what's going on everybody and welcome back to my channel movie files ellie here today to share with
you all my review of the first two episodes of the brand new apple tv plus sci-fi drama by the name
of foundation which will be premiering his first two episodes this coming friday now i got the
opportunity to check it out early and i'm really excited to share my thoughts with you all and
let you know if it's worth checking out on this spoiler-free review before we break it all down do
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and for all my foundation fans out there let me know if you were excited for this new series
if what was your anticipation for it have you read the novels these are based upon and if you
have read the novels this brings me to my second question how was the adaptation in these first
episodes to the source material was it pretty true to the source material or if you were like me and
haven't read the novels what'd you think of the narrative the story the characters the direction
are you hooked are you fascinated or were you bored were you disappointed let's talk about it in
the comments below so for me personally i've been saying it for two years now apple tv plus to me
is one of the best if not the best streaming service out there they don't have the the
quantity of a netflix dropping something every week but they have the quality and that's more
important to me and i've covered like 95 of their shows whether it be the morning show c
ted lasso for all mankind you name it i've watched it i'm a big fan of apple tv plus so i'm always
excited to see what they have up their sleeve so going into this show i remember last year i
want to say it was beginning of last year apple dropped like this first look behind the scenes
teaser trailer for this show and it was david s goyer who's the co-creator co-producer of the
show he was talking about it and a couple things caught my attention number one he mentioned star
wars he misses he mentions star trek he mentions frank herbert dune things that i love if it wasn't
for isaac asimov who's the creator of foundation we might not ever have seen star wars dune or star
trek are some of our favorite sci-fi's because pun intended isaac is the foundation of sci-fi
a lot of the stuff that we see in sci-fi comes from his novelizations of foundation and other
books he's written so i'm like okay i love those things so yes sign me up please and then david
goes on to say that it's almost kind of like watchmen where it's like almost unadaptable
because this story spans over a thousand years so i'm like oh i like an underdog i like when people
say you can't do things and they do it so i was really intrigued very fascinated by the
show being a big sci-fi fan that i am here we are discussing the first episode so the way i want to
handle this i'm going to leave chapters and time codes in the description so you guys can kind of
know what we're going to be tackling in this video but again no spoilers just my general thoughts of
the first two episodes kind of recapping the first two episodes breaking down the characters as much
as i can without giving too much away and just letting you know if it's worth checking out in
this spoiler-free review so let's kick things off with starting off with my first impressions
this has to be and this is a i'm not speaking hyperbole this has to be one of the best looking
shows i've seen all year i i and first and foremost i mentioned apple tv plus
their pockets are deep every show that they've produced has looked gorgeous but i think this
is the best looking apple tv plus show so far from the opening shots the sequences of the
landscaping the the sweeping shots in space the different textures the different planets seeing
the beauty of the outer space i mean i was floored i was blown away by the visuals of the show which
brings me to i'm such a big fan of when shows can make me feel like i'm in the world that they're
creating there's a perfect balance and i don't i'm not speaking hyperbole here a perfect balance of
practical effects they're building sets you can feel like you can touch these sets you can be
in this world which i love and then they give you a great amount of visual effects the vfx the cgi
is mixed perfectly with the practicality so i love that right off the bat the score is bombastic it's
huge in scope i'm a score head and i love the score this show has to offer and the performances
without diving deep into all the characters that we get in these first episodes there were two
actors two characters that stood out to me first and foremost lee pace such a fantastic i think
underrated actor he's been a part of some big franchises career uh first and foremost you know
twilight the hobbit he's been a part of the marvel franchise with guardians and captain marvel
and i think he's fantastic and i don't know if you all have ever seen on it was on amc holton catch
fire one of the best shows like in the last decade he's fantastic and i mentioned marvel now if you
all have seen guardians i love james gunn uh but ronan wasn't a good character to me he was very
undemutalized but think of that character times a thousand and getting something to do he plays
a character by the name of brother day who i'll talk about his whole situation and and cloning and
cleons and all that but he was absolutely he was menacing he demanded your attention absolutely
fantastic but then there's another actress by the name of lou lowball who plays gal who i've
never seen her work but she's fantastic i am gonna give her a moment here to kind of break
down her character but she stole every scene that she was in and i am so glad that we're on
this journey with this actress because she is fantastic in her role so visuals performance
direction first episode score the first episodes absolutely incredible but let's talk about the
