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More Delays for Ender Movie
Arramol writes "IGN reports that difficulties in hammering out a screenplay have resulted in more delays for the Ender's Game movie. Despite attempts by several teams of writers, no script has yet been written that meets necessary standards in the minds of Warner Brothers or author Orson Scott Card. The latest plan involves an entirely new script written by Card himself."
an entirely new script written by Card himself.
Hopefully it won't be like the Ender's Game sequels. Does Card even have any experience writing screenplays? Why not give it to someone who can do something good with it? Oh damn, that's right, Kubrick's dead.
My other first post is car post.
Are adaptations of books, old movies and sequels all that Hollywood can produce now? Sad state for a supposedly "creative" industry. That said, I'm actually looking forward to this one - I think it's a good thing that the script is being held to some standards.
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
They should take a card from Douglas Adams et. al... and just slap some shit together, and let the digital effects speak for themselves.
No... wait... don't.
I love Ender's Game, and all of the sequels.
Honestly, I can say that I'd rather see no movie be made at all than a bad one. Hopefully, if Card writes the screenplay, we have a chance at a good film, and if Card DIDN'T write the screenplay, I wouldn't bother seeing it at all.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
IGN reports that difficulties in hammering out a screenplay have resulted in more delays for the Ender's Game
Sounds like endgame for Ender's Game.
(Maybe we could get Uwe Boll to direct it?)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
it's an insider joke
... the original screenwriter's decision to make Valentine a lesbian and have her marry her partner in Act II may have been a mistake.
As far as I'm concerned this film has some major challenges to face that are integral to remaining true to the book.
1. The characters age from 6yrs old to 12 yrs old. That's a HUGE swing. Them being children and developing are two important themes that need to remain.
2. How are they going to film the Battle Room scenes? It's a 3d fight, so there really isn't a good way of doing it. I think the best way would almost be a first person view directly from Ender, so the battle flows as he sees it, but this would lead to problems in the final battle.
3. The Computer Game at the end (i can't remember it's name). That is going to be an extremely difficult thing to replicate, and build tension with. The build up of hopelessness at the very end will be crucial (more so than in the book) and will be hard to pull of with blips of light.
4. Will they even cover Peter Wiggin? It will be hard to do that as well, especially his rise to power on the nets...
Those are just a few of the problems I see. It's going to be a huge challenge to accuratley represent the book well. The only way I can see it getting done is CG, but this seems to dark for a CG movie.
http://www.pterrys.com
Given the sort of person who views this site, this is probably not stricly necessary. However...
SPOILER ALERT: THIS POST CONTAINS KEY PLOT ELEMENTS OF THE BOOK
One of the things I see as a probable cause of conflict is that some of the key scenes in the movie, and key scenes of character development, is that Ender basically gets picked on, and then retaliates by beating is antagonizers to death.
Now, given todays mass market, I dont expect that Warner Brothers wants to spend a hundred million or so on a sci-fi epic and then have to cripple potential box office gross by slapping an R rating on it. The main character is essentially a very likable child who is very smart and a great leader. They want to get children in to see this thing. They wont be able to do that if they have to get an R rating on the movie. But given the brutality of these scenes, I dont see how they can do justice to them without showing the brutality.
If Warner had their way, I would have to guess that they would like to see it cut out entirely, or have Ender not kill them. But I doubt that Orson Scott Card will let that happen. One of the reasons that Ender is ultimately chosen is that when he has to, he strikes without mercy and utterly destroys his opponent. There is no way to portray the character of Ender properly by having him pull a half assed beating on Bonzo, or that first bully, that lets them live.
Beyond that, I dont see any other likley cause of conflict with a script. Like any novel adaption, it will have to be cut down for time constraints.
END COMMUNICATION
Let's hope Orson Scott Card's personal views will not be reflected in the movie script!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
What worries me about a movie adaptation is that Ender is a six year old genius. This means the star of the movie would have to be very young and still very able to portray emotion and intelligence far more advanced than his age. Also, Ender grows up in the book, and it makes me wonder if they will attempt to let that happen for the movie as well. I'm sure it's all in good hands.
The only way Douglas Adams got his script done was to die... then the arguements him and the studios about what constitutes a good script ended, and the movie got made. I suspect the same will be true of Enders... we'll see it in the theaters about five years after Card dies.
Seriously, a film version of Ender's Game is going to require some serious acting on the part of leads who haven't even hit puberty yet. The film doesn't need just one child prodigy to pull it off, but several. They were almost ready to film once before with Jake Lloyd (Anakin from The Phantom Menace and Card's personal choice) in the title role. The project fell apart because, with only his performance in The Phantom Menace to recommend him, Lloyd didn't appear to be a good enough actor. (Let's face it, even excellent actors like Liam Neeson, Ewan Macgregor, Natalie Portman all gave wooden and unconvincing performances under Lucas's direction, so maybe it's not all Lloyd's fault.) Even once they agree on a treatment for the book they're going to have to find the actors fast and film it fast. A delay of a year or two in pre-production is fine for most movies, but for Ender's Game the entire cast would literally outgrow their roles!
As a result of all this, I think live-action would involve too many compromises. This is one film that really would be better done as a cartoon or CG feature. Unfortunately, adult-oriented cartoons have not fared well with U.S. audiences, who seem to expect cute little anthropomorphic Disney sidekicks and musical numbers from anything drawn or rendered. Japan does not have this problem. If I were Orson Scott Card and I wanted to see Ender's Game done right, I'd flip Hollywood the bird and hop on a plane to the land of the rising sun.
Given the ominous "Development Hell" label being placed on "Enders Game", the movie may get made, it will bomb, and it will kill any chance to see "Speaker for the Dead". Which, to me, is the real written masterpiece. And they could totally sell out and market the piggies for the kids.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I'm sure in the hollywood version it's all surly teenagers etcetera. Can't have Card's anti-war message coming through too clearly now.
Right! Cuz there's no more right-wing, gung-ho, pro-war establishment than today's Hollywood. Damn wingnuts...
OSC wrote the novelisation of The Abyss (movie) during its production (not before, not after). Everyone working on the movie liked what he did, but the movie came out making no sense at all if you hadn't read the book.
This is a different scenario, but I don't like its chances.
-- All your bass are below two Hz
His novels are only popular with nerdy kids who got beat up as children, and made up elaborate fantasies how they would make the bullies pay, once they got wicked science-fiction powers. The Columbine killers listed it as their favorite novel, big fucking surprise there!
Anyone who thinks that a mass market, big budget Ender's Game will turn out to be anything other than Pirates of the Space Caribbean: The Enemy's Gate is Down starring a bunch of 20-something "teen" actors culled from whatever the hell it is that kids are watching on TV these days, has no idea how Hollywood, and particularly the distribution chain, works.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Anti-war message?
Are we even talking about the same Orson Scott Card here?
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
I've been waiting patient ever since the live action version was announced. Some of the people involved sound like they actually understand the show too... it has like, a 1 in a million chance of being any good, but imagine if it were? Hell would freeze over I'm sure.
John Varley wrote the screenplay for Millennium and turned a classic short story into the worst film made by anybody, anywhere.
Good writers think in a much too overblown, theatrical style. It just doesn't translate to the screen.
I wasn't much impressed with the episode which William Gibson wrote for the X files, either.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality" by John Kessel
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
All dead. All have movies.
Clarck and 2001 are an exception to the rule.
As far as I'm concerned this film has some major challenges to face that are integral to remaining true to the book.
