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ENDER'S GAME Casts Ender!! Is Harrison Ford Next??
Merrick here...
After years and years ad years and years and years and years of development and false starts and re-scripts, etc. it's now looking like the long awaited bigscreenification of Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME is perilously close to...actually happening?
Asa Butterfield, currently on screen in HUGO, is locked to play the title character in a film directed by X: MEN: ORIGINS' Gavin Hood. Producers are currently casting Colonel Hyrum Graff - a role for which Viggo Mortensen was initially courted, but now Harrison Ford may be in the mix. Graff is essentially a training commander at the "Battle School" attended by Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, which dovetails with this thumbnail plot description from Variety, where this casting news is also discussed.
Kurtzman and Orci are producing alongside Digital Domain and OddLot Entertainment. The film should arrive in theaters Spring 2013. Hood appears to have drafted some iteration of the script - it's presently unclear to what extent his version will remain intact in lieu of K/O's subsequent association.
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Readers Talkback
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Well, he does, although I wish he had brown hair as that´s how I pictured Elder. Gawd, I'm such a geek.
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Fucking Skyrim.
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He played Joe Enders in the awesomely bad 'Windtalker'
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Nov. 30, 2011, 11:15 a.m. CST
insect alien race seems almost done to death, starship troopers, disctrict 9, galaxy quest etc
by tHEgREATgABBO
cowboys n aliens would have been better if the aliens were more like in the comic
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Gamer???
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Graff is just kind of expositional filler with nothing much to do. Mazer Rackham is a much meatier part, and Ford would be perfect for it.
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A guarantee of quality then...
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Seriously. Scenes in the battle room may be the first time ever that 3D was a necessity.
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The Last Starfighter. I've never read the book Ender's Game, but the description sure sounds like The Last Starfighter.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 11:29 a.m. CST
Always pictured Morgan Freeman as Rackham for some reason.
by ROBRAM89
Not sure why.
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At least the book isn't. If they're making him a gamer, which he is not in the book, then maybe.
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But Ford would be great choice, especially since he's alive.
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Paul Giamatti as Col. Graff. Temeura Morrison as Mazer. (Mazer is supposed to be Maori, IIRC.)
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Aint it 2nd, 3rd, 4th hand 'news'!
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Nov. 30, 2011, 11:33 a.m. CST
Sadly I don't see this movie having the same end point as the book.
by BloodiedFox
I just don't see a major release with the budget this will require making it through studio hands without the end message being altered to something more 'audience friendly'. Can't have moral ambiguity in a blockbuster, now can we?
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Ford's in the title but no explaination of why in the article. What about Harrison Ford? Sloppy reporting.
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Seriously? <P> Have they even read the book? I'm guessing they read the title and worked from that. <P> Ender wasn't a fucking gamer.
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His age is somewhat important. Giamatti -- I could see it. He can plump up when he needs to. But how about Ed Harris?
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So, I don't like the ideas of Ford, Harris or Mortensen for the part. Great actors, just not for Graff
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and filming won't start til sometime in 2012. At the start of the book Ender isn't quite 7, and is around 10 or 11 at its conclusion. Also, another Brit playing an American. Agree with those wo picture Ford as Mazer. But, who will portray 'Bean'?
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John C Reilly? Actually, Giamatti is a good choice in the first place.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 11:48 a.m. CST
Harrison Ford casting is as exciting as Harrison Ford's acting
by YackBacker
In that neither causes me any excitement. "Producers are in talks with a plywood plank for the role of..."
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to sign off on this because Hollywood insisted Ender be 'older', and needed a 'love interest' (Petra)?
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Nov. 30, 2011, 11:57 a.m. CST
It doesn't need a love interest! It has a beautiful non-romantic love story
by bah
Which, by the way, is part of the main theme, Hollywood. Remember that. The whole purpose is to get Ender to understand an enemy without loving it.
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I think Hoffman is too young, or at least young-looking. And seriously... A love story?