gentleman here that's very important to this story before we break down and recap these episodes
a gentleman by the name of dr harry selden now he is known to many as a genius mathematician
he's known to some as a murderer and a martyr and essentially what harry's whole thing of this first
two episodes is he studies psycho history and psycho history is the destiny of the human race
in numbers to predict the future in the fall of the empire so i mentioned marvel a little bit
earlier for all my captain america winter soldier fans remember the algorithm how they could predict
things that happening before it happens or even steven spielberg minority report which again we
talked about this is a huge financing sci-fi predicting the future and obviously that's not a
good thing for the empire because their people are getting scared there's people like oh are we gonna
are we gonna die or is the world gonna fall so obviously there's some people of power that don't
like what harry has to say so that's kind of the the gist of these first two episodes and diving
deep into the lore into these characters let's break down these episodes episode one which was
titled the emperor's piece first and foremost for my action sci-fi fans there's not a ton of action
in the first two episodes which i'm okay with because what they give me in replace of the action
i mention how the visuals are absolutely flooring but it's the world building it's the
lore it's the mythology it's the different planets it's the different politics it's
building out the world that again spans over a thousand years and i thought this was one of the
best pilot episodes i've seen in a very long time because it's very dense i'm gonna let you all know
it challenges you because you have to pay attention which i love doing that
this reminds me a lot of two things come to mind when watching these first two episodes
i remember being first introduced to game of thrones and hearing all the houses house stark
lannisters westeros the walkers and this is like whoa this is a lot to take in but as the episodes
unfold and you meet the characters you start to understand the world and that's what these
first two episodes do a good job at as well as i mentioned game of thrones but also one of my
favorite shows of all time dark there's a lot of stuff going on there so i love how these first
two episodes in particular these first episodes lays the foundation of the world they're building
here and within this first episode we're exploring again no spoilers there's a trial at hand because
as i mentioned dr harry he has this this this this prediction of the future and that the empire that
that will fall sooner rather than later and of course that creates fear and the powers that be
don't want people to fear the empire falling so within the the first episode again we're tackling
this trial there's a big moment that happens in this episode that involves an attack that
causes over a hundred million people to lose their lives and that changes everything and
dr harry has his eyes on this other intelligent person as i mentioned gail played by lou
and we'll get into her in a bit here but if you kill the hope of the mathematicians there's no
hope at all so that's going to even accelerate the process of the empire falling down but let me
get a little bit more particular and more specific about breaking down this character so i mentioned
lou how she was fantastic and she goes by the character of gail now she comes from a planet
by the name of cenex and from what i gather from synagogues he seems like people that
are very in tune with religion they have these prayer stones and they seem to have
this intuition of people's feelings so we kind of get a little bit of her backstory and we learn
that she won this big contest this math contest that allows her to work side by side with harry
so she has to leave her family behind she's given this task to prove his theory wrong and is within
this first episode and the first two episodes of being honest she's such a great character she's so
intriguing she has so much intellect and she's so wise but just as much intellect she has she
has just as much hope in the galaxy in building the galaxy and to try to prevent the fall of the
empire so i thought that she the first the way she handled her character seeing the world through her
eyes was very fascinating again i'm very blown away by that actress he was great but i mentioned
i keep mentioning the empire let's talk about the emperors and there's not one there's not two but
there's three emperors in this show and they are without getting too deep into the minutia
and i mentioned star wars they're clones they're clones of the cleons and they are the first
emperors of the natural remains of the world and there's three clones and there are three different
ages we have we have brother dawn brother day and brother dusk and again they're genetically made
to come from the kleon people so again not diving too deep into the minutia but it's just
so fascinating again i mentioned clone wars star wars and geneticism it's just like they're they're
almost robotic in the way that they approach how the rule of the galaxy hollow ruled the empire
but then there's other brothers and there's the there's a little bit of a rift going on with the
brothers that's more focused on episode two but i love again it's the world building it's the the
mythology and everything that we're getting within this first episode and again not really going
too deep into uh the episode one here but keeping the mathematicians are very key within this first
episode and i think wrapping up my thoughts on the first episode it's star wars visuals and scope and
scale meaning the politics of the prequels but it has the intellect of star trek and i mentioned