1. The characters age from 6yrs old to 12 yrs old. That's a HUGE swing. Them being children and developing are two important themes that need to remain.
Obviously, this being big budget, they're not going to be 6 to 12 year olds anymore. They're going to be the age of the target audience, for sure. I don't see the point of doing something like in Die Hard (or any other action movie since) where the main character is much older than the target audience (teenagers), but acts likes one (so they can identify with him).
If you want to see 6 year olds in your movies, go to Japan.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
From Orson Scott Card's own website:
So here's what I have to say about Serenity:
This is the kind of movie that I have always intended Ender's Game to be (though the plots are not at all similar).
And this is as good a movie as I always hoped Ender's Game would be.
And 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.
I'd rather just watch Serenity again.
>>Can't have Card's anti-war message coming through too clearly now.
Huh? Card is a hawk. I thought the message of the book was "Blow the shit out of your enemies because they are evil, ignore your weak human feelings of remorse."
Card is a Mormon. Mormons love to seperate people into "worthy" and "unworthy" categories. I know because my family is mormon. In Ender's Game, he invents prefectly evil enemies with no redeeming qualities. They are foils; fabricated devices for creating lots of guiltless Ender vs evil battles. It makes for a neat fantasy. I don't see an anti-war message though.
**SPOILER ALERT** If I remember right, in the end Ender gets to have his cake and eat it too. He gets to be the hero for defeating those nasty nasty bugs, but he gets to remain innocent because he didn't know he was committing genocide. I suppose his latent guilt is supposed to engender some sympathy. At least the kids will sleep easy at night. "Ender sure kicks ass! I'm glad he's not intentionally killing anyone though!"
it's just a lengthy book. the same story could have been ...
told without all that other boring stuff
using oneself as armour, how stupid can you be?
i would really really like to see a movie on
the heechee saga by frederick pohl.
now that is good writing!
Are adaptations of books, old movies and sequels all that Hollywood can produce now? Sad state for a supposedly "creative" industry.
At the rate and quality Hollywood is going with their usual productions, its a good thing American film studios are phasing out, and Japanese managed (or at least owned) studios are phasing in. Look at most movies you see now, they are produced by Sony (all hail Sony corporation!!!). My guess is the reason why films produced by Sony are usually so much better is because they actually care about making money, except that unlike American producers and studios, who would just jack up the ticket price, Sony and other Japanese companies make more money by making a better film, one that will actually attract people and make them want to buy the movie instead of some half-assed movie out of Hollywood that people consider not even worth illegally downloading.
I have been designing an open source project to help producers, authors, and screenplay writers with exactly this kind of difficult problem. It is a group screenplay writing system, in MySql and PHP. I'm also going to design a J2ME version of the program for cellphones so you can approve or reject ideas by phone. Would anyone here care to help me with the project? I've been designing and redesigning it for over a year and I'm just about to start coding. Its a group online word processing system, basically a blog in script format with some editing, approving, scheduling tools. https://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=138513
This movie's going to be great. We all know the longer a screenplay is the development, the better it gets! Right? Right?
They can't cut that without destroying the whole point of the story. Ender's a nice kid, very smart, and more or less wants to be left alone. But he's been manipulated from the day he was born by a government that wants to train him to personally command the extermination of an entire sentient species. You've got to show that not only is he being driven to react this way against threats, but that the authorities who are watching will never help him, and actually approve of his retaliation with lethal force.
If Ender just turns out to be surprisingly tough, but lets the bullies live... you've negated the character. Ender doesn't do mercy. If there's a serious threat to his safety, he destroys it totally by any means necessary. That's what they wanted. That's what they built.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I really don't get how people can mod the first post redundant... I guess it's the obvious sign that the /. modpoint method doesn't really work too well... (Hey, we all know the most efficient and logical government, while not the most fair, is tyrany... tyrranny... Ok... yeah, I can't spell, at least I know what redundant means...)
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034
Many people are astonished to learn that the man who wrote about "that poor little boy" is such a rabid Fascist. But Card has always been a rabid Fascist, as well as several other species of asshat, and none of his works demonstrate that better than the sad tale of Ender Wiggin itself.
Here is a very respectful article by SF writer John Kessel which is suspicious of Card's motives. You should read it; it's pretty good. I'll wait.
Back in the mid 1980's I knew a struggling SF author who managed to get a few stories published and breached the threshold for membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America (or SFWA), the SF writer's union. She joined thinking it would help her fledgeling career.
In 1985 the big news in SF was Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game, which had swept both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Accordingly, my friend read it and passed it on to me, as she often passed on books and magazines. I read it and saw how it would be compelling to a certain mindset, but I didn't think it was all that good.
"So what did you think of it?" she asked me later.
"I think I see why it's so popular, but the guy really doesn't write that well."
"Well all it is is an apologia for Hitler. Sorry, but I don't buy that argument. When I was a kid I heard every Sunday how Jesus would forgive Hitler if he really really repented, but I say fuck that. Some things can't be forgiven or redeemed."
She could get a bit passionate about stuff like that, so I let it drop. As it happened, though, SFWA members vote on the Nebula awards, and Card's sequel Speaker for the Dead was out. Card's publisher helpfully sent all SFWA members a free copy to help its chances of getting the Nebula like Ender's Game had.
One day I spotted it on her coffee table.
"Have you read that?"
"No, I don't plan to. It'll just be more of the same."
"Buzz is it's going to get another Nebula."
"Well if it does, my colleagues are idiots."
So I took the book and read it. She was like that; if someone wanted to write about forgiving Hitler she wasn't the type to complain. It's a free country and all that. Just don't ask her to read past the point where she figures it out.
About fifty pages into Speaker I gave her a call.
"You are not gonna believe this," I said. "Ender ends up on a planet settled by Brazilians."
"Brazilians?"
"And he's angling to prevent the genocide of the badly misunderstood aboriginal natives of Planet Brazil. And it's hinting that he's gonna pull some Buggers out of his ass before the end of the story."
"Wait a minute. You are telling me that if I wrote a story where Hitler escapes to Brazil, prevents a massacre of some Native Americans, and then raises a bunch of Jews from the dead, that this would be about parallel?"
"Well I'm only fifty pages in..."
"And they're going to give this crap a Nebula Award?"
"Well, it certainly looks that way."
"I think I'm going to need the book back," she said very evenly.
If you click back to Kessel's Innocent Killer essay and scroll down to the section titled The Guiltless Genocide you will see that Kessel mentions an essay called Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman by one Elaine Radford. Elaine was my writer friend and if you are among the many people who hate that essay and want to blame someone for it, you can blame me because it probably never would have been written had I not l
Actually, I have a fairly easy solution for this. It comes directly from the book too. Don't tell the kids. The people who have read the books with know what happened, and the kids who haven't will just think he won the fight.
http://www.pterrys.com
I have not read the book, but from everything I have read about it (from both supporters and detractors) it seems to be pure male adolescent neo-fascism. Which of course will do great because the latest hollywood movie we had that was adolescent neofascism was starship troopers and that was a huge success.
... he was a bleeding heart european liberal trying to make some kind of an ironic statement. Imagine his surprise when not only did no-one see the irony and humor but the public embraced the movie at face value and made it one of the biggest best sellers. I wonder how he felt ... scared as hell I bet.
... they are trying to be serious. Which of course means that the movie will probably be much funnier and cheesier than starship troopers.