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I could live with that change. The world today is much different than the world was when Card wrote the book and the assessment process seems a little disconnected from the 'Earth that is' at this time. How could a kid that is a strategic genius in the near future not be a gamer? If the military was looking for child protegees, where would they look? As long as Ender is portrayed as a quiet, anonymous nobody that lays waste under obscured usernames and they dont try to make it too 'cool' or portray him as some kind of internet legend. Ender is a tragic figure and appreciated by few... until the end, of course. I wouldnt want much else changed. I would note it is absolutely necessary that he kills the asshole kid in the shower.
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And just end the movie when Ender...y'know. Just leave out the last chapter because it's "confusing" or something.
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where do you find a preteen midget that an act?
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Nov. 30, 2011, 12:02 p.m. CST
Yeah, I'm afraid there will be too much focus on the "twist ending"
by bah
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And I forget that the prequels were ten years ago. I could get behind him as Mazer I guess.
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Not that I agree with that methodology
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Jemaine Clement is from NZ, right? (Right?)
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I'm not a huge fan of the book. Read it once and never looked back. But I could see this being watered down and cheesy.
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When Ender challenges the older 'tooner' to a 'best two out of three' in the game room. And the RPG(?) he plays at night.
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Card wrote the book in the 80's. Russia was still a major threat, and the internet barely existed yet. A major major plotpoint was that kids could get on the net and be treated as serious adults because only the privileged few had it. And also World War Z happened. It isn't Card's fault technology progressed 30 years since he wrote the book. (He did get tablet PCs right, however.) Video games barely even existed when the book was written. Ender WOULD be a gamer if it was written today. In fact, Card has edited and changed the ending to Ender's Game a couple of times now to better fit the books he wrote later and the world moving on.
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What guarantee do any of you have that they didn't "modernize" the story and made the boy an XBOX or PS3 wizard who gets recruited by the government because of his gaming skillz?!?
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The ending isnt much of a twist. Ender pretty much knows the whole time that the sim is 'live fire' but keeps it from his team... only Bean, supposedly, has a clue. The more I think about it, the more I remember that this is such an interior story. Most of the important stuff is all in Enders heart and head. I doubt they will try to portray that and this will be more an action thing. In the book, the battle school games seemed a little cursory other than a social tool. In the movie, it is likely all gonna be about 'Space Football', the blossoming of an uber-hip nerd, and hi-5's.
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First Gavin Hood... Fuck X-Men: Origins I've never seen a comic book movie mess up characters as badly as that one. Horrible. Plus a studio will never allow Ender's Game to be done right.
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....and don't remember much about it, other than I wasn't impressed enough to read any of the sequels. And they're totally gonna dumb this down for the Gen-Xbox. I do own 'Last Starfighter' on Blu though. It's silly fun - my 9 year old loves it.
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I've read the book probably 20 times. Not sure where you're getting the "Ender knows" from, unless I missed something. It's okay to update the world around the story, just don't fuck with the story. It's set in the future, so a kid in the future would be practically raised by computers and games and such, so the "gamer" aspect is reasonable, but it can't be his whole reason for living. FYI, Card's website refuses to confirm any news surrounding the movie. As he will likely be an EP and screenwriter, I still take all of this as conjecture. And Sean Connery for Mazer, James Gandolfini for Graff. Brian Cox as Bean.
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He's FURIOUS when he finds out what he did! He only does it because he thinks it will piss off Mazer that he broke the rules of the game.
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Loved it. I like the casting for Asa Butterfield. Not keen on any of the rest of it, including the producing by Kurtzman and Orci. Makes me nervous.
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Enforced sterilization, government implanted monitors, starvation in major European cities (from the parallel Shadow series). I don't get the impression that preteens have the leisure to sit around playing games.
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I totally remember Ender figuring out that the exercises on the asteroid was somehow the actual attack on the hive planet. I even recall he wanted to give a heartfelt speech to the soldiers/pilots that he was sending to their death in the 'end run' attack on the planet... All right, maybe Im remembering the 'Bean' rewrite of the same sequence that Card did in the sequels. I retract those comments then. Its been a while since I read the OG book.
