The empire parts are done well, and a nice solution to not having the same characters around when the time jumps. The production and design is good (at least for space/empire parts).
But then they also made other characters move through time so that... because they are special, and only they can save the plan!
It _entirely_ inverts (at least what I remember being) the entire point of the book, that individuals aren't uniquely special. It makes "The plan" look like a plan that needed to be actively managed by the uniquely special people involved - the same people, because they travel through time actively managing it - rather than an actual inevitable projection of history.
This then completely undercuts anything special about the Mule because, oops, we already gave people superpowers, so now it's just a generic action badass dude we have to fight.
At this point you aren't adapting foundation, you are fan-fictioning it. I guess attaching the name gets you money though.
> "The plan" look like a plan that needed to be actively managed by the uniquely special people involved - the same people, because they travel through time actively managing it - rather than an actual inevitable projection of history.
It was a rather important, though not initially revealed, point in the original trilogy that the plan was a plan that needed to be actively managed, by uniquely special people (including, but not exclusively, the strongest telepaths that could be found and gathered.)
Revealing this before the Mule is a radical change to the structure of the story, sure, moreso than changing the nature of the specialness of the guardians.
Right, the radical change is showing the Second Foundation getting built (and it having interesting reasons, in part due to individual mistakes, why it is getting built very slowly in time) not that the Second Foundation exists.
It's definitely an interesting storytelling change, and probably for the better. Second Foundation in the books is very much a seat of the pants deus ex machina where Asimov seemed to write himself into a clever puzzle with no easy answer and cleverly solved it "at the last minute" with a retcon, then sort of took another trilogy and a half to complete the retcon and deal with the consequences.
> It makes "The plan" look like a plan that needed to be actively managed
The plan was managed to an extent. That was the second foundation's job. And if you read far enough, even that and the Empire before it was quietly tuned from afar by R. Daneel.
So was Hari's exile to Terminus, which IIRC wasn't mentioned in the original stories that later formed the 1950's trilogy. That first part of the first book was written a few years after the original 8 shorts and IIRC contained things not at all alluded to in those shorts.
It's in the book series though. So they did the rather sensible thing of not doing the sudden reveal, but slowly building the anticipation and understanding that there are people with immense psychic powers etc.
I mean, in the book series there's even the out-of-the-blue Mule without any retconning.
But then they also made other characters move through time so that... because they are special, and only they can save the plan!
It _entirely_ inverts (at least what I remember being) the entire point of the book, that individuals aren't uniquely special. It makes "The plan" look like a plan that needed to be actively managed by the uniquely special people involved - the same people, because they travel through time actively managing it - rather than an actual inevitable projection of history.
This then completely undercuts anything special about the Mule because, oops, we already gave people superpowers, so now it's just a generic action badass dude we have to fight.
At this point you aren't adapting foundation, you are fan-fictioning it. I guess attaching the name gets you money though.