Of course the maker of starship troopers, was not a fascist
The Ender's game movie will be probably the same except that here the makers are not even trying to be ironic
It is all the better, because I am sure I will have to see it sometime. One cannot escape these kinds of movies nowadays. But it may be for the better, it is always useful to know what kind of violent fantasies teenagers are having nowadays.
I really don't get how people can mod the first post redundant...
One special case: if it's the first post, and its contents are "First Post!", well, that seems pretty redundant.
Shinji, we recall, has been manipulated by his parents, by the government, by the Marduk Institute and by NERV, all in the cause of a vast secret project. He attends a school full of kids who are in the same position as he; all of them have been similarly manipulated, all are on Marduk's list, all are candidates for Evangelion pilots. Shinji has great difficulty relating meaningfully to any of them. He fights, reluctantly, causes enormous damage through little or no fault of his own, hospitalises one classmate, kills another, and gets some severe psychological problems as a result. Finally, some extremely weird shit goes down and an entire species turns into yellow goo.
I'm quite sure that Shinji, Asuka and Rei would fit right in in Ender's world.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Have you even read the book?
He invents prefectly evil enemies with no redeeming qualities. They are foils; fabricated devices for creating lots of guiltless Ender vs evil battles.
At the very end of the book, Ender communicates with the last remaining Hive Queen. He learns that the buggers were not the ravaging hordes earth thought them, but intelligent beings. He learns that the war between humans and the buggers occurred because the two races could not understand each other. He then writes the book that eventually turns himself into a genocidal monster in the eyes of the public.
If I remember right, in the end Ender gets to have his cake and eat it too. He gets to be the hero for defeating those nasty nasty bugs, but he gets to remain innocent because he didn't know he was committing genocide
Except that he condemns himself as a genocide, and turns the popular opinion of him towards that pole, so that eventually his name is as reviled as Hitler's. Part of the premise of the books is the concept of a perfect general: one who shows sufficient empathy to totally understand his enemy, but one also willing to totally exterminate what he has empathy for. The only way to pull off that combination is by the trickery used by Ender's superiors. Ender doesn't get to have his cake and eat it too - he spends the rest of his very long life atoning for his cake-eating.
Card is a Mormon. Mormons love to seperate people into "worthy" and "unworthy" categories. I know because my family is mormon.
It looks like someone has a bone to pick with the Mormon religion, and is attacking Ender's Game, not because of any particular lack of literary merit, but because it happens to have been penned by a Mormon.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
We're not talking about Orson Scott Card at all - we're talking about a book called Ender's Game.
Whatever conclusions you can draw about Orson Scott Card from his behaviour have absolutely no weight when discussing the themes of his book.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
For the film's final twist - that Ender has been fighting the actual war not just a simulator - to be feasible, the audience needs to understand the existence of Ansible, and the way the Dr. Device chain reaction works, without these explanations seeming like blatant clues as to the ending when they happen earlier on in the movie. In a 600 page novel you can hide these sorts of key facts in the general 'fleshing out' of the world, but by the time you trim it to a 2 phour script, then it gets difficult.
I'm worred that the book's plot holes will be shown up with great clarity - in my opinion it's never adequately explained why it has to be a kid who controls the fleet, rather than Wrackham. If the reason is video game skills, then I can see a swing to teenagers not young kids in the lead roles, which makes sense from the studio's point of view but will ruin the empathy.
I don't see the computer simulation episodes being a problem, they will simply look like PS3 games (bacause that's what they will be, there's money in tie-in games). Hollywood never bothers to extrapolate the state of the art when computers are concerned, witness the Nostromo in 'Alien' being less graphically capable than your cellphone.
On the upside of all this rewriting, the longer the movie takes to get made, the better the battle room / war scenes can be done with state of the art CGI.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Seems to be popular on her but I'll risk a troll rating by saying
that I found Enders Games to be the dullest sci fi book I've ever
read and in fact I got so bored I gave up 3/4 way through.
The only other book that got even remotely close in tedium rating
was Radix by A. A. Attanasio.
Enders Game - great book for people who rate political allegory above
anything remotely resembling a good plot.
Can't he kill them off camera?
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
(EVEN MORE SPOILERS--WARNING!) So...do you folks suggest that the ending be glossed over as well? After all, an entire planet of beings is destroyed, and surely you don't want the kids to see a genocide if you're going to pretend the homicide didn't happen. I don't want that kind of compromise. The acts are apalling, yes, that's the thematic point. Take away the unspeakable acts and what you have is just another sci-fi adventure movie--which have their place, but do something else rather than suck the heart right out of a strong story like Ender's Game.
Where is Rendezvous with Rama? Morgan Freeman has been 'producing' it since 2000 or something. What is happening?
There is no way to portray the character of Ender properly by having him pull a half assed beating on Bonzo, or that first bully, that lets them live.
"Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire" featured a kid getting killed and had mildly disturbing scenes involving that ghost chick checking out Harry's package and Voldemort attempting to kill Harry, yet it only received a PG-13. Episode III featured a pretty gruesome scene with Anakin's skin being burned off, and it only received a PG-13. Frankly, someone under the age of 13 probably isn't going to understand some of the dynamics of EG anyhow, so I really don't think they'll have a problem fitting in two scenes of mild carnage. I've never understood why people think Ender's Game is a kids book; some of the social dynamics in it would be difficult for many teenagers to grasp.
They'll obviously have to change the book, considering the kids spend part of the time walking around battle school naked, they're 5-10 years old and Ender kills Bonzo with a kick to the groin while wrestling naked in the shower. *THAT* stuff won't fly for a PG-13 rating.
--trb
Nonsense. In literature criticism, you need to put in intentions of the author in mind.
While plenty of readers have free-associated their way into believing that Ender's Game had a pacifist ideal, the fact of the reality is that Card, being the man he is, probably intended it to have the opposite meaning. The world of Ender in Card's eyes is not a dystopia as many readers have thought, but an utopia. The way the war is won at the end of the book, regardless of whatever remorse and respect for the enemy is felt, was how Card thought it should be fought - without diplomacy, without mercy, without belief in innocence, and to the ultimate end.
Let's not forget, the only way the cycle ends is by the creation of a new all powerful authority which would exert total dominance over all others. There's no anti-war message here. Wars are just means to an end - the eventual total consolidation of power.
Get Larry Clark to direct it... if you see KIDS or BULLY, or the like, I bet he can get kids to A) act their age B) be brutal about it all.
But it would get an R rating... possibly because of Clark directing.
Please, you obviously read the books and try to share relevant information. Leave /. immediately and return when you have learned to talk about subjects you know nothing about, and refrain from having actual arguments in support of your opinions. TIA for your commitment in upholding the /. standards.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
Nonsense. In literature criticism, you need to put in intentions of the author in mind.
So you're saying that if I read a book, and get out of it a certain meaning, that meaning is suddenly no longer valid when I discover the author didn't mean to put it there? I don't know what school of literature criticism you went to.
Who cares what Card intend Ender's Game to be? Unless you treat the text as the only authority on it's own meaning, analysis just becomes a constant game of second-guessing the author. Your analysis of the text becomes nothing more than an analysis of the author, a subject on which you can never have all the facts.
And considering the main character of Ender's Game becomes a pacifist at the end of the novel, there's not too much free assosciation needed to come up with that theory. And as for it being an utopia, that must be why the main character sinks into depression and insanity after the final battle, and when he recovers, starts a life-long journey to undo what he's just done.
