Ender's Game

[Shannow]

Trailer for the trailer is out. Link.

Real trailer to come out May 7th.

I'm probably going to hate this movie.

[Ironwood]

Well, that brief two seconds was true to the books.

 

[Ratman_tf]

I am cautiously optimistic.

[disKret]

Rackham with tatoo? Was it lost in translation for me?

[Ironwood]

Um, it never really went into detail.  As a character, he mattered about as much as my farts, not less what he looked like.

They could make him a 280 pound lesbian and it wouldn't matter.

[WayAbvPar]

Rackham with tatoo? Was it lost in translation for me?

I wish they would, just to watch SOC's head come apart.

[Shannow]

Rackham with tatoo? Was it lost in translation for me?

I wish they would, just to watch SOC's head come apart.

A Married lesbian to really rub it in.

[Shannow]

Saw the trailer, too lazy to link.

Will definitely hate this, looks like shit.

[Ironwood]

A for Effort young man.

[Samwise]

Here's the trailer.

I agree, looks a bit off.  Like the Hobbit movie, I will go watch it, fully expecting that I will hate 90% of it, and I will try to enjoy the other 10%.

[RhyssaFireheart]

I got the feeling that Ender (and the rest of the kids) knew this was an actual war with aliens rather than it being presented as war games or an elaborate simulation.  That was the thing - finding out that what he and the others had been doing really wasn't a simulation or war games but they'd actually been fighting and killing the aliens all along was a huge mind-fuck for Ender and gave him some serious issues to deal with.  I really did not get that feeling from that trailer at all. 

It looks pretty but.. I dunno.

And Harrison Ford just didn't do it for me as the narrator there.  Something about his voice just felt off.

[schild]

I like entertaining movies. I like Ben Kingsley and weird-old-phone-everything-in Harrison Ford.

I am not arrogant enough to give a shit about things remaining true to the books. The fact I'm saying this makes all of you fucking weird.

[Ironwood]

Well, much like Rhyssa, that trailer gave the game away.

 

[schild]

Claiming you didn't get the same feeling from a 90 second trailer that is supposed to get random mouthbreathers excited as you did from a near-masterpiece level of literature (I consider any piece of Sci-fi I can tolerate a near-masterpiece, I despise sci-fi) - is just a little goofy.

People who read and praise the book are not the target audience for a movie with that sort of star power.

Edit: Also, the trailer didn't give shit away. For people that didn't read the book, it said absolutely nothing. They know NOTHING about what the book is about other than "kids in the military."

[Triax]

OSC has already stated that they're giving away the surprise ending to the audience in the beginning in earlier interviews regarding the script.  The character of Ender isn't aware, but the audience will be.  I understand the reasons why they did that and thought it necessary with the age of the novel and the number of people who already know.  Now, it's possible the script has undergone severe revision since the interview, but with the control-freak aspects and control OSC has maintained on his properties, I doubt it.  And there have been no indications that OSC's script has been altered dramatically since.

The second decision I made was to give that information about the surprise at the end from the start. In my script we know who Mazer Rackham really is and we know what is at stake as Ender plays his games

Source:
http://hatrack.com/research/interviews/1998-scott-nicholson.shtml

[Evildrider]

Umm.. is that interview from 1998?  lol.

OSC doesn't get a script writing credit on IMDB.  It's given to Gavin Hood.

[Bokonon]

Plus the "this isn't a game" twist, isn't even the real twist in the ending.

[Venkman]

I got the feeling that Ender (and the rest of the kids) knew this was an actual war with aliens rather than it being presented as war games or an elaborate simulation.  That was the thing - finding out that what he and the others had been doing really wasn't a simulation or war games but they'd actually been fighting and killing the aliens all along was a huge mind-fuck for Ender and gave him some serious issues to deal with.  I really did not get that feeling from that trailer at all. 

It looks pretty but.. I dunno.

And Harrison Ford just didn't do it for me as the narrator there.  Something about his voice just felt off.

Right with you on all points.

Edit: Also, the trailer didn't give shit away. For people that didn't read the book, it said absolutely nothing. They know NOTHING about what the book is about other than "kids in the military."

There's no reason to make a movie based on a book (or comic book) if you don't expect to also inherit that fanbase. Otherwise, what's the point of the royalty and creative ownership headaches? Just go make a Minority Report or Fifth Element.

So there's no reason for this movie to exist except that it was a wildly popular book for then-kids/now-adults who still play videogames. People who don't know the book are going to see a boring generic antiseptic sci-fi setting establishing yet another child actor's career in rather bland hero's journey. The cynical will think "sci fi Harry Potter".

And this launching in the same year as quite a few sci-fi/fantasy movies with much broader awareness, bigger budgets, and in many cases, already establish movie fans. Oh and it's scheduled to launch a week before Thor.

By the time the summer closes, I wouldn't be surprised if this gets pushed into the far less competitive March timeframe.