star trek because i'm not like the biggest star trek fan but something i love about star trek
more so than i do and not saying that star wars is an intellectual but i think star trek focused more
on the human nature it dives into discrimination of the different planets and different creatures
and this show has a mixture of both of those worlds so i really thought that first episode
did a great job of establishing that and we kind of in the episode in regards to okay we have to
go to a new planet by the name of terminus and we have to build this vault which has the secrets of
how we're going to live as a as as a world as a future and we we build the foundation so it was a
great pilot episode i was hooked after the first pilot episode it was almost like a movie it was
almost an hour and 10 minutes i want to say very cinematic very very highly recommend that first
episode it is fantastic for my sci-fi fans but going into episode 2 which was titled preparing
to live an episode in which we immediately get a little bit of action because like i mentioned
in episode 1 there was an attack on the star bridge which caused 100 million people to die
so the emperors are looking for answers and this is where we get a little bit more of the world
building the characterizations and we get more of the relationship building i mentioned how gail is
a very important character and we have harry who has a son by the name of rish and we see that rish
and gala getting very close on their journey to terminus and seeing all that kind of play out but
speaking of terminus it's in the second episode that we hear the dangers of this planet we get
the assimilation of how dangerous this planet can be and there's a lot of conversation being had as
they're traveling to terminus which is going to take about 54 months there's people on the ship
that that fear that they're going to lose humanity because terminus is very kind of isolated and very
dangerous is it living or is it more a part of a greater plan so you're seeing that the economy
of how people are thinking about themselves and moving forward with the future and making sure
the empire doesn't fall and kind of slowing down that process but we also learn things in regards
to going back to harry's plan and and everything that he kind of has set out for the future
there may be some holes in that plan there may be some misses pieces in this mathematical
apocalypse that he predicted there's so many great conversations in the second episode regarding
conversation around preservation what do we bring to this new planet there's like i mentioned some
division between the clone brothers and there's maybe some uh people thinking that they should
or shouldn't do certain things so that's really heavily focused on the second episode again the
second episode really builds we don't expand as much as we did in the first episode but we hone in
on the worlds on the planets and the characters and who these people are and what drives the
people to do to things they do which brings me to brother day again played by lee pace he makes a
very violent and disturbing decision and he sends a message to the rest of the galaxy you don't want
to play around with the empire and it's a message that's heard around the galaxy and again it
reminded me a lot of star wars regarding the death star and i'll just kind of leave it at that but we
end the episode on a very open-ended uh kind of very ambitious ending that left me very confused
but in the best way possible so wrapping up this review here ladies and gentlemen no spoilers
first two episodes were fantastic i personally think episode one was just a little bit more
fleshed out the second episode was was great it just it was a little bit off in the pacing
it's still about an hour long very cinematic i was very surprised they didn't release the
first three episodes and i'm glad they were this too but i thought that it would have been maybe
just to kind of really spread things out to release the first three but neither you know there
episode one was fantastic episode 2 was really great this is a world i want to live in
in regards to diving deep into it learning more of these characters learning more about
terminus learning more about there's a particular moment in episode one when we jump 35 years into
the future to see how the foundation looks how it comes to be there's someone that's able to
come close to the vault which normally animals planets are animals creatures humans can't come
close to the vote but someone's able to do so i want to learn more about that character learn
more about gal and her intellect and her she has like this certain type of ability against
her and again once you all see episode two what now i'll just leave it at that so again
i am beyond impressed i am like i mentioned up top i love sci-fi this is the sci-fi i love
the world building i love the the conversations i love it doesn't rely on the action whatsoever
like i said there's literally probably two apps and set pieces or action sequences
within two hours of storytelling so in in exchange for that again it's the world building it's the
visuals it's the story it's the narrative it's the performances i am blown away by these first two
episodes and i will be covering this on a weekly basis and i want to know will you all go on this
journey with me on the foundation let's talk about in the comments let me know your pros your cons
your thoughts your theories for the weeks ahead and of course will you be back to watch more let's
talk about in the comments ladies and gentlemen if you stuck around to this point this review i would
appreciate every single one of you all before you leave make sure to like this video share
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videos hope you enjoyed this review hope you're staying safe and we'll see you on the next one