Card wasn't presenting the war in his book as the best way of interacting with other beings, he presented it as the ultimate way to wage war - without diplomacy, without mercy, without belief in innocence, and to the ultimate end. But note that in the book, the ultimate military victory also becomes recognized as the vilest act humanity ever committed.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
How many movies based on popular media have been completely ruined due to the standardization of the Hollywood script/ending?
The author's own writing most likely will make the movie more unique and interesting, and true to his own vision. Hopefully the director will be someone who works hard to get the right shot.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Here's something new:
Autumn Rangers
http://autumnrangersgame.com/
http://autumnrangersmovie.com/
http://autumnrangersnovel.com/
http://autumnrangers.com/
Our generation is entitled to tell its own classical stories.
When Hollywood produces them, they will begin making money again.
Anti-war message? Look, there are only two messages in any of Card's books.
1. Accept Jebus as your savior.
2. Russia wants to take over the world.
Yeah, OK, I guess that to be strictly accurate there is a third message.
3. Card is batshit crazy.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
You should read this.
4
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/703
And this.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
This movie has been in development about as long as Duke Nukem Forever, and I expect them to come out at about the same time. There's also a very low likelihood that it will be good if it ever does come out, thanks to the difficulties of translating a novel staring children and with a lot of focus on the main character's thoughts to the screen.
In a 600 page novel...
I think your copy must've had all the pages doubled up. Mine was about 300 pages...
Well, I think that the likely target audience for this film (teenagers, if the target isn't boomers, it's teenagers)would better empathize with people who are more like themselves, rather than a bunch of kids.
If Warner had their way, I would have to guess that they would like to see it cut out entirely, or have Ender not kill them.
Dude, if Warner had their way, you would just send them the 10 bucks, and let them skip making the movie.
OSC has repeatedly come under attacks for not being politically correct. His writing style, characters and some deep beliefs in his stories seem to bring new enemies to the battle.
I personally could care less about his personal religion or what he thinks of gays or blacks or chefs. It doesn't matter to me -- he doesn't seem to have any opinion of me, so I'll just let him write.
And write he does. Ender's Game really was such a key element in my youth and I know it was the same of many of my friends. I don't want to see the book destroyed by a bad movie, with everything deemed negative scrubbed out. I don't see any major movie production house doing the right job with the movie(s), and I don't see any kids being able to replace Ender in my head. My lady and I "battle" over what Ender and the other characters look like. We both believe the movie would likely be better as a 3D or anime cartoon than an actual live action movie. Can anyone here actually stand to watch kids on TV?
That is the magic of the books -- you think, you read and you think some more. As I've aged over the years, the books are still on my main shelf in our library. I've read them recently and still find great insight into the little things.
Here's an idea: leave it be. Movies today are trash, and there is very little that comes out that is worth watching. Hell, for decades a common response was "it wasn't as good as the book" and I say let's not stop repeating that.
OSC, you have a lot of money and millions of fans. Warner Brothers, you're a monster of a company, more concerned with protecting your non-physical intellectual and creative property that you've licensed than with concern over producing quality goods at a quality price on a regular basis.
This is why i believe Ender's Shodow would make the better film. A very good job is done in that book of hiding what's happening.
Or maybe it's because I read Shadow before game that I'm biased?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
"I only hope the movie is as good a quality as the books and are of LotR quality adaption and not a HP quality adaption "
The last thing I want to see is a LotR-quality movie adaptation of a good book.
The Lord of the Rings movies are very good movies. The camera work, the special effects, the acting, the directing, are all very very good. The trouble is that they aren't good adaptations of the books. It is understandable that plot shortcuts need to be taken when adapting a book to a movie. It is also obvious that a movie can't contain all the dialog that a book can. The time restrictions of a 2 (or 4) hour movie simply don't allow it to contain all that is in a well-written 300 page book.
What the movie format does allow, and is very good at, is developing characters. The tragedy of the Lord of the Rings movies is that the characters were largely mangled beyond recognition. Many of them, if it weren't for the coincidences of name, race and costumes, would have been unrecognizable as the characters in the books. (IMO the hobbit characters were handled the best.)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Although I wrote the "asshat" article at kuro5hin, I wouldn't really consider it germane to this debate; and if it was, I would have just posted a link, not the entire article.
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if his personal views come across in it then so be it. Yeah some of his views are not exactly politically correct and some grate against the self-perceived intellectuals of society but why isn't his view allowed to be known?
do we want a world where everyone acts like a politician? Telling you one thing and believing the opposite, or worse getting into office and doing the opposite?
if bigotry or racism, neither I will attribute to Card, are hidden then how are they ever dealt with?
finally just because he doesn't fit your view doesn't mean his is invalid.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Warner Bros. standard is that they want "Mighty Ducks" in space.
The kuro5hin link doesn't mention his book at all - it's mostly a personal attack against Card.
The "Innocent Killer" article, which I've read before, bases it's conclusions on several premises. If you agree with these premises, then the conclusions it presents follow on logically. If you don't, then the conclusions it makes are irrelevent.
One of premises the essay makes is the assertion that no blame is attached to Ender's genocide or murders, and that Ender's own feelings of guilt and remorse are just a writer's trick to make us feel sympathy for Ender. I don't agree with this - I think Ender did blame himself for the acts he committed and the point Card is making is that despite society's exoneration, the fact that Ender feels guilty about these acts means that he does attach blame to himelf for them.
Because I don't agree with the premise, I reject the conclusion. But that sort of article is exactly the sort of thing good fiction should inspire; it's exactly the sort of argument Card is writing for in the book. The whole book is "flamebait", if you like; it seeks to stir up discussion and argument about a certain theme. While ever essays like "Innocent Killer" are published, defended and refuted, Ender's Game is serving it's purpose.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Not a kick to the groin, a blow to the chin from below.
It's been over ten years since I read the book.
As I remember, Ender did not want to kill bonzo. In fact, Ender didn't even know that he had.
Orson Scott Card is a competent writer, but he has almost no experience writing screenplays. As long as he is trying to write the screenplay, or has final say over which screenplay gets shot, the movie probably won't be made, and if it does, it risks sucking. What Card needs to do is say "I don't know anything about movies," pick a screenplay writer he likes (Joss Whedon?), and agree to greenlight the script, whatever it is. Of course it's going to be different from the book - it's a gol-darned screenplay. It's a story about a boy picked to be a military genius, and how the government uses and abuses him for their own ends. As long as the screenplay gets that down, the rest of it (the Battle Room, the computer game, the ansible, the Dr. Device) is just details, and should be changed as necessary to tell the story visually. But I'm afraid Card is too close to the original to ever let that happen. K
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
The latest plan involves an entirely new script written by Card himself.
Every book-gone-movie with a still-living author should be done this way. If the author isn't willing or able to write the entire script, they should be actively involoved in the process- deciding which plot elements are required, approving dialogue, essentially editing the script as it's being created... Sure, not every author is suited for this kind of thinking (ahem: stephenson and his unwillingness to even edit his books down). I still think it's worth a shot, and no author should settle for anything less than having the opportunity to do this.
I agree that Ender has to beat the kids to death in the movie to stay true to the book. But if the movie stays true to the book, then it likely won't show anything beyond a PG-13 style beating.
The key, here, is that when you read the book for the first time, you don't know for some time that Ender has killed those bullies. The book describes Ender beating on the bullies until after they stopped moving, but in each case, he's brought away and neither he nor the reader sees the aftermath of what he did. Ender himself doesn't find out until quite late in the book, if my memory is correct.
That was very skilled Troll.
First, professing some agreement with the GP to allay suspicion.
