Richard Anderson

Stunning film - immersive, engaging, thought-provoking, beautiful - the ambition to adapt Dune has really paid off.

Scattergun storytelling, and the return of the emperor feels arbitrary, desperate and implausible. But at least it felt more like Star Wars than the appalling Last Jedi. At least the characters emotional states and behaviour was more plausible. A respectable end, but the trilogy was ruined as a whole by the god-awful second chapter.

A true science fiction series and a superb achievement. It's undoubtedly true that the writers have taken only very general direction from the original source material. The show has invented a lot that was not in the books, not least the genetic dynasty and triple Emperor - a single and very minor character in Asimov's original, but here, the Emperor is one of the best things in the show. He's symbolically true to the theme of the original book - an empire and culture in decay, unable to evolve quickly. It was a theme Asimov often touched on in his books. I think most of the creative choices they have made are positive, and help to create a rich and multi-faceted universe. I suspect those who are more negative are perhaps a little too fixated on accuracy to the books - but I think that is misguided. Asimov's work was great, but as a writer, he was simply not that good at character, detail and texture - most especially in those first Foundation books (the 1980s prequels were far better in this regard). To create a successful, engaging TV show inspired by Foundation, creative licence was the correct and obvious decision. However, the worst thing about the show is the platform it is on - Apple TV+ is incredibly frustrating and manipulative - as an Android and PC user, they seem to want to make it as difficult as possible to watch.