Isaac Asimov raped by Hollywood...again

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I just watched the 2000 movie of Nightfall.
 
I went in optimistically.  They put the right number of suns in the sky!  The movie addressed at least some of Asimov’s ideas!  The story, um, made sense!...well, at least up to a point.
 
But congratulations, Hollywood!  For the second time, you managed to completely screw up adapting one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written.  What’s the matter with these people?  To me it’s astonishingly simple:  STICK TO THE STORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I understand that when you’re adapting a short story into a movie, you have to pad it out.  I get that.  But come on!  The 1988 movie had the snake princess...now this version has people with Jedi powers?  WHAT?!?!?!  Look, just STICK TO THE STORY!
 
And the thing is, Asimov even made it easy for them.  By the time this version was made, Asimov and Robert Silverberg had already expanded Nightfall into a splendid full-length novel.  So if you need to mine for extra material to pad the story out, DUDE, pick up a copy of the novel!!!  Is this really that difficult??
 
So I’m still waiting for a good film version of Nightfall.  The tragedy is, done properly, Nightfall really would make a tremendous movie.  I only fear that two lousy film versions have turned people off of that magnificent story.

I keep wishing I could consolidate the two films and get one halfway-decent adaptation out of them, but it’s just impossible.  They both totally screwed the pooch.
 
I’m still trying to digest what I saw last night, but I’m thinking that even though this version was more faithful to Asimov’s story, I actually prefer the 1988 version.  As bad as it was, and as much as it had NOTHING to do with the story, it had some sense of dramatic presentation.  That film’s opening, showing a montage of the three-sun system, is (even though it’s the wrong number of suns) exactly the way a movie of Nightfall should open.  If I were to make a movie of Nightfall I would start with a similar montage, but with six suns.
 
And the fact that the 2000 version was more faithful to the story is actually kind of a negative, because they do it so poorly.  At least you can watch the ‘88 version and then go into the original story absolutely fresh.  The 2000 version just ruins the story’s most dramatic moments.
 
Also, at least the ‘88 version had a sense of rising tension as the suns set.  This version...boom.  Night falls.  I didn’t even realize there was only one sun left in the sky at that point in the movie.  They did a very poor job conveying a sense of the impending darkness.
 
Both movies completely ruin the climactic moment when the Stars appear—but at least the ‘88 version delivers a tiny little bit of an emotional gasp when you see the stars.  In the 2000 version the stars are just....there.  Actually, a rather unconvincing painting of the stars are just there.  Geez.  The one moment I was hoping they would get right.  The one moment!
 
However, it was nice to see that the 2000 version at least got some things right.  They did a very good job conveying the people’s panic when they find themselves in darkness.  And I really did like the “darklings,” people who have lived in the caverns in darkness since the last Nightfall.  It’s an interesting concept, very true to the spirit of the story; just unfortunately the movie dropped the concept as soon as it was introduced.
 
If I were to do a film of Nightfall I would take all care that the suns are characters in the story.  Don’t just superimpose six suns in the sky—make them each individual.  Make them all a different size, color, and magnitude.  Figure out the orbits and put them in the right place.  In the original story, Asimov named the suns Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.  In the novel, though, he wisely gave them more interesting names:  yellow Onos, red dwarf Dovim, white binaries Trey and Patru, blue binaries Tano and Sitha.  What a splendid stellar vista in which these characters live their lives, and how magnificent it would look on screen if done right.  I remember how the novel absolutely arrested my attention with the first line:  “It was a spectacular four-sun afternoon.”  How I came to love that world.
 
And it amazes me that neither film includes the characters’ speculations about these mythical things called “Stars.”
 
Ah, well.  The fact that there are two awful film versions doesn’t negate the existence of the original story—I can read it anytime I want to.
© 2014 - 2024 Jack-Abbott
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jrmalone's avatar
I couldn't agree more! I never saw "Nightfall" (either version) though -- I just assumed that it would suck, the same as "I, Robot" did. I'd heard a few years back that they were trying to develop Foundation into a movie. I was instantly excited, then just as instantly dubious. Asimov's stories, most especially the Robot mysteries and Foundation series, don't adapt well the Hollywood action movies. While you and I would like to see literal translations of them to the big screen, others would find them boring. Asimov's characters solved their issues and conflicts with brains and logic. I think the world could use a little more of that, eh?!