Then asserting something that is obviously true (nationality), but giving it a little slant it to make it sound like a vice.
Finally, he slips the true purpose of his post. A little misinformation to accompany the anti-religion prejudice, and a Troll is born.
(Posted anonymously because I'm already feeding the Troll enough.)
...
Lame!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/11/08
The reason it's so vital to the plot to have Ender get picked on and retaliate beyond all possible reason (it's a tribute to Card's writing chops that we don't notice that the murders of Stilson and Bonzo are, well, kinda psychopathic) is that it's an adolescent revenge fantasy, with its dials all cranked to eleven.
Consider that a kid who seldom fights and is smaller than his opponents invariably manages to beat them to death. He conquers every obstacle before him, commits murder and genocide, and yet is the object of the book's compassion. Who wouldn't want to be an ultraviolent martyr like that?
Indeed, I think the angsty eighth-grader audience will be key for this movie, as well as every maladjusted geek who never got over getting picked on in high school and wishes he could go Columbine on the folks who made him miserable back in the day.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There's an allegation that Card did not, in fact, actually write Ender's Game in there, if you look for it, between all the vitriol.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I read it in early high school, and loved it, though I didn't know why. Re-read it this year, and felt very... unsettled, and didn't know exactly why.
I think the original poster may have been referring to Stilson and Bonzo. Ender beats them both to death, remember? And through some authorial legerdemain, it's not really his fault and he gets to feel real bad about it because, y'know, they made him do it. That didn't strike you as a bit of a stacked deck on Card's part?
Ender doesn't get to have his cake and eat it too - he spends the rest of his very long life atoning for his cake-eating.
I thought you were discussing Ender's Game, not the interminable list of sequels, or even the tacked-on abortive second novel in the last fifteen pages. Taken on its own, the book makes Ender into a hero for committing his genocide--and he's also the victim, because he was manipulated into it.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
IT WASN'T A GAME
muahahaha
...is if the sequels were optioned as well. This is bound to get me flamed, but IMHO, the adaptation of the rest of the quartet would suck. 20+ pages of philosophical and scientific diatribe between two characters doesn't translate very well to the screen... and this is most of the last three books, especially Xenocide The screenplays would read more like transcripts of a talk show than science fiction flicks...
Maybe they could shorten it...
"The trees are made out of pequeninos!!!"
Actually, in a screenplay, you'd leave that revelation til the end, so the audience has no reason to suspect the battle are real. *Then* you hit them with the "oh, you've been in FTL contact with real ships". In fact, it might have been a good idea to do it that way in the book, because I had the "twist" figured out when the ansible was first revealed.
I think we may both be right. Not sure which actually killed him, my impression was the blow to the crotch.
"Ender asks Bonzo not to hurt him in order to provoke an attack, and Bonzo jumps at him. Ender avoids the attack and hits Bonzo in the face with the top of his head. He has injured Bonzo and knows he might be able to walk away, but he does not want to have to fight the battle again. Ender realizes he must make Bonzo fear him enough never to fight him again. He knocks Bonzo to the ground and kicks him in the crotch, but Bonzo is motionless, and does not even respond."
--trb
That's a general Hollywood strategy, not restricted to Uwe, as many other reasons as we have to hate him. Apparently the loophole has been closed, though, so they'll have to find other crooked ways to make their money. It is amazing, though, isn't it? Tomb Raider was paid for before they even released it in theaters, so all ticket revenues and rental sales were pure profit. Nice work if you can get it.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Moreover, Bean is less violent than Ender. Ender kills his bully. Bean psychologically tortures his bully into confessing to murder and getting expelled. The fact that Achilles goes on to murder many people makes for a good debate over the effectiveness of capital punishment in preventing further crimes... Heh, and since Bean's basically a shrimp throughout the books and never acts like a kid, they can probably use the same actor throughout.
OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if the genetic engineering and the gang upbringing seem even more unpalatable to the producers than Ender's violent nature.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
While a kick to the groin definitely hurts that would have to be one hell of a kick to kill him, and I think Ender would know right away that he'd killed Bonzo by the fact his foot went halfway through him.
The kick is just to show that Bonzo is dead or unconscious at that point.
There is no way to portray the character of Ender properly by having him pull a half assed beating on Bonzo, or that first bully, that lets them live.
Why is it not sufficient to have him break a limb or two, then deliver a blow that renders his foe unconscious? (And actually dead, but unconfirmed.) It would be brutal, sure, but not prolonged or gorey. As I recall the scenes, Ender didn't know for sure they were dead until later. The key seems to be to film the 'personal' combats as extremely short fights preceeded by long, suspenseful build-ups. By contrast, the 'game' combats would be elaborately long fights preceded by almost no buildup.
What seems harder to me is to show Ender's motivation for these acts in the film, given that exposition of his thoughts must be limited.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
It had nothing to do with video game skills. To a certain extent, it was because young kids are naive: naive enough not to detect the manipulation, naive enough not to understand even at an intellectual level the horrors of war and go in with less than full commitment to win at all costs. But partly, it was simply because the war was coming early and they didn't have time to train them further. Ender and his peers were rushed through their training; there were multiple references to how kids normally didn't get to Command School until 16, etc. They made do with what they had: the younger kids (Ender especially) were less well trained, but more brilliant, than the current crop of older students.
It'll end up with Ender replaced by a waify underage girl with much better martial arts skills.
George Lucas showed us all the complete destruction of a populated planet in 1977. Alderaan was full of innocents - it had nothing whatever to do with the Rebel Alliance - but it was destroyed nonetheless.
Were we traumatised? No. We don't see the faces of anyone on Alderaan, we don't see them dying, we see no pain for anybody at all except Leia's as she watches, and Obi-Wan's as he feels a great disturbance in the Force.
However, what if instead of showing the Death Star blowing away Alderaan, we'd seen Vader slapping Leia about the cell, trying to physically brutalise her into telling him the location of the Rebel base? Suppose we'd heard a THX-enhanced crunch as the Sith Lord's black-gloved metal fist smashed the Princess's pretty nose to splinters? THAT would have upset us. That would have earned Star Wars a pretty high rating.
One-on-one physical violence upsets people. The bloodless eradication of millions that we don't have to face does not. It's why Hitler switched from SS firing squads to gas chambers - it upset his troops less that way. Same here. Nobody will mind the destruction of the bugger homeworld, but they may well object to Ender's habit of barehanded manslaughter.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
G.B.Y.L.B.T., PastorEd
... Pigs?
To some degree the whole Ender thing was a game, merely a deadly serious one with high stakes.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
The other books in the series definitely do not contain a pro-war message. In light of the other 3 Ender books, it doesn't make any sense to claim that the overall message of the series is pro-war. Though I disagree with it, I can see how the argument could be made about Ender's Game as a stand-alone book. But not as a series. Maybe that's why Card wrote the later books, rather than letting it end with Ender's Game.
The Bean books are a slightly different story, but they are not strictly about war either. There is still a subtle anti-war message. But a point is also made that sometimes there really is no alternative, because some threats are too immediate and too grave.
But even when Card makes it clear that he believes such actions are necessary and unavoidable it is also made very clear that he believes we should be remorseful about it, because the lesser of two evils is still evil.
If OSC is listening... maybe a miniseries for sci-fi would be a better option? If it was my book and my option to move it to screen, I think I'd do something like Star Trek and Serenity ended up doing (though this would be better planned) which is to do a series on TV that starts in the beginning.... build the characters over several seasons, then plan a big blockbuster movie at the end of it all for the final shootout.
