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"Ender's Game" movie happening

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Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#61

Apparently, I'm the one and only nerd who read Ender's Game and found it passable at best, and slightly creepy and inhuman in general.

You are meant to find it slightly creepy and inhuman in general. Ender spends a great deal of the next three books self-flagellating.

(Which are, incidentally, not much like the first book. The first book was a juvenile sci-fi book, the next three are fairly serious works you wouldn't hand to a 12-year old and expect them to enjoy. Or understand, frankly.)

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#62

Is it seriously happening? I mean, Harrison Ford name-dropping is all well and good, but I'm skeptical. The first I heard rumors of this movie happening Real Soon Nowish was on USENET.

Along the same lines, I had a paperback copy of Battlefield Earth in the mid 80's with a "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!" emblem and a tear-out card to order the soundtrack.

Hopefully waiting decades for an Ender's Game movie turns out better than waiting decades for Battlefield Earth did.

...or waiting decades for the Star Wars prequels.

Maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up - but LotR turned out well!

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#63
post #61

Apparently, I'm the one and only nerd who read Ender's Game and found it passable at best, and slightly creepy and inhuman in general.

You are meant to find it slightly creepy and inhuman in general. Ender spends a great deal of the next three books self-flagellating. (Which are, incidentally, not much like the first book. The first book was a juvenile sci-fi book, the next three are fairly serious works you wouldn't hand to a 12-year old and expect them to enjoy. Or understand, frankly.)

What I meant is that the children are comically pure, and utterly inhuman. Endlessly droning on about how much he loves his sister, never misbehaving or having a crush on a pretty girl; it all reflected a very strange impression of childhood.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#65
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, a…

When you say "Bean was Ender's trusted right hand," I suspect you're thinking mostly of "Ender's Shadow". Reading the original book on its own, Bean comes across as very creative with his small team but not really as a "right hand". (I'd think mostly of Petra and Alai in that role, in somewhat different ways.)

As you point out, there really were some conflicting perspectives (and to some degree even conflicting "facts") in the two stories, and at least for me those "retcons" made the newer book less enjoyable. The few bits of Bean's dialog or internal thoughts that were carried over directly from the original book feel really out of place in the retelling.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#66

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.

> To be perfectly honest, that's a great way of describing how he feels about homosexuals ...

That he is fearful? That he feels the same emotion that one might experience from a giant hairy spider, or cancer, or a bottle of nitroglycerin? Not liking something, or not wanting it to be public policy, does not make someone fearful.

> the fact that OSC has some incredibly harmful views on society that should not be tolerated.

It's a fact that a lot of the homosexual leadership leads lives of debauchery and wanton disregard for consequences. It is not harmful to suggest that perhaps they should not be given free reign to rewrite family and marriage law, nor indoctrinate schoolchildren.

Now this is being discussed in the context of a religious leader (Card) rallying the troops (Mormons). The Mormons are a religion with a fanatical devotion to procreation, children, and families. When a bunch of slick Hollywood queers try to move marriage in the direction of being a frivolous indulgence, the internal Mormon rhetoric is naturally going to run towards the revolutionary. (And it is not idle talk. In a fantasy world where the lunatic wing of the queer movement gets their wishes on marriage laws, Utah probably would secede from the U.S.)

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#67
post #36
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

There really is one for every occasion.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

An utopia without birth control seems a bit unrealistic (that's what utopias is all about anyway), especially when you consider future medical advances. So I usually see birth control as somewhat orthogonal to the utopia vs dystopia discussion.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#69
post #57

For a long time I was skeptical that this movie could ever be made, simply because it would be impossible to find someone to play Ender. You need a 11-year-old who can seem simultaneously sympathetic and capable of killing another child. Then I saw Hugo. Asa Butterfield might actually be able to pull that one off.

In the book, Ender does'n knowingly kill the other children, he just beats them to the ground with, arguably, little empathy as a counter reaction to bullying.

Re: "Ender's Game" movie happening

#70
post #62

Is it seriously happening? I mean, Harrison Ford name-dropping is all well and good, but I'm skeptical. The first I heard rumors of this movie happening Real Soon Nowish was on USENET.

Along the same lines, I had a paperback copy of Battlefield Earth in the mid 80's with a "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!" emblem and a tear-out card to order the soundtrack. Hopefully waiting decades for an Ender's Game movie turns out better than waiting decades for Battlefield Earth did. ...or waiting decades for the Star Wars prequels. Maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up - but LotR turned out well!

I think I still have that edition in my basement.

I'm expecting the worst for Ender's Game. I really can't picture anything of the real story remaining in battle high-school.

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