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Ender's Game Trailer Released
The first trailer has been released for the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic Ender's Game. It gives us a good look at Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham, and Hugo's Asa Butterfield as Ender. It also demonstrates just how much money they put into the special effects for this movie.
FX spaceships are cheap. The effects are no better than Iron Sky. Since this has Big Name Actors, they probably spent too much.
In the book, the adults barely appear. But if they paid for Harrison Ford, they probably let him talk too much.
Shut up, meatbag! Bender's the best one of the bunch!
This is one book that I couldn't see Hollywood doing justice to. The trailer doesn't really leave me feeling any better about it. Lots of nice effects, but I think it's going to come out all bubble-gum.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
[Emphasis mine] Appreciate art on its own merits and you'll be the happier for it. Not everything has to be politicized. When everything is politicized, we become incapable of finding common ground with people we disagree with. When we can't even appreciate art together with others who have views we disagree with, how can we ever learn to tolerate each other? How can we have unity amidst diversity if we do not, as Plato said, have a communion of pleasure where we might at least rejoice and mourn over some things we hold common?
I'm not really sure you read the same book I did. Ender's game isn't about "just following orders"... I can't think of a single character who has that as their motivation at any level. Everyone involved is either being lied to and manipulated or is trying to save the world by any means necessary. If you insist on making it about the military, I would take it as an attack on spending soldiers' lives on wars that the soldiers know and care nothing about. Especially since most of the people doing the fighting 'on screen' were drafted into the situation long before they could make that decision for themselves (even genius children can be manipulated).
But really it should be a story of "the ends justify the means" and questioning if they really do or not. Ender's Game is a story about adults who put kids through hell, leading to nervous breakdowns and at least a few deaths. All because they think it's the only way to save the world and in the end not only were they wrong, but their crimes were far worse than we had been led to believe.
That's not the climax. The climax is when Ender realizes what he's actually done. Since it's a morally complex point, I have little doubt that part will be cut from the film.
This reminds me of 2 of my ex-girlfriends.
One would not read The Chronicles of Narnia because she was Christian and the books were not.
The other would not read them because the books were too Christian.
I am with Cervesaebraciator on this one – judge art on it’s own sake. And if it bugs you too much then borrow the DVD from the local library – Card won’t get too much money that way.
The most fascinating part of this, for me, is that I connected with Ender's Game more easily as a young adolescent precisely because I was gay and understood how harsh and how quickly a child has to grow up. I also understood empathizing with my enemy, my enemy not understanding the degree of harm he was doing to me, and not trusting adults or authorities.
I also keenly felt the idea of being tested in subtle ways, in manipulating adults and politics with their own fears, and deeply appreciated the affects of demagoguery before I even knew what it was called.
I felt like Orson Scott Card so deeply understood the plight of being a bright, homosexual child with more self-awareness and introspection than many an adult, that I was shocked to find out that he was so antagonistic to it. This was after I read Speaker of the Dead which seems to so perfectly capture that sensation of oppression.
Maybe my sense of connecting with the author and his general outlook on human emotion was so great, that to find out he is as homophobic as he is caused a deep-seated sensation of betrayal and cognitive dissonance. Also, I don't even want to separate my knowledge of the artist from the art, which is a topic worthy of an essay itself.
Also, I feel that while it seems a bit pushy and bitchy, and will evoke the typical "uppity homosexual" response, complaining about a popular person's homophobia and suggesting that they, and even their art, be considered as lesser because of it, still seems to me to be an effective way at showing strength and causing people to realize the tenuousness of their position.
No art or artist is held to account for all their crimes, and in the fullness of time people will forgive Card as a fuddy duddy for his homophobia, but in the here and now where it has extreme political relevance to my life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on this globe, I say he is an ass for his views and I do not wish to patronize him. Let the future enjoy him unfettered by these concerns like I can enjoy Wagner now.
Card has some gay characters in his work and they're portrayed sympathetically (or, at least as much as any other of his characters), so the "anti-gay hate speech" can't be referring to his art. So it must refer to statements he's made on his personal blog, etc.
If this is the case, I can only reconstruct your reasoning thus (please feel free to let me know if I'm missing your point): 1) Card says things I consider reprehensible; 2) Giving him money supports his ability to say reprehensible things; 3) Therefore, if I pay for his work, I am implicated in the reprehensible things he does.
If I am correct in understanding this line of reasoning, it must be a terrible burden to bear. For consistency's sake, it would implicate you in the wrong doing of anyone to whom you pay for services, whether a news-paper editor who runs the local daily, a car mechanic, or a doctor. We could imagine the editor, the doctor, and the mechanic attend rallies on the weekend where they say things we consider reprehensible. But according to this line of thought, by paying for the weekly classified ads, getting bronchitis treated, and having brakes checked, is funding reprehensible speech. To be truly consistent in this line of reasoning, you'd need to evaluate the politics (or morals, if you prefer) of everyone you interact with in civil society before exchanging money with them.
This notion of "funding people [...] you don't support" is totalizing: it politicizes all acts in civil society. One might deem it a good thing to do this, but it is not a step toward a tolerant and diverse society.