This would allow for the actors to grow physically... start them at just before puberty and hope that they get growth spurts, and as actors. In general it would let the story develop more fully and on a timeline more consistent with the novel... I don't think I sat down and read the whole thing in one night, longer stories can be more interesting because you have to stop and think about the events between reading periods, so take advantage of that.
On the business side of things, they could use the time and revenue to develop the CGI over years instead of months and would be able to reuse the models, effects, etc. and incrementally improve upon them as the CGI becomes more important in the story. The revenue from commercials could seriously offset this development and allow for a really good movie at the end instead of having to blow the whole budget on CGI they could spend more on 'getting it right'.
For the actors / kids this would really give them the time to 'become the characters' as they could start off as regular kids with a few quirks and grow into the personalities that make the book powerful.
For the audience... well how big is the audience for this movie right now? I know very few people outside of sci-fi fans who have read this book unless they were assigned it as summer reading in high school. A TV series could certainly grow the audience size and bring them up to speed on the story at the same time. I hate movies that have to tell this huge backstory because the meat of the plot is at the end but you won't understand the motivations of the characters without the back story.... spend more time in the movie on the events that unfold and let the characters just be who they are the whole time without having to explain how they got to be the way they are.
As a side note, it would be very interesting to do some web based tie in 'marketing' by creating a web community around the idea of Peters forums... where people could discuss the implications of the events in the show...
the downside to all of this is that we already know how it ends... it'd be really cool to not know and have a series that builds up the tension, with a web based extras feature for creating anticipation and a big movie at the end to wrap it all up in a final crescendo.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
W/R/T the current topic, I think some of the other comments have nailed why this book will never be made into a movie while Card is alive. I can't see anyone in Hollywood filming a depiction of a six year old brutally murdering a classmate, which is a central image in Ender's Game; if you snip that or soften it or make Ender too old, the story loses most of its punch.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
They'd better hurry up and get this produced. The actor they'd tapped to play Ender just died of old age.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
The kick to the groin was the final blow, but Bonzo was already dead.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
I just don't see what so important about plot. Interesting story elements are much more imporant to me. The interaction between Ender and the other kids made this book fun to read.
And the movies with a good plot are usually the least interesting ones. Those are the movies my grandmother sits down and watches for hours. Rocky wasn't a good movie because of its plot; it was good because it gave the audience insight into a character from another world, and because it was fun to see the fictional underdog go toe to toe with the best.
And if you found Ender's Game tedious, try Children of the Mind, where 3/4 of the book is a recap of the first two in the trilogy.
I'm worred that the book's plot holes will be shown up with great clarity - in my opinion it's never adequately explained why it has to be a kid who controls the fleet, rather than Wrackham
Actually it is in the book.
I dont have it in front of me, but I re-read it the other week so the quote is aproximate:
Hes teacher explained to him right after the final battle why they needed a kid as commander:
A commander knowing he is losing real soldiers get either too carefull or to ruthless. A experienced commander tends to be carefull and think to long. A commander of a huge army tends to think about his personal agenda more than winning the battle.
Not a quote as I said but that was more or less the explanation.
Card was a playwright before he was an author.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I hope I won't get screamed at here for not reading the above comments, but I don't have time to read 25 comments right now and want to say this.
Remember that we never knew the kids died until the very end of the book, and it is that revelation that reveals to us Ender's key qualities and the criteria by which he was chosen.
This means that you don't have to show the depth of violence that we imagine existed during each of the two fights, becuase the point is that we are not supposed to realize he is a killer until the very end, and that shock is a critical part of the story.
I think this can be done without an R rating.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" -- George W. Bush
Actually, it is his head smashing Bonzo's nose that kills him by driving the bone into his brain.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" -- George W. Bush
If you read Ender's Shadow, Bean sees the immediate aftermath and notes that it is the headbutt to the nose that does the final deed to Bonzo. In regard to previous posts, Ender (introspectively) does NOT want to cause extreme harm to either Stilson (the first bully) or Bonzo. He justifies that he must totally destroy them as a threat to keep the mob of kids (that both bullies brought to the fight) from jumping in after their leader went down. Sure you can say his justification was programmed in by his sadistic brother, Peter, and his Battle School training; but I still think he was merely thinking logically.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
www.archonmagnus.com
eom
That's quite a claim to make. Please take a few minutes to peruse the bottom 100 at IMDB and then think about it again. You've missed such jems as "Manos, The Hands of Fate" and "From Justin to Kelly". There are movies of such horror that Millenium is unable to even show up on the bottom 100 radar.
The standards are much higher than you think for worst movie. Millenium has a score around 5.1
The IMDB bottom 100 needs no higher than 3.1 to get in.
You'll have to do much better than Millenium to even begin to make "worst movie ever" claims.
Card is an outspoken homophobe (although he wraps his fears in weird pseudo-logic based on his Mormon upbringing - if you're a member of a revealed-truth religion perhaps the arguments will make sense to you) so the parent post was actually pretty damn funny.
Card's anti-gay rants are saddening, since he is otherwise a voice of tolerance and sanity in the LDS - he has no knee-jerk distrust of science, for example.
Utter crock.
Card has directed a few local theatre things (which doesn't mean too too much, but he does know how to make dialogue flow).
This delay is incredible. I remember looking over an early version of the script about 5-6 years ago for a few minutes (someone who know him had a copy and I'm from his hometown). I can't remember any content, but I know it's been in the talks forever.
Just like DNF
Tibbon
tibbon.com
The Troll disappoints.
I could believe that a skilled Troll would pretend that "professing" implies "doesn't believe" instead of "claims belief."
I could believe that a Troll would say that I suggested that he simply stated a fact, when I had made it very clear that he had distorted a simple fact into a Bad Thing.
I could believe that a Troll would give the impression that the obvious-from-the-beginning purpose of my GP was instead a hidden 'sting in the tail.'
I could even believe that a skilled Troll could deliberately pretend not to know what misinformation was propagated in the GGP.
However, if the Troll were that good, he wouldn't give blatant, obvious, easily googleable non-facts as facts.
I mean, Gabriel???
So I looked at some of his other posts, and I take it back. I apologize to the world of slashdot, and to BarryNorton. He's probably not a Troll, just a regular slashdotter that, this time, let his prejudices run away with him to make a Flame.
The masters of turning books into movies would be either Steven King or Michael Crichton King has done more movie adaptations and could work well on the psychological aspects of the story, but Crichton would do well on the military and sci-fi areas of the story, or better yet get all 3 of them involved
nt
Comment of the year
Well, the movie sure could sure use some sort of end-game. As I mentioned last time this movie came up, you can find USENET postings dating from 1992 about the first rumors of the movie. Frankly, Ender's Game is the Duke Nukem Forever of sci-fi movies.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
So maybe the correct medium for the Ender story was actually a novel? Maybe trying to shoehorn a story best told as an adults' novel into a mass-market two-hour movie is futile?
Maybe Card should write a new story, one that lends itself to the strengths of the film medium?
Trying to adapt certain books into movies is like trying to adapt paintings into novels, or sculptures into music. Very occasionally it can be done, but most often you can't express the ideas that made the original great in a new medium.
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
From this point of view, the critical scenes are where he learns at a too early age to be brutal. Where he leans to use the games an escape, and as a path to his own social space. I think we can all relate to this. The betrayal then comes in the fact that the relatively safe space of the game turns out to be reality, where the structure created in the academy is the fantasy. Most can also relate to this as we discover that the artificial society of school turns out to be the fantasy, while the games we have played end up being the lessons we need to survive.