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I only ever read a short story version of it back in Junior High. Soooooo, we're talking at least 20 years ago. Yeah... I only remember a couple of bits and pieces, certainly not the whole thing, and I'm sure my version was missing a LOT.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 12:47 p.m. CST
Maybe Bean knew. I just started reading that one for the first time.
by bah
But there's nothing like that in the original.
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yep. Im remembering Bean from the sequels.
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His Glory Days are over.
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This should be animated.
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yah, I now remember not liking how Card re-imagined the battle school experience from Bean's perspective. Bean was supposedly the one who knew that attack was live-fire and even went to lengths to prop Ender up during the battle where he was potentially failing. Some of the after-the-fact explanations of Bean's behavior were a little weak and I didnt like how he was portrayed as a quietly superior strategist.
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Too bad the author of the book is a gay bashing asshole. I try not to let the politics of authors keep me from reading good books. William F. Buckley for example was a loathsome man politically, but his spy novels were fun reads. Orson Scott Card however is beyond the pale in his attacks on the rights of gay Americans and I'll have to sit this movie out no matter who's in it or how well it's executed. From Mr. Card's bio on Wikipedia: Card has publicly declared his disapproval of homosexuality and of marriage rights for gay men and women. In 1990, Card called for laws that ban homosexual behavior to "remain on the books... to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society" The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card
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Ender only realizes at the very end that it's not a sim. It's actually Bean who realizes it's not. He does indeed win just to piss off Mazer Rackham. If Ford is going to be in it, he should definitely play Rackham. Graff should be played by Clacy Brown. I have actually always pictured Graff as Clancy Brown and when Starship Troopers came out, I realized I was justified in picturing him in that role. His Sgt. (Pvt.) Zym was the best part of that movie and I don't doubt he would steal the show in Ender either.
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Not just the headline.
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Bean being a superior strategist is mostly based on the fact that Bean grew up under the adverse conditions that forced him to figure out how to survive when he should have had no chance of doing so. Ender had to be placed in those situations by Graff whereas Bean was born into them. It makes sense because Bean was far more ruled by doing what he had to. He knew that letting his emotions get in the way of his actions could cause not only his own death but the deaths of others. Ender acted out of emotion and impulse still. They really were two sides of the same coin. Part of the whole "Shadow" anaology/comparison is that Bean was not only IN Ender's shadow, but that he was born from a darker place than Ender. He was sort of the darkness that was a reflection of Ender.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 1:14 p.m. CST
is this from the harrison ford interview that sky reported on where ford said that indy 5 is filming in late 2012 and lucas is presently working on the script??
by paul burnett
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Please god don't go that route.
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It's like the Omen or something.
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Bean figures out the whole plan around his arrival to Battle School. Ender is too naive to get it. "gamer" makes me worried.
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Totally agree! Thank you! I suppose having ancestry like Brigham Young turns one into a bigot, or maybe he did it all on his own?
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I've read a few quotes and there was not a single shred of hate in anything he ever said. He's crazy in love with the concept of family, so his gay characters tend to force themselves to be in straight relationships and crunch out babies. I think as a society, we're enlightened enough not to scream GAY BASHER at the author if his views are not hateful or radical.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 1:36 p.m. CST
As a movie, they better change quite a bit...spoilers(can a 30 year old book be?)
by MoneyGrabSequel
As a book it makes for a great story, one of my favorites - but a movie would be lame if it ended with a bunch of kids in flight simulators. All of the training and battleroom stuff could stay as is, but they need to put Ender (or someone you care about) directly in the action somehow. I can picture a split screen like the opening of The Brady Bunch with all of the kids taking orders from Ender in the "Alice sqaure" and it's not pretty... Change the movie I say, if I want the original story I'll just read the book for the 10th time!
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***SPOILER**** The book actually mentions how much Ender enjoyed games and puzzles several times. And we should remmber that the Mind Game is presented as a game that Ender dedicates himself to solving. It is very much presnted as a virtual reality/video game type of construct, so I can easily see where referring to Ender as a "gamer" would fit in and make sense even in the context of the original story.
