Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"Ender's Game" movie happening

variety.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 70 posts

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#31

Post by jff »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #14
psweber wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ender's Game was my favorite book when I was 12, so I read a whole hell of a lot of Card's books before I knew anything about his personal beliefs. I tried so hard to think they were awesome, but everything after Ender's Game is pretty uninspired.

After a certain number of words, everything Orson Scott Card writes is at risk of devolving into the exact same plot: 1. Character glimpses a new way of life. 2. Character is misunderstood and persecuted by society. 3. Character collects followers and heads off into the middle of the wilderness to found a new society. This is an effective summary of not only the Ender's Game series but his Homecoming saga, Alvin Make…

The Homecoming saga is literally the Book of Mormon... IN SPAAAAAACE! It sort of holds up until the last book, then he completely loses it--I was able to sort of read the early books simply as S.F. but eventually it got too Mormon for me to handle.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#32

Post by hengli »

I read this book when I was in 6th grade. I liked it a little. By 7th grade I thought it was lame (I read all the sequels up to Shadow of the Hegemon). I now think it's fairly terrible sci-fi. Anime (I understand that's a very broad stroke) is much better.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#33

Post by fennecfoxen »

nilchameleons wrote: post #20
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OSC is a homophobic asshole. He has a fear of homosexuals so intense that his mind is diseased? Let's stick to facts, not misdirection.

To be perfectly honest, that's a great way of describing how he feels about homosexuals (or anyone that breaks his heteronormative ideals). More importantly, though, making an incredibly inane distinction over how much he hates a group of people misdirects readers from the fact that OSC has some incredibly harmful views on society that should not be tolerated.

Ugh. Whatever happened to "I don't agree with what you have to say, but I will fight for your right to say it?" that has made America great? Is it so quickly forgotten?

If he's a jerk and he's wrong and you think he's overrated or should be boycotted, you know, go ahead and say so, but "should not be tolerated"? That's the language of "they belong in jail or Siberian labor camps".

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#34

Post by rbanffy »

kkihara wrote: post #25

As much as I loved Ender's Game when I read it the first and subsequent times, I lost all respect for the man and his works after finding out what a homophobe Orson Scott Card is. He's so full of hate.

You don't have to like the author or agree with him, to like his book. Far too many people were educated to hate.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#35

Post by whimsy »

SteveJS wrote: post #26
tikhonj wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember the book correctly, the 3D parts were actually games where the participants as people move around without gravity in 3D. In this particular case--much more than for an aerial battle with airplanes or space ships--I also think 3D would help with immersion.

I get queasy watching 3d shooters. I don't want to imagine how bad that could be with Ender's Game in 3d on the big screen.

Might I suggest you watch the 2D version? I don't get queasy; I would love a 3D version of this movie.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#36

Post by indrax »

thesash wrote: post #18
nl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaker for The Dead is good, but the book deteriorate quite quickly after that.

The original quartet is epic, Xenocide and Children of the Mind get a little bit off the cuff, but I really like them. Even the first few in the "Shadow" series were ok, but then quality dropped off. Now there are dozens of books set in the universe.

http://xkcd.com/304/

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#37

Post by fennecfoxen »

waiwai933 wrote: post #22
darien wrote: post #17

"Set in Earth's utopian future..." If I recall correctly, the earth society and government was actually pretty dystopian. Does that mean that Hollywood is altering the story for the worst??

It (i.e. the book) was more utopian than dystopian, but neither "utopian" nor "dystopian" are really appropriate terms here. The Earth-wide government wasn't much more than an UN (that changed after Peter got put in charge), but there was international peace and harmony since the Buggers were the primary concern, so one could say that that was better. But no significant oppression, etc.

To say that such a thing is "no significant oppression" is a contentious statement at best. The world government had imposed a two-children-per-family population-control policy, imposed on many members of society against their will, against religious objections. This is visited in the book(s), though not for overly long. Also, the young child has a government monitoring device implanted on his neck at the beginning of the book. That's pretty creepy.

I suppose that if you're just saying that the oppression is not as gratuitous as 1984 or whatever, that's true.

(The secret genetic engineering experiments to make people extra intelligent but then give them OCD to keep them under control is a later book, it's true.)

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#38

Post by CWuestefeld »

jjcm wrote: post #3

The cast looks great, but I'm honestly not sure about Gavin Hood. His XMen movie was fairly campy, and there will be a lot of pressure to do the same with the Ender's Game movie. I have my doubts.

I like the XMen movie. However, the OP says Steinfeld plays Petra Arkanian, Ender's trusted right hand.

As I remember it, Bean was Ender's trusted right hand. Petra was an anchor for Ender's humanity, but it was Bean that was the real military genius, and actually made everything work.

So I'm concerned about how well the movie will reflect the books.

And BTW, contrary to other here, I didn't enjoy the second book, and I really hated the third. But when the "Shadow" books came out, I found them really interesting. I thought it was a great device to re-run the story, but entirely through the POVs of characters who, in the original novel, we thought were nothing but bit players. It challenged my mind to try to resolve the real story between the conflicting perceptions, and I think OSC was trying to show us something about our own personal views of reality.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#40

Post by drivebyacct2 »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #33
nilchameleons wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be perfectly honest, that's a great way of describing how he feels about homosexuals (or anyone that breaks his heteronormative ideals). More importantly, though, making an incredibly inane distinction over how much he hates a group of people misdirects readers from the fact that OSC has some incredibly harmful views on society that should not be tolerated.

Ugh. Whatever happened to "I don't agree with what you have to say, but I will fight for your right to say it?" that has made America great? Is it so quickly forgotten? If he's a jerk and he's wrong and you think he's overrated or should be boycotted, you know, go ahead and say so, but "should not be tolerated"? That's the language of "they belong in jail or Siberian labor camps".

On the flip side, there's nothing wrong with saying "I like Ender's Game, but OSC is a prick whose views are out of line with a 21st century society".

Again, this is the guy that basically said he would physically attack the government if they endorsed or allowed gay marriage.

Post reply on HN