But Card got soft, with the sequels and the Seventh Son. The dark reality gave way to the technicolour fantasy. In particular, the sequels tried to recast Andrew as almost a victim, rather than a strong hero. I fear that the movie will continue to move the story away from a brutal coming of age. What the sequels missed is that we are not always in control of our destinies, and the true hero makes the best of bad situation, and continues to so do.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
They can't cut that without destroying the whole point of the story. ... If Ender just turns out to be surprisingly tough, but lets the bullies live... you've negated the character. Ender doesn't do mercy. If there's a serious threat to his safety, he destroys it totally by any means necessary. That's what they wanted. That's what they built.
Just because they can't doesn't mean they won't. This IS Hollywood we're talking about here after all.
If not for his amazing talent as a director, he can graphically accomplish "anything" with CG.
I don't know anything about Stephensons thoughts on the matter, but I think Snowcrash could be a great movie, and not as difficult as Enders Game to pull off. (apple seeds and orange groves, btw) Though a lot of the juicy descriptions and historical reference would be lost in a film. A series might do it, it's starts with a bang so it would get an audience first and lose them later, speaking of lost...
I think it's more complex than that. I just finished reading the last Bean book (horrible, worst Card book to date), and although he may be Christian, he's just your typical liberal war monger. And this is not a flamebait, every 20th century war was brought to us by liberal presidents, trying to "improve" the world. He thinks that wars are unavoidable and unbiquitous, and that we can only get passed that phase when we force everyone to bow to the same leader. A typical globalist who doesn't have to work for his food anymore. He's only a pacifist if he gets his way. Even Hitler was a pacifist by those standards.
His writing shares the same weakness as Ayn Rand, in that all the characters speak with the same voice, regardless of how different they are. And because they're all "geniuses", they implictly understand that people will only be happy and at peace, once the world agrees to surrender their sovereignty to an unaccountable beauracracy. Every character in his book, even the ones who pretend otherwise, are completely obsessed with power and controlling other people (which means Card is). People like this, like the Bushes of the world, constantly preach about peace while they practice/write about nothing but war. Card is very far from being a pacifist, whether he knows that or not is up for debate.
Can't speak for the rest of the series, but I thought the original sucked. The premise of it - that war in space is so enormously more difficult than other forms of warfare, that you needed not only life-long training, but to be actually genetically engineered to do it - was ludicrous. Think back to 1940. Aviation was in its infancy, and no one really knew how to conduct air warfare, or even what air warfare meant. Within five years, we had progressed (if that's the word) to titanic air battles, aircraft carriers, V-2 rockets, etc, etc. No genetic engineering required - ordinary mortals could learn to do it with a year's worth of training.
And the big space battle in EG was no more complex than, say, the Battle of Midway! We could fight that battle now, with nothing more than a few quick spacecraft check flights. Pilots already have to know how to think in 3D, deal with fast moving targets, etc, etc.
Given all that, it was really tough to slog through the interminable initial sections of the book, where Ender goes through what amounts to child abuse for years, when there isn't any reason for it. Maybe the other books would have been better, but I'd had my fill.
Sean
One-on-one physical violence upsets people. The bloodless eradication of millions that we don't have to face does not.
I can't believe how blind some people are.
The reason blowing up Alderaan didn't upset people is that NO ONE SAW ANYONE DIE! DUH! All we saw was an explosion out in space. We didn't get upset at the physical violence because there wasn't any. A narrator could have said "and then Alderaan blew up" and it would have been the same.
Don't try to make it seem as if humans are less sensitive to mass murder than to slapping a princess about in her cell, that's stupid. If Lucas wanted Star Wars to get an X/NC-17 rating, all he had to do was film a five minute slow motion death scene of some poor schmuck on Alderaan exploding and boiling away.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
That's what I was thinking. With Bonzo, he could start beating him, maybe punching him toward the right while the camera panned left and maybe sat for a second looking at a white tile wall, shower spout still on, room steaming, and some of Bonzo's blood on the wall.
just an idea that popped into my head.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
One of the things I see as a probable cause of conflict is that some of the key scenes in the movie, and key scenes of character development, is that Ender basically gets picked on, and then retaliates by beating is antagonizers to death.
They don't have to be bloody fights. If I understand the ratings system, blood and gore is more offensive than good clean pain and death. In fact, the deaths shouldn't be too obvious to the viewers, since Ender himself doesn't realize that he has killed anyone. The fights should demonstrate that although physically Ender is the underdog, he is a very intelligent fighter who goes all out, not stopping until his opponent is thoroughly whipped.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
I have personally read every Ender series book, and some of Card's other publishings. While I don't believe every one of the books are fantastic, none of them are horrible. Horrible is a romance novel, alright? Let's try to get some things straight here. As for a movie adaptation, I don't think it can be pulled off. I wouldn't be surprised if it came out alright (i.e. HGTtG) but, it wouldn't do the series justice. Chances are it'll simply be mauled by Hollywood execs and demographical studies, the final nail being delivered by cutting room floor. That is, if the movie they shoot is even good, which is a long shot to begin with. Even if Card writes a good screenplay, it doesn't mean a damned thing. Everything in the first book would need to be included in the movie. It's what makes Ender so good, because of all the factors mean something to the end product. You remove something, change anything, you mess it all up. And they (movie studios) like to do that way too much because they think they know what's best for movie goers. I want to see it done right. If I were to wish for any movie to be released, it would be this, but it's a wish I may very well regret making. We'll see.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
There's a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: "One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic."
Wow, you do have your head up your ass. And I mean all the way up you ass, until you can see daylight.
Now for some facts, including a little history. (The details may be a little off, because I'm doing this off the top of my head. Actually, I'll use Wikipedia to fill in the blanks. You could have done this as well, but that would require thinking, which is clearly beyond your reach.)
First, the only US based studio currenly owned by a Japanese company is Sony. Sony has had good years and bad years, buth this season has been one of the worst in a long time. Like since Sony got into the US film industry. With only one Japanese owned studio, how does this make 'The Japanese' better then then anyone else?
Also, Sony in Japan has nothing to do with the creative decisions made by Sony Pictures. All the managers are from the US film industry. The only time that there was ANY Japanese creative input was when that god-awful Godzilla film with Mathew Brodrick was made. And the reason that there was Japanese involvement was that Godizlla is owned by TOHO, not SONY. Anyone making a Godzilla film would have to do it with TOHO.
There was a time in the 90's when Matsushita bought into MCA/Universal pictures, but they lost a lot of mony and sold out to Seagrams, owned by the Bronfman family of Canada. This ended up being Unversal/Vivendi, with a French owner. On the other side of the world Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a former Aussy. He became a US citizen so he could own a US media company, as required by law. Nope, no Japanese there...
How many Japanese films are released in the US in a year? How many US made films are released in Japan? In the real world, all the major US films are relased all over the world (except Cuba, North Korea and Iran). Except for Animie, there are almost no Japanese films relased in the US. I can't think of ONE live action film from Japan that had a general US release in 2005. Well, if you count 'Memories of a Geisha', maybe there was one. But I don't know if it was done by a US or a Japanese studio or if it was an indy film that was then released by one of the studios. I could look it up, but I don't care. The previous Japanese related release was the Tom Cruse film about the civil war soldier going to Japan, 'The Last Samuri'. Does this count as a Japanese movie?