[Abagadro]

Won't see it just because it would result in OSC getting approximately 2 cents of my money. Fuck that lunatic.

[Selby]

Won't see it just because it would result in OSC getting approximately 2 cents of my money. Fuck that lunatic.

/agreed.  I am definitely not a fan of his and as a result won't read anything he has done or give him any money.

[MahrinSkel]

Won't see it just because it would result in OSC getting approximately 2 cents of my money. Fuck that lunatic.

Ditto.  I'm used to finding out that Sci-Fi writers I enjoy have politics I disagree with, beyomd the long shadow of RAH, 'conservative' was the contrarian position if you grew up in the 40's through 70's, which most of the ones I grew up reading did.

But OSC's politics aren't the issue as much as his holier than thou moralizing.  And that's embedded so deep into his stuff, even the earlier work like Ender's Game is contaminated retroactively.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

Won't see it just because it would result in OSC getting approximately 2 cents of my money. Fuck that lunatic.

That goes without saying.  Though we have said that in other threads on the topic.

Way too much serious in here.  Like most, I was a huge Ender fan when it first came out.  Now ?  Not so much...

[Numtini]

I'd like to see the movie, but we're a bit short on money right now since our tax bill was $1100 more than it would have been without Mr. Card's pet hate group. So I guess I won't be going.

I might be outside walking in a circle with a sign though.

[HaemishM]

Won't see it just because it would result in OSC getting approximately 2 cents of my money. Fuck that lunatic.

This. Also, hated every fucking character in that book. EVERY ONE. Thought the book was really kind of shitty because of it, and them giving away the "this is not a game" twist at the beginning of the movie is really going to drain all the impact out of the ending.

[Khaldun]

I re-read the book not long ago and was surprised at how not-good it was. A lot of its impact on me on the first run was a fans-are-slans thing (e.g., taking Ender as a sort of Mary Sue stand-in for all of the geek suffering I'd had plus the feelings that every geek has about being better than all the bullies). The Battle School stuff is still pretty interesting but it kind of reads a bit like an updated version of the Dorsai novel Tactics of Mistake--an icy military commander who can do no wrong, always out-thinks enemies, etc.  The central problem is that it is describing cognitive supersoldiers without anything making them that way other than some kind of hand-waving eugenics and once you recognize that it gets pretty creepy: that Ender isn't any kind of enhanced human.

What really reads poorly now is the stuff with Peter and Valentine. It wasn't even believable then but it just seems stupid now, not just about the technology but about everything. It was an early warning of how impoverished Card's ability to imagine society and politics really is, and should have been seen as an early alert system of his fuck-up-edness. I hope they have the good sense to just completely jettison all that shit.

[ghost]

I bet that the movie is better than the book.  

[Venkman]

The book that we think we remember or the book that we'd reread now? 

[Chimpy]

I didn't read Ender's Game until maybe a year ago. I thought it was kinda cool but nothing stellar to me.

[Trippy]

Speaker for the Dead is better, though quite a bit different in style.

[Margalis]

This. Also, hated every fucking character in that book. EVERY ONE. Thought the book was really kind of shitty because of it

Yep, didn't like the book at all. Got strong super douche vibes from it, far before I knew that OSC was a super douche. I don't remember much about it but from what I recall yes, the character of Ender was sort of a blatant Mary Sue nerd revenge fantasy, and I also recall the book being fairly unkind to the female characters. Mostly though I was just bored.

Make a movie out of the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch please. (Actually don't do that!)

[Samwise]

I really liked Ender's Game when I read it as a kid, but then I was the target demographic of persecuted nerd, so it naturally hit the right buttons for me.  It does feel a little bit more clunky going back to it as an adult.

Speaker for the Dead holds up really well, though.

[Khaldun]

Yeah. I read Speaker again after doing Ender's. It's surprisingly good and it makes me wonder about Card: how can you imagine something even for a moment that requires that much empathy and then be such a thoroughly unempathetic person? It does give you some hope about how people can overcome their own limitations.

[HaemishM]

I made it through Ender's Game. I did not make it through Speaker. As vile and hateable as every character in Ender's was, Speaker made me want to hatefuck every single character to death. Finding out later that Card is a rabid homophobic bigot of the highest order just made me less inclined to try to slog through that shit.

[Ratman_tf]

There's no reason to make a movie based on a book (or comic book) if you don't expect to also inherit that fanbase. Otherwise, what's the point of the royalty and creative ownership headaches? Just go make a Minority Report or Fifth Element.

Name brand recognition. I guarantee Hasbro has pitched around ideas for Candyland The Movie. By Michael Bay.

Personally, I'm waiting for Chia Pets The Movie.

[Margalis]

Name brand recognition. I guarantee Hasbro has pitched around ideas for a second Candyland The Movie, this one with Adam Sandler

Fixed!