Orson Scott Card Reviews Everything

H_Fisher writes "Orson Scott Card, author of sci-fi classic Ender's Game and many other novels and stories, has posted his review of the much-discussed Joss Whedon film Serenity (which opened at #2 in the US box office this past weekend). Among other things, Card has this to say about Serenity: 'Those of you who know my work at all know about Ender's Game. I jealously protected the movie rights to Ender's Game so that it would not be filmed until it could be done right ... I'll tell you this right now: If Ender's Game can't be this kind of movie, and this good a movie, then I want it never to be made.'" With praise for Full House, Friends, Being John Malkovich, and Lost to boot.

Comments

Links for the lazy like me

[Work Account]

Biography at Wikipedia

Personality critique at Kuro Five Hin

Re:Glad he liked it.

[bersl2]

Pity he's batshit insane.

Exactly what I thought, to the word.

Re:reevers

[Darth]

A couple of points about this...

If i remember correctly, the reavers have only been around for about 12 years at the time of the movie and there were about 3000 of them at the start. The lack of a propagation path isnt a real problem because they havent had time to die out yet.

The answer to how they propagate is actually explained in the series, though. They sometimes choose victims on their raids and torture them and make them watch their acts and participate in their acts until their minds snap. Then they start teaching them to be reavers. They dont breed. They make more reavers out of selected captives.

Re:reevers

[Tsunayoshi]

Zoe's answer when Simon asks abouts the Reavers in the series pilot:

If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skins into their clothing and if we're very very lucky, they'll do it in that order

Re:well respected author in my book

[Henry V .009]

The short story was fun. He should never have tried to expand it though.

For good Card-bashing, I'll point you to: Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat. It's a great read.

Re:reevers

[L33tminion]

The Reaver traits aren't genetic, so far as anyone knows. Furthermore, the Reavers are probably sterile, what with flying around on starships with no core containment on the reactors. Those raped by the Reavers don't survive. Even people who just witness such an attack (themselves escaping detection) tend to go insane (the usual manifestation of this insanity is for them to start acting like Reavers themselves, so the Reavers may get a few new "recruits this way, but it can't be more than a handful). More relevantly, the Reavers have only existed for 12 years, and there were 30,000 of them, so they haven't died off yet.

As far as operating starships and so on, Reavers are still intelligent. They're just insanely aggesive towards anyone who's not a Reaver.

Re:reevers

[kathgar1]

It is a quote from a firefly episode, by Jayne.. the train job episode google says: http://www.wavsite.com/sounds.asp?id=107

Re:Whoa.. so when's it coming back to TV then?

[pintofblood]

I was lucky enough to see one of the screenings in early September. They had a Universal rep there that had tons of info. (Like where all the Easter Eggs were) She said that is was written into the contract that they could not make new episodes for 12 years after the date of cancellation. This was probably an attempt at not having the Sci-Fi Channel pick it up like they have done with so many other shows. She also said the movie had to hit 80 million in order for Universal to consider a sequel.

"Forget about the Box Office"

[fnurb]

As Edward J. Epstein explained more fully in Slate back in May:
http://www.slate.com/id/2118819

In 2003, box office receipts accounted for less than 20% of a movie's revenues. Home entertainment provides more than 80%. Since then, the shift from theater to home has only accelerated. Last year, Walmart alone accounted for more than a third of studio revenues in video and DVD.

Home sales account for an even greater percentage of profits for the studios, given the high costs of theater promotion.

In fact, most studios expect to *lose* money as long as a film is in the theaters. The purpose of theater release is to build recognition and audience awareness, NOT to make money - not any more.

So, using your number of $10 million for Serenity's opening weekend, the movie can expect to make around $55-$65 million, if not more (given the strong cult fan base for the series and a lot of initial hesitation, given precedent of lousy films based on TV series).

Epstein uses the example of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which made only $8.1 mil in its opening weekend in the theaters--but sold over 1.5 million DVDs during its first week in the stores.