Mazer Rackham is Maori -- the facial tattoo is typically applied to the face if you are a male.
Exactly. It may be a fine movie, but I don't want any portion of my ticket price to be funding anti-gay hate speech, period.
Tolerance goes both ways. It is far too easy to claim the high road and seek to prevent those with different viewpoints from being heard. It is another thing entirely to stand and defend a persons right to freedom of speech when you don't like their message. If you can't acknowledge his right to speak his mind, then you are no better than he is.
There is a big difference between a person acknowledging his right to speak his mind and buying the megaphone for him to speak it loudly.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
I've read both books, and as far as I can recall, the comparison is fairly apt.
There's nothing particularly ground-breaking in either, despite Slashdot's glorification of Ender's Game as some sort of nerd canon. It's pretty much EVERY sci-fi/fantasy story ever told:
It's Mary Sue Fantasy, dressed up with a bit of techno-babble about faster than light communication. Hunger Games didn't bring much new to the genre either (other than the film adaptation's use of the talents of Jennifer Lawrence, who I happen to think is a primo piece of ass second only to the adorable Anna Kendrick) - it's Lord of the Flies + Running Man + Logan's Run + every other dystopian fantasy you've ever read.
Neither of them are particularly ground-breaking literature, both are light, relatively enjoyable takes on established genre fiction, and neither of them are as momentously, insightfully philosophical as their fans try to make them out to be. The reason teenage girls like Hunger Games is because it has a tough teenage girl protagonist. The reason geek boys like Enders Game is because it has a loner misfit boy who turns out to have special powers that let him save the world, even though he's unappreciated by the society that birthed him. Each book provides its fans with the hero they wish they were.
You base all your purchasing decisions based on the personalities of who created the products? Do you read Shakespeare or avoid it because he wasn't a thoroughly modern politically correct person? Do you discount the writings of Jefferson because he owned slaves? Do you see Lincoln as someone who freed the slaves or instead as the dictator who suspended constitutional rights? Do you interview all people in the supply chain before buying, only use open source software if you can check the bios of everyone who worked on it, etc?
What about your family? Disowned all your ancestors as worthless scum who don't follow your political views? In the political war of Us vs Them you can't go soft and let some of Them go free.
It's an interesting point but isn't there a difference between giving money to someone alive right now who is actively working against your interests and reading the works of someone who has been dead for over 200 years?
I think you need to recast it in other terms.
For example- if you were sick and had to go to the emergency room, would you turn down the assistance of a racist, homophobic doctor?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Oh... and in the end it's my money so I get to decide where it goes. I reduced my consumption of Domino's Pizza tremendously as a related example.
I won't be a jerk in mixed company- but when I have the choice, I choose another company.
For example- Papa Johns tried to be jerks but relented under tremendous pressure. Darden's (Olive Garden) tried to be jerks and relented under pressure. Your consumer pressure can make the world a better place.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Since it's a morally complex point, I have little doubt that part will be cut from the film.
Hell they are flat out telling him what they are doing. When did they ever admit to their goals in the novel?
Quite. What a miserable mess. They rewrote it basically from scratch. Kept the names and the We Win part and redid everything else. Half of the point of the book was Ender didn't know. That he fought every single battle thinking it was just particularly grueling training. That the military lied to him and almost everyone else throughout the entire book. Little doubt? How about no doubt whatsoever? How can he "come to a realization" when that entire element has been completely removed from the plot? 5 seconds of footage is enough to know they completely rewrote the destruction of the alien planet. Where is Ender's despair? Where is his giving up on the "training"? The only part that's left is his decision to just blow it all up with the Little Doctor, and they turned that into a triumph, rather than the training failure Ender believed it to be.
No better than I expected. There was no way in hell they were going to do the book justice. Odds went up after Hunger Games, I guess. I could have sworn audiences would rebel against kids killing kids, but I constantly underestimate the bloodthirstiness of contemporary audiences. Still, looks like they failed, as expected, despite being able to keep the violence.
You're describing elements of the Hero's Journey. That shows up damn near everywhere because it's a compelling template - the reluctant or unlikely hero who turns out to have more strength than they thought... it's an easy model to imagine yourself into, to draw inspiration from, as well as providing counterpoints to what would otherwise be "Awesome person saves the day again, the end"
That said, Ender's game does particularly gel with certain geek-guy stereotypes; the bullied outcast who gets to be entirely justified in striking back, and whose unique genius makes them valuable. There's a potential comparison with Twilight also; both books make for good escapist fiction (for the gender they're aimed at) whilst having some somewhat disturbing moral assumptions buried just below the surface.
The difference (I think) is that Ender's Game does that at least somewhat knowingly, to force you to consider some ugly ideas that it's holding up as virtues.
"you don't know who Nietzsche is do you?"
Sure, he was a gay philosopher who got his syphilis from a gay brothel in Italy who told people God was dead.
IOW a dream candidate for the Republicans.
But it also highlights the fact that hindsight is always 20/20.
