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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."
The extended EG books are great. The original is the best but the other books tell a wonderful interesting story of the progression of mankind and probably one of the most realistic tales of how man might interact with other intelligent species.
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 two movies have really fallen short). Keep the movie as short as you can without cutting down the story. Everything you need and nothing you don't. EG was always deeply about the characters and what is going on inside and between them. That aspect must be maintained. We need to feel the need and the pain of all the characters.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
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.