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It's been next on my list for after I finish up game of thrones. Finally on the latest one, 800 pages to go. So this one is coming up quickly. Ashamed of myself for never having read it before to be honest.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 2:03 p.m. CST
Be prepared for Rackham and Graff to become a composite character and...
by MoneyGrabSequel
this will be combined with elements from Enders Shadow too. The entire political unrest storyline will be downplayed or dropped altogether along with the Peter/Valentine shaping world events. This movie will focus on Ender playing games, both real and virtual.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 2:08 p.m. CST
"Kurtzman and Orci are producing" This is enough to know this movioe will suck fuckign ass and will be a retard bullshit that shames the original novel.
by AsimovLives
Move along, nothing for you to see here.
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Completely different kind of story, be warned, but it is outstanding. The room always tends to get a little dusty for some reason when I read it.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 2:23 p.m. CST
Incidentally, "Speaker For The Dead" sucks bugger balls...
by MoneyGrabSequel
as do all of the original sequels. Enders Shadow was great, but not better.
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But no, it is definitely a better book.
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how can it NOT be terrible?
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Nov. 30, 2011, 2:37 p.m. CST
I liked the first book but had some trouble with a sequel(SPOLIERS)
by GeneralKael
I liked the sequel with the descolata colony, etc. and the other stuff - interesting ideas and wisely not trying to recreate the original plot. However in one of the sequels when the metaphysical device is created which pretty much creates whatever you think about... it started to lose me when a certain someone returns. I pretty much stopped reading that book at that point...
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I'm kinda enjoy them for what they are, but holy shit, Children of the mind and Xenocide are wieeeeerd. I enjoy the Shadow series a lot morewhich is almost as implausable (all plot developments rely on grown ups being retarded) but still, it has ex battle schoolers tearing up Earth. Genius children becoming national figureheads, waging devastating wars against each other like wierd little dieties, still playing their battleschool games just on a planetary scale... There's some pretty awesome stuff there. If they want to franchise this, go with the Shadow books instead of th Speaker books. I'm hopeful, because Hollywood wanted to make this for a while, making the kids teenagers with love interests and Peter going up to Battleschool to be the bad guy, but OSC said hell no to that. Let's hope they didn't break him.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 3:37 p.m. CST
i read the first book, i liked quite well. never bothered with the sequels.
by AsimovLives
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I really hated the Shadow series, because it retconned so, so much. Ender didn't outsmart his enemies... he crawled naked through a ventilation duct and spied on them. Bean knew months in advance the game was real. Bean wasn't a smart kid, he was an artificial super science created mega genius who happened to be brothers with one of the other kids at the school and also had his own mortal recurring enemy and had been famous to everyone in the school except Ender for a year before Ender met him. And then after he finishes retconning all the charm and sincerity out of Ender's Game, he goes on to have a bunch of sequels that rely on secret codes that ONLY super geniuses could possibly decode on an accidental fluke whim, and adults have to be idiots.
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Read all the books. Won't bother with the movie because of these doofuses. Two of the most supremely untalented pricks in Hollywood. Paint-huffing, female tree stumps with Down's Syndrome are brighter than these two.
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I don't care what fictional characters do, it's what the totally non-fictional Orson Scott Card has said and done that I have issues with.
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>I think as a society, we're enlightened enough >not to scream GAY BASHER at the author if his >views are not hateful or radical. Let's go to the tape: "Why should married people feel the slightest loyalty to a government or society that are conspiring to encourage reproductive and/or marital dysfunction in their children? Why should married people tolerate the interference of such a government or society in their family life? If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn't require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government? What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them. How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn. Biological imperatives trump laws. American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die." Fuck Orson Scott Card
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Nov. 30, 2011, 5:32 p.m. CST
Presumably it will turn out that Ender turns gay because Graff molests him?
by ar42
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"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message to those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society." ...sounds pretty hateful to me.
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Seriously. One of the worst movies ever made. I have NO confidence, zip, zero, nada, that this guy Gavin Hood could deliver anything other than a total piece of shit "Ender's Game". So disappointing.
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I agree 100% with your assessment of OSC's hateful bigotry. I wonder if they would even be considering making this film had he made those statements about any other minority?