The information given by Mazer towards the end basically points out that humanity had no other foreseeable option. (Adult) human strategists were incapable of giving tactically brilliant but suicidal for anyone chosen maneuvers. The long travel time for fleets meant ANY force sent would automatically be obsolete by the time it arrived causing any REASONABLE commander to simply withdraw. The military forces the Buggers were able to field we numerically so overwhelming that defensive strategies by humans were hopeless. Logical answer? Suicidal, "deal with what you got", "Never tell me the odds!" attacks.
The Bugger Queen only reinforces this fact. Once the Bugger Queen realized what they had done, they understood that they would have retaliated the same way the humans did had they suffered the same experence. Even if the Buggers wanted to end the war, they were aware the biological/psychological differences prevented communications (and therefore diplomatic means) from happening.
Were the crimes of the leadership bad? Yes. Were they irredeemably, unforgivably bad as they're made out to be in the sequels? In hindsight, Yes; in context, No.
Just remember that Card is a person motivated by what he thinks is right not a corporation motivated by money. While you have the right to legally spend your money as you want what you are effectively saying is that you are trying to do is to force someone to change their beliefs or lose their job. So, while you might be acting within your rights, just remember that by doing so you are going against those ideals of free speech and belief that the US was founded on...and if you can't follow them is is any wonder that your government can't either.
By all means disagree with the guy but disagreeing, even vehemently, with him does not mean that you can't admire his skills as an author (although to be honest I'm not impressed with those either).
It's the deviations from the Hero's Journey that make a story interesting. The human brain is very good at looking for patterns; once a pattern is learned, the subtle changes away from the pattern are what provides the interest. This is how we distinguish faces, and it's why all Asians look alike to a westerner (the base pattern is tuned to one facial style, but Asian faces introduce more than just subtle differences from that pattern, which really throws things off).
Also interesting reading, a list of examples of the Hero's Journey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monomyths
Hell they are flat out telling him what they are doing. When did they ever admit to their goals in the novel?
Quite. What a miserable mess. They rewrote it basically from scratch. Kept the names and the We Win part and redid everything else.
You can tell all of this from the trailer? Or you're just choosing to interpret things this way to give you an excuse to vent your nerd rage?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yes I read the book, I thought it was garbage pulp fantasy for those of limited breadth and imagination.
At the time I read Ender's Game as an adolescent, I thought it was awesome. Years later I picked it up again, and came to the same conclusion you did.
On the other hand, I didn't take much note of "Speaker for the Dead" as a young reader; it seemed a rather ho-hum sequel. I've since since changed my mind -- as a work of Science Fiction literature, it is the superior work. OTOH, Children of the Mind is still crap, Full Stop.
Speaking of the plot, the part in the trailer when he says "now" is the climax of the book (though arguably the revelation that comes afterwords is the "punch line"). Why the hell did they put the finale of the book in the trailer?
(and no, this isn't a spoiler post, because if you haven't read the book then you won't know what you're seeing or what it means)
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
You're remembering it wrong.
They told him they needed a hero, but they never told him that he was going to lead the fleet. He thought it was going to be a defensive war.
Also, they attacked Earth first (First Invasion; that's when they used Eros as the staging point, that's when humanity "discovered" the ansible and artificial gravity). Then they attacked again (Second Invasion; Mazer defended earth). After that, they realized that humanity was intelligent and they decided to stop trying to invade Earth.
The Third Invasion was Ender attacking them.
When you say "they" I think you missed part of the point. A huge part of speaker for the dead was the power of the stories of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Ender's self hatred was so powerful and his empathy with the hive queen so strong that he was able to tell the tale of her life and death and make himself the villain. As humanity took over the planets that the buggers/formics originally colonized, they realized the sadness inherent in that loss, and the horror of a single person killing an entire "beautiful" race.
Remember where the term "Speaker for the Dead" comes from (in-universe), though. Ender himself, anonymously, wrote The Hive Queen (also The Hegemon, though that's not relevant here) to tell the story from the perspective of the buggers, and that story is the one that the vast majority of the human universe read. Not an explanation of how the military treated him - if anything, that was covered up - and not the story of how humanity never had any other chance. Ender's goal was to give the Buggers a voice, to make humanity sympathetic toward them. If he was to succeed in that, it was neccessary that the one human who ordered the entire species wiped out be considered a monster. Sure, he could have (and it probably would have been more justified) pinned that on Graff, or on Mazer Rackham, or on any number of other people who put him in the position to unknowingly give that order... but that would have distracted from the story, and they didn't have the insight into the alien race that he did, anyhow. He made himself the scapegoat, accepting responsibility for what he did without knowing the consequences, because it made the story better, and thus furthered the goal of "speaking for the dead".
As a sort of side note, a little over a hundred years ago, Americans who managed to kill an unusually large number of "Indians", or to hold out against them in desperate combat, were regarded as heroes. Today, they are still sometimes seen as legends, but also sometimes as monsters or at least murderers. From a time when "wiping them out" was perceived as a laudable goal, to a time when there is a sort of nationwide shame for what we did, in a mere century. That's without anything even remotely close to the impact of The Hive Queen (as described in Card's fiction), and without an actual, literal [g|x]enocide. Imagine how it will be viewed after another 400 centuries...
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...