The only area were there is ongoing distribution of Japanese entertainment int he US is Anamie. Most of this is TV, either on cable on on DVD. Some of it is good, most of it is crap, like any creative entertainment. Note: THIS IS NOT FILM, IT IS TV. Most intellegent adults can tell the difference. Clearly, you cannot.
Even if you just look at animation, US and Japanese, where are the Japanese? US based companies include Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, and PDI. In Japan there is Studio Ghibli, which gets international distribution because the Pixar people help them. Or perhaps you think that the Pokiemon movie is great art?
I'm sitting here wondering if you be any more wrong if you activly tried, and I think not. You don't know squat about film as an art or film as a business. Go back to watching TV. Stay out of the theaters. I can tell from your stupid posting that you are the kind of jerk who talks to their friends and on a cell phone instead of watching the movie.
Alderaan was full of innocents - it had nothing whatever to do with the Rebel Alliance - but it was destroyed nonetheless.
Bullshit. They were a bunch of terrorist sympathizers, and one of the most visible members of their government helped to start and finance the rebellion. Fuck 'em.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
get some of the people from the Lord of the Rings, Wachaski Bros', King, Chriton, and Whaton to do the movie, Keep Card OFF the team, tell him to suck their collective cocks if the script "sucks" , and be happy with the translation. I'm serious here as well- find out where the harry potter folks hire their actors (most are competent), and just up and do the flipping movie. I meen honestly, at this point it'll either suck (the book did) or be good (better than the book-not hard).
Who are you going to get to put MOPI on the silver screen? Think you can get Natalie Portman to do the young Caroline?
Because it would have spoiled the whole "exploitation of innocence" premise. If you read the original short story, the triteness of the concept really shines through. The full novel is highly polished with many well crafted sub-themes, but the framework upon which these are hung is ridiculous. Really, the most gaping plot hole is the fact that no amount of training and manipulation can turn a child into an effective military leader. The novel essentially hand-waves this away by simply assuming forced-maturity is possible, from having Ender experience significant muscular development at 10 years old, to having him skip 6-8 years worth of normally puberty-driven neurological development. Indeed, if you add 6-8 years to the kids' ages and then it starts to be believable-- but of course that kills the premise...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Yeah, like The Abyss.
XML causes global warming.
and again I repeat :
Meh.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
And I get -1 Troll for pointing out the book is in fact Anti-War. Shouldn't go against the group mind at /. ..
At least you got fair moderation.
Luck of the draw I'm afraid. The sad fact is, whichever direction you're first moderated seems to be the direction you'll go after that.
Heh, the quote of the moment at the bottom of slashdot when I posted this seems appropriate, given our topic of conversation.
What we wish, that we readily believe. -- Demosthenes
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Nobody will mind the destruction of the bugger homeworld, but they may well object to Ender's habit of barehanded manslaughter.
Which, incidentally, is what Ender himself says in the book. As he listens to the courts discuss his murder of two children, he reflects on the fact that everyone is upset about those two murders, not his genocide of an alien race.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Way to miss something.
Read it again. (Or for the first time?)
I've spent a fair amount of time in Utah, and I believe I've read everything Card's written on the subject of homosexuality (obviously I could be wrong, and I've never heard him speak on the subject).
Did Brigham Young wear black robes? How about Joe Smith? I've read his stuff too. No social experiments there, no sir.
Incidentally, my own church has accepted homosexuals freely, and has been in existence quite a bit longer than the LDS church. Strangely enough, we haven't been struck down by lightning bolts yet (apparently God is reserving that treatment for Mel Gibson's employees).
But no, I wouldn't dream of arguing with you.
Bullshit. They were a bunch of terrorist sympathizers, and one of the most visible members of their government helped to start and finance the rebellion. Fuck 'em.
"What's the different between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? Which side you're on."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Actually I was suggesting that people were disliking the books because Card wrote them, not because they actually disliked the book. I knew I could have stated that more clearly...
2. You'd also have to assume that homosexuality is a choice, something arrived at through thought, in the same way that it is for Card to employ his brain to come to the conclusion that he thinks homosexuality is a disease, that homosexual sex is worthy of punishment [1], etc.
I can't speak for the LDSers, but many of the Christian groups don't see being homosexual as a choice. It's what you do that is your choice. They often draw the analogy to things like pedophilia. *wry grin* And some figure the two go hand in hand although, statistically speaking, pedophilia and homosexuality tend to be fairly mutually exclusive on the male side due to the fact that before puberty boys look more like girls in terms of sexual aspects until you get to the dongler. Of course, that's assuming pedophilia as a sexual desire and not one solely of control. Meh. I'm digressing, bad habit of mine. Anyhow, having homosexual desires doesn't make you evil; it just means you have greater trials to go through in life than most, resisting such sinful urges. It's all part and parcel of that "love the sinner; hate the sin" bit.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Ender need not be a "teen with a love interest" to succeed as a movie. Narnia has enjoyed a good box office despite the lack of teenage romance.
... uh, oh, wait. Yeah, Mr. Card had better hold out for the right screenplay.
Maybe Ender's Game can be the "Mormon"'s Narnia, like Battlefield Earth was the "Scientologist"'s
What I don't get is why anyone defends homosexual sexuality.
Near as I can tell, strict homosexual sexuality is one of those things that shows how selection works in evolution.
And if that is not what homosexuality is all about, then is it just an excuse for promiscuous sexuality? For taking whatever sexual partner is handy at the moment, and intimacy and permanency be damned?
Or is it a misguided attempt to recognize that pink shirts and ballet tights on men are not necessarily evil? When I do ballet, I prefer black or navy, but, hey, some guys even like pink tights. It doesn't mean they inherently prefer sexual intimacy with guys.
Or is there some fantasy about making those jokes like the Schwarz/de Vito movie Junior reality? Is there lack of comprehension that changing a man so he can have a baby makes him a woman in the only meaningful sense?
Life's toughest problems aren't meant to be solved an easy way, and human relationships are not meant to be easy. Making the problems artificially easy solves a different set of problems.
Complementary angles don't appear both in the same quadrant.
I think we may both be right [sparknotes.com]. Not sure which actually killed him, my impression was the blow to the crotch.
I just read the book again a few days ago, and there was something said later (I think it was Ender thinking back) about seeing the dead look in Bonzo's eyes and knowing he was gone before he hit the floor.
funny munging
I don't get it either, but hey, I'm happily married to a member of the opposite sex.
But the weirdest, strangest, sickest thing of all - far weirder and sicker than any consensual sexual act could ever be - it the need for people to regulate the behaviour of others.
There is no person in this world who is so morally perfect they need to direct their efforts to remediating the perceived sinfulness of other people who are engaging in purely voluntary activities. Jesus says, "cast ye not the first stone", remember?
Incidentally, you seem to be correct when you state that committed, loving, truly homosexual relationships do not breed true. I know 3 families based on same-sex pair-bonding (my church has never had a problem with that sort of thing, so I see happy, well-adjusted gay couples all the time) and none of the children are homosexual so far (all but one are adopted; children nobody else wanted who now have stable, loving homes). The one who is not adopted is quite the ladies' man now that he's an adult... perhaps having two moms gave him some insights.
Wanting to curb promiscuity is somewhat defensible, in this day of incurable STDs. Wanting to oppress non-promiscuous gay folks is just poisonous bigotry and/or the self-hate of repressed homos looking for a violent outlet.
If two people love each other, and some other people want to stop that, who are the evil-doers?