The Lessons of the Future: Character Vs. Events (Foundation)

Literature and film are two different mediums that often share common goals but heed my warning, do not directly translate literature into film. Stories are interpreted differently by the audience in literature and film. 

After reading Foundation and watching the movies StarWars: The Last Jedi, and Valerian, I have come to the conclusion that in film we should stick to character-based stories if we want the audience to empathize and care about our films. In Foundation in almost every chapter, we lose all the characters from the previous chapter and start with a new slate of character and new events. We began to lose attachment towards each character and care more about the environment and events. We can’t empathize with an event or grow attached to it. Events alone can be entertaining in literature but splitting a story into too many events in film can cause us to lose interest in the film altogether. In the Last Jedi, the story is split into about 5 storylines with new characters. This gives us no time to develop empathy for the new characters. (In Rogue 1 all the characters are isolated to that one film and event so we end up forgetting them completely in the overarching scheme of StarWars.) In Valerian, we end up caring about the vast world and each race that is introduced but we stop caring about the protagonists. In film, characters will always have more influence over the audience than the events or the environments.

Translating literature into film is a great idea, but remember to take liberties and weight the film towards characters more than towards the events and environments. In film and animation, characters will always pull more emotional weight than events or environments.