Nightfall

Okay, in Asimov's story, a technologically secure and superficially confident society falls to ruin because they burn books and civilization itself in the one night they experience in a 1000 years.

In the movie, a superstitious voodoo society on the verge of collapse is made no worse by the first night in a thousand years.

The written story can be compared to the Heart of Darkness -- oh, the horror of letting go of reason.

In the movie, the poorly acted characters go from nowhere and nothing to nowhere and nothing.

To have a story, something must happen. One would think that the first nightfall in centuries would be something. But, the film-makers manage to make this something into something boring.

For a long time nothing happened, then, suddenly and without warning, nothing continued to happen.

As an Isaac Asimov fan, and sharing the idea that "Nightfall One," his SF story is possibly the best SF story ever written with many others, I had hopes on this film. It's nothing like the story, there's nothing in common other than there are six suns around the planet, there's a scientist, and the night surely falls to madden people who had never experienced a night for 1,000 years. The film is totally crap, acting is awful, the script's based on the astronomer's stupid daughter's antics and a shabby love-story between her and a priest/guard, and I simply can't believe how Asimov's estate allowed this piece of crap to be filmed. It's surely an abomination to the works and memory of the great master of Science-Fiction and I am totally appalled by the awfulness, stupidity, shallowness, and total lack of respect to the original script. The characters in the short story then became characters of a novel -not as good- by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, but nothing in it suggested such terrible imagination at the part of the script-writer. I, for one, am ashamed of this whole effort and I hope the video ruts in shelves. It is, in short, a grave insult to a wonderful author who gave us everything modern SF is working with from robots to the main ideas of the Star Wars, Star Trek (even Star Trek's famous insignia is from Asimovian Empire's starship-and-sun sign), and many other films and novels. Pity that Asimov (with the probable exception of Fantastic Voyage) could never be cinematised correctly. I mean, when I watched Bicentennial Man, I had felt betrayed. As to this abomination, I can't find enough words to abhor it. May its producers, actors, and script-writers rot in Hell!

I first read Isaac Asimov's sci-fi story, Nightfall, in the 1980s when I was asked to help find financing to make a film version by the person who then owned the movie rights. I read the book and was moved... Asimov's story says much about the nature of scientific knowledge and religious superstition, and it says much about how we are locked into our world and often not able to transcend it. At the end, the scientists of the day discover that the religious nuts were right all along about one basic fact... but their interpretation of this fact was quite wrong. Asimov had a long and prolific career as a writer of sci-fi but Nightfall, written when he was only nineteen was one of his more (most?) famous stories.

I couldn't raise the money for its filming and lost track of the project. So I was excited to see the film. What a disappointment. It had been filmed in India (is that we they got the money finally?) and the story greatly expanded. It had been made into a love story - it did not explore the nature of knowledge at all. The lead actress was quite unconvincing, pathetic, actually. I had my whole family watch the movie with me and was quite embarrassed. They kept asking me what I thought but I would say nothing as they would have all walked out... I kept hoping is would improve. But it didn't.

I am a hard core science fiction fan and an Asimov fan in particular. In fact Nightfall was the first science fiction book I ever read. I have reread it many times and always remembered it fondly... Until now. I can't believe the people that made this film got the legitimate authorization to butcher such a wonderful story. The acting was horrible although I suspect that was mostly due to a lousy script. The special effects should have been left out to further improve this movie. Worst of all I actually bought it thinking Asimov's estate wouldn't let them make too bad a movie.. Right? WRONG!! That said. I hope they do a better job with I. Robot currently in the works. Looks like a bigger budget what with will smith etc...

I'm not that much of a hardcore Asimov fan, but Nightfall is one of my favotire stories. I saw this movie at the rentals and decided to give it a go. Like many other pointed out - the only thing similar to the story is the fact that there is indeed an eclipse on 6 sun world. The director decided to build the movie around the point where everyone go insane and start burning things. Which is an important part of the story, but not THE most important one. Not to mention the use of SUPER POWERS? "Hmmm... this story is nice, but let's add superpowrs to it! Yeah, that should make them watch it!" Err, not. To sum it all up - If you read the book, don't see this, it has little to do with the story and you will just sit and say "Ehhh... he can light flames with his mind?". I know i did :)