Weekend Watch: Star Wars: Visions, Foundation
Anime Jedis and high-falutin' empire building (or destroying)...
Image Credit: Disney+
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, it’s sci-fi of all sorts via Star Wars letting anime creators loose on the galaxy and the huge-scale new Asimov adaptation. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
Much as with Marvel’s What If…? series of multiverse possibilities, the idea behind Star Wars: Visions is letting creators loose to play in the galaxy far, far away, giving full power to their imagination. Unlike the latest MCU brand extension, however, this is strictly non-canon stuff, stand-alone adventures with no concerns about tying into the wider Wars world(s) or, indeed each other. The relatively short episodes (between around 14 minutes and 22 minutes) are fast, frenetic and a whole lot of fun.
It’s not completely detached from what has gone before, though. Some familiar elements show up: there are appearances from Boba Fett (with Temuera Morrison lending his voice) and Jabba in one episode, and another is set in (and around) a giant Star Destroyer. Oh, and of course there are Stormtroopers everywhere to be roundly abused, flung about, and shot. But the real joy here is experiencing the bursts of creativity that the various writers and directors can apply to the universe created by George Lucas all those years ago.
There are Samurai-esque encounters (fitting, given how much of a debt the original films owe the work of Kurosawa etc), Scott Pilgrim-style band adventures, duelling Sith twins, a skilled master, and more. And, since this is fully backed by Lucasfilm, there are naturally all the recognizable sound effects you could hope for. The voice cast is also suitably stacked, with contributions from James Hong, Neil Patrick Harris, Alison Brie, Jamie Chung, Henry Golding, Simu Liu, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, David Harbour… the list goes on. You’ll be able to enjoy trying to figure out who is who.
And given the talent behind the scenes (directors include Eunyoung Choi, Hitoshi Haga, Hiroyuki Imaishi and Kenji Kamiyama), these are visions, indeed, striking uses of black-and-white in one episode, bursts of colour in another. Characters are stylised and impressive and you didn’t know you needed to see a Sith warrior wield an umbrella-like lightsaber until you watch one show off her skills here.
Fully leaning into what animation can do that even live-action with a giant effects budget can pull off (further even than what Dave Filoni and his team have tried with their various animated series), Star Wars: Visions will appeal to anyone who likes their Star Wars a little crazier than usual. It might skew a little young, but don’t let that hold you back even if you were already born when the original movie debuted (if you’ll pardon me, I’ll be over here turning into a force ghost).
All nine episodes of Star Wars: Visions are on Disney+ now. I’ve seen four episodes.
Image Credit: Apple TV+
I talked above about the limitations of what live-action science fiction can achieve, but Foundation, backed by the gargantuan pockets of Apple, pushes the envelope in terms of scope and scale. Some shows and movies fling around the term “epic”; Foundation is one of the few that might, genuinely, lay claim to it.
Anyone attempting to adapt Isaac Asimov’s book series was always going to face a budget and scope challenge – the esteemed author’s novels are not small tomes. There’s a reason the idea lingered for years in big-screen development limbo – you’d need a film series the length of the MCU to do it real justice, and no studio is willing to bet that on a highbrow science fiction series.
TV, however, especially in this age of streaming companies looking to make an impact and with the funds/time to do it, is the perfect forum, even if you might find yourself wishing you could project the episodes on the biggest screen possible. To boil down Asimov’s complex, layered story is near-impossible, but showrunners David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman have given it a real stab here, zeroing on a few storylines and taking the show to some impressive locales when not in big CG studio sets. One of our central figures here is mathematician and “psycho-historian” Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), who has figured out that the ruling galactic empire is on the wane. In a few centuries, it’ll have been destroyed by greed, war, and other strife. His pitch is to create a safe place, a foundation (you says the title, you wins a prize) where the best of society can be stored and civilization rebuilt after all the trauma. Naturally, the emperor (Lee Pace) isn’t too thrilled by the idea that the society he runs is doomed, and Hari and his followers are exiled.
Foundation leaps around in time and space, tracking and handful of storylines, including that of Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), one of Seldon’s followers and a genius in her own right, who discovers her new mentor has some secrets of his own. Then there’s Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), trying to keep the Foundation’s early incarnation safe in a dangerous universe. Meanwhile, the Emperor’s bloodline, a series of clones, squabble about how best to manage their sprawling domain. This is not a show you can have on while you do the laundry or scroll through social media – it demands your attention and rewards it with startling visuals (it made my geeky heart sing to see a space elevator brought to such vivid life) and characters who switch between Shakespearian declarations and regular chatter. Not all the storylines are quite as compelling as, say, Gaal or Salvor’s, but your patience will be rewarded. I can’t talk about future episodes in any real detail given the embargoes, so you’ll just have to trust me that it’s worth the journey. I’m also hopeful that Goyer and co. will score future seasons to keep their future vision alive.
Foundation starts today, Friday 24 September on Apple TV+. I’ve seen the entire first season, but only the first episode’s embargo has lifted.