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You guys are right. Sounds pretty bad. It's wierd becouse he has some gay characters portrayed in symphatetic light. But He has this enormous mormon hard-on for traditional values, sanctity of marriage and eternally pregnant women, so homosexuality contradicts everything his values stand for. I think gay bashing is a strong word when it's not about "WHAAAH, IT'S UNNATURAL AND DISGUISTING, WAAAH" but thought out arguments that support a persons world view. I' m probably defending him because I like his stuff, and some of his most interesting work like the Alvin Maker books could not exist without those convictions and his wierd ass religion. His "the only way to happiness is to be a baby factory" stance is so far from my own, that i find those ideas injected into sf and fanasy very interesting. Good thing he is not a decision maker though. (Then again as a straight white male It's easy for me to forgive people saying brutally stupid / insensitive things)
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WTF? WHY is this guy directing one of the best pieces of science fiction? FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. You are going to RUIN this movie!
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Gavin Hood, man. Gavin Hood. I'd stay as far away from him as possible.
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Endermen, those annoying teleporting vandals who go ape-shit if you look at them? Let's have Endermen, and Zombie Pig Men too.
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Bummer.
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Laurence Fishburne gotta eat too.
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Nov. 30, 2011, 7:24 p.m. CST
Seriously, did I mention that the Wolverine movie is a fucking piece of shit?
by WillTheThrill
I'd rather watch "X-Men 3", which is miserable, a dozen times before I'd ever watch the "Wolverine" movie again. And the guy who directed THAT p.o.s. is the director they get for the "Ender's Game" movie??? WTF were they thinking???!!!!!!!
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http://i.imgur.com/y9tZk.jpg
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I try to convince myself that the Card of 30 years ago wasn't such a zealot and bigot, and that his overwhelming religion and gay bashing are things he came into later. All of his more recent books are far more religious than his earlier works (which had religion, but represented many cultures.) Of course, he didn't have an outlet like the internet to toss around his views when he started, so he may have been like this all along and its just been editors keeping him in check. Then you stop and think about Xenocide, where it turns out as a major plot point the Chinese religion is completely wrong and worshipping a false deity, but no such revelation is made about others and there's a whole bunch of stuff about faith and rebirth and making a new person in hyperspace...
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You can't cast them with the ages they are in the books. it will never work. Readers can look past it and imagine kids with that level of sophistication and intelligence. It will never never never work on screen. It will just be a whole bunch of Wesley Crushers. OSC was a moron for writing them that way, IMHO. It was a stupid scifi gimmick. I hated it even more when later in the series they tell Bean's story and he's even younger and has done more violent and crazier things than Ender ever did. The other thing is that it will be amazingly hard to tell the central plot without people guessing the end and the MOTHER OF ALL SPOILERS it's kind of obvious these days. It wasn't so obvious when the book was written.
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That's another thing people will be disappointed with ... kind of like Game of Thrones. The books aren't really direct sequels. Especially as they were written book publishing date wise. I suppose there's opportunity to make sequels that fit the chronology, but most of those stories are not as good as Speaker for the dead, Xenocide, and Ender's Shadow. Asimov he aint, but then again there aren't any good Asimov movies either. :) What I wouldn't give for a faithful Caves of Steel/Naked Sun/Robots of Dawn/Robots and Empire adaptation
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Nov. 30, 2011, 9:01 p.m. CST
I bet there's gonna be thousands of asshats all over the internet
by WINONA_RYDERS_PUSSY_JUICE
trying to spoil the ending when this is released. Everyone's gonna know the end even people that didn't read the book haha
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His work is dead to me. His fixation on young people and strong religious views and statements have made him the Roman Polanski of sci fi.
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It didn't ruin it for me a bit. It's not even the most shocking revelation in the book. What's great about the book is the psychology (which will be nearly impossible to capture on film) and characters. Truly. That's why I said before that I'm afraid people will focus on the "twist" and decide they don't like it because they predicted it. The story is just as powerful when you know what it's leading too -- possibly even moreso.
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ARTISTIC FLOP.NEXT.
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His "Tales of Dread" are very well done. But his bigotry unfortunately overshadows everything now, and it's tough to separate his work from the religious zealotry which is pretty much rules his thinking.
