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How Foundation’s New Emperor Cleon Clones Came to Be
“It’s a perfect example of how we approached the adaptation,” Goyer said in a video conference press meet last week. “In the books, the Empire has existed on 10,000 worlds for over 10,000 years. They’re powerful, they’re resistant to change. They’re rigid and so I tried to think about what’s the vision? What’s the theme? What is Asimov talking about? How do I embody that in a character? ‘One man cloning himself over and over again and imposing his ego upon an entire galaxy.’
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“That was a plot device that then led me to all sorts of wonderful character moments. With the Cleons because they’re all — in some ways, the show is also a show about legacy — desperate to individuate, they’re all desperate to leave their mark on the galaxy, and the tragedy is that they’re all living in the shadow of Cleon the First. So even though they’re monsters, it allowed me to tell some stories that also possibly makes the audience empathise with them.”
Lee Pace, who has made a habit of playing immortal or mad rulers — he was Thranduil the Elvenking in The Hobbit trilogy, and also Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy — essays the role of Brother Day. The Cleon clones call one another Brothers, even though they are the same person. Pace studied all sorts of real-life rulers, from the Roman emperors to the Incas to the Chinese dynasties. His favourite of all was Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia.
“I’m not really playing a man, I’m playing a series of men, who for a certain time in their life, inherit the role of the Emperor of the Galaxy, which is an absurd idea that one person could have control over the entire galaxy, have power of life and death over trillions of people, control which planets prosper, which ones suffer,” Pace said. “And so, when approaching a character as absurdly abstract as that, I wanted to bring diverse opinions to it.
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Cooper Carter as Dawn, Lee Pace as Day, Terrence Mann as Dusk in Foundation
Photo Credit: Helen Sloan/Apple
“Doing research is one of my favourite things I get to do as an actor. I looked at obviously, the Roman emperors that inspired Isaac Asimov to write this story. But I also looked at the Chinese dynasties. I looked at Incas, the Emperors were basically gods to them. I had a really great read. [Ryszard] Kapuściński’s book The Emperor, about the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. I found him particularly interesting and looked at him for one of the Emperors that I play this season.”
“What I think is so interesting about this riddle posed about inherited power is not that office of a God they hold,” Pace added. “It’s these individuals who are approaching it and I think very much about an actor approaching a role. Here’s Day looking at Dawn, who is the youngest of the dynasty, and I’m saying, ‘Here are the lines, this is the blocking. Here are the costumes that you will wear. And it is imperative for the safety of the galaxy that you are exactly like me that you behave exactly like me, that you are an identical copy of me, once you inherit this extraordinary power.’
“And I believe he looks at Dusk, the outgoing emperor and says, ‘You made a lot of mistakes here. And now that I’ve got the power, I’m going to do it right. I’m going to be stronger; I’m going to be braver. I’m going to be more just; I’m going to be distinguished among this line of clones.’ And that’s a contradictory idea. When the belief is, the fantasy is, they’re the same person.”
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Some fans of Foundation the books might be perturbed by the changes, but Pace isn’t too bothered. He believes they respect the book, but that the Apple TV+ series is its own thing — it’s not meant to be a line-by-line adaptation, after all.
“I think anything that I bring to it is right, there’s nothing to get right in a way with it,” Pace said. “It’s not a book report this show. We’re not trying to, page by page, say ‘This is Foundation.’ We respect it. I think it is a sign of respect to Isaac Asimov, and the door that he opened to many writers, Ursula K. Le Guin, [Frank Herbert’s] Dune, and [Dan Simmons’] Hyperion. So much of the science fiction that I read. So, I am kind of casting a really broad net with this character, and it’s up to David Goyer to edit me and keep me in line.”
Foundation premieres September 24 on Apple TV+ worldwide.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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