump around in time in the same way as season one, or is the original content told in chronological order?

EddieDean said:

This edit desperately deserves a glowing review! I’m finally picking this up and only two movies in, but absolutely loving it so far. Common consensus of the show, especially through season three, seems to be that the decision to deviate from the source books has borne out. And I certainly enjoyed season one in its original form for what it was, though found it extremely disjointed, with a lot of character revelations (especially their motivations) often being revealed after their actions. For me, the two movies I’ve seen so far completely remedy this, allowing the available content to be enjoyed in the most digestible manner. It’s a great effort and really well executed, and definitely the way I’d propose a first-time viewer watch this show.

Thank you so much for this! Your praise means a lot, especially coming from someone as skilled and experienced at fanediting as you are. Thanks, buddy!

EddieDean said:

One minor nitpick is that in the first two movies at least, some of the on-screen text (‘X years ago’ and planet names) is inconsistently sized/positioned relative to each other, and in one instance in the first movie some of that text is actually cut off by the new black bars at the bottom of the screen. This didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the content, though.

Yup, I’ve spotted those errors as well. I’ve always thought about revisiting and refining minor details like these, as well as resolving some audio issues, but I’ve never had the chance. I hope they will be fixed in time for the release of Volume III, which I am currently working on.

EddieDean said:

And one other question: Does season two jump around in time in the same way as season one, or is the original content told in chronological order?

The narrative of the next seasons is definitely less disjointed than that of the first, and the timeline is fairly linear. There are some flashbacks throughout the episodes, but they do not disrupt the main narrative.

I guess my process for Season 2 and 3 was to regroup the several plotlines, rather than restructure the whole story as I did for the first season.