After being inspired by James Cameron’s Avatar, Director Roland Emmerich has decided to shoot his next film in 3D using CGI motion capture. This news alone is nothing shocking, considering the proverbial avalanche of films set to be shot or converted into 3D these days, but what does make some (including myself) pause for concern is that this isn’t just “another movie”, this is Roland Emmerich’s planned adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s classic – Foundation Trilogy.
Emmerich spilled his reasoning behind this decision in a recent interview (which didn’t help matters).
Emmerich said,
“It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real, I think now everybody who does bigger movies has to shoot them in 3-D. Probably now all big movies have to be 3-D. It’s not only the effect of 3-D, [Avatar has] just shown that if you do a movie in 3-D, you can ask for more money and that’s the trick. I think now everybody who does bigger movies has to shoot them in 3-D. I think there’s no way around it. I was on the set of ‘Avatar’ and I saw how it worked and I really thought, ‘That’s the ultimate way of making movies.
If you haven’t read The Foundation Trilogy, here’s a description
The Foundation Trilogy is an epic science fiction series written over a span of forty-four years by Isaac Asimov. It consists of seven volumes that are closely linked to each other, although they can be read separately. The series is highly acclaimed, winning the one-time Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966.
The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psycho-history, a concept devised by Asimov and his editor John W. Campbell. Using the law of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone for anything smaller than a planet or an empire. It works on the principle that the behavior of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy). The larger the mass, the more predictable is the future. Using these techniques,Seldon foresees the fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire arises. To shorten the period of barbarism, he creates two Foundations, small, secluded havens of art, science, and other advanced knowledge, on opposite ends of the galaxy.
The focus of the trilogy is on the Foundation of the planet Terminus. The people living there are working on an all-encompassing Encyclopedia, and are unaware of Seldon’s real intentions (for if they were, the variables would become too uncontrolled). The Encyclopedia serves to preserve knowledge of the physical sciences after the collapse. The Foundation’s location is chosen so that it acts as the focal point for the next empire in another thousand years (rather than the projected thirty thousand).
You can also listen to the entire (8 hour) Foundation Trilogy radio drama below (courtesy of Internet Archive)
[Rant]
Look, I’m generally a fan of Emmerich’s disasterpalooza films. I’m not one of these high and mighty folks that can’t just enjoy the spectacle, but… seriously? The Foundation Trilogy is a slice of Sci-Fi sacred ground.
If Emmerich is simply going to throw together a 3D/Mo-Cap mess for the sake of getting more money for it, or because he “would not know how to shoot this thing in real” and potentially destroying a classic in the process – then he needs to hand the project over to a real director that can.
Am I overreacting? Let me know what you think in the comments (and keep it civil)
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[Source] MTV