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fact that Ender was bred to be what he was. I think it's important to the story. They'd also better have the bits concerning his sister and brother as well.
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And just for fun, he could have an arm missing...you know, just for something different, because that kind of thing never happens to Ironside's characters. Ford as Rackham would be pretty cool though.
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...about Hood, Kurtzman and Orci though. Those three make this feel like it is already dead in the water, even before a single camera has started rolling. And yes, Orson Scott Card has turned out to be a bit of a nutter, if we're being honest. Reality calling Orson, come in Orson... Hmm, maybe Ford should look elsewhere for his next role, after all. I mean if it was good then it'd be a nice role for him, but with that line up the chances of this actually being good are not, um, good...
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Which was a total ripoff of Eli in SG:U.
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Oh god, they really are going to Hollywood-ize it. By the time they get done with this shit, it really is going to be The Last Starfighter all over again. Ender Wiggin was not recruited because he was a Gamer. He didn't play Bug Hunt and end up reaching the 50 billionth super secret level which brought him to the attention of the government. I fairly imagine the stuff with Valentine and Peter is simply going to be excised, as will the Giant's Drink scenario and its purpose. We'll be left with the barest of story with some Battle Room scenes leading to the defeat of the enemy along with being smacked upside the head with a clumsily dictated WAR IS BAD HMM K! theme. Seriously, this article is extremely depressing. That Kurtzman and Orci are involved pretty much means we'll get the eviscerated kiddie version of the story.
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Dec. 1, 2011, 8:09 a.m. CST
How else will they sell the video game movie tie-in, tailhook?
by Wookie_Weed
I agree with you though, it doesn't bode well.
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I bet it'll suck. It'll be gutted and "white washed" for the American public. Though I'm sure with Digital Domain working on it the Battle Room sequences will look good.
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Dec. 1, 2011, 10:31 a.m. CST
@comedian:Clancy Brown - The Greatest Living Actor Of Our Generation (tm)
by Joaquin_Ondamoon
That is always how I refer to him, in any post, discussion, et al. The Man adds two stars automatically to any production he graces. His brief appearance in 'Cowboys and Aliens' raised that film up considerably. Unfortunately, that only gives 'CAA' two stars.
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Dec. 1, 2011, 10:34 a.m. CST
@ wookie: "Which was a total ripoff of Eli in SG:U." (?)
by Joaquin_Ondamoon
Don't understand how an 80's flick ripped off a SG:U character 20 years or so before it was created. Unless you mean the reverse? Was never a fan of the whole SG thingy except for the original film, and only because Kurt Russell was in it.
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"gifted young gamer with an almost preternatural capacity for strategy and logistics. . . who is recruited by the government " I guess an argument can be made that Ender was a gamer, but he was not "recruited." Recruited implies that Ender had a choice.
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Dec. 1, 2011, 10:40 a.m. CST
"gifted young gamer with an almost preternatural capacity for strategy and logistics. . . who is recruited by the government "
by ellen monte
I guess an argument can be made that Ender was a gamer, but he was not "recruited." Recruited implies that Ender had a choice.
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The most important twist in the book deals with Ender's young age. That point in the book is utterly bone chilling. I was under the impression that Card had held out on making this movie for decades because he didn't want to compromise any part of the story. A big budget film depicting a 6 year old doing what Ender does just didn't seem plausible. I guess Card has finally decided to compromise. On the other hand, Ender does age quite a lot throughout the story, so maybe 6yr. old Ender will be depicted by a younger actor. If so, that would by fan-fucking-tastic! I kinda doubt it, though.
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Really? Even if they hadn't screwed up almost every character in the story, that movie was giant ass on so many levels it's not even re-watchable. I've seen nothing else Hood's done so maybe Origins was a fluke but holy shit is that movie terrible. Much much worse than Xmen3. Ender's Game is such a fantastic book and the ending is one of the more profound and well written endings I've read. Not visually impossible to be sure but so very profound and deep that only genuine "lovers" of the source material would ever be able to adapt anything close to that level of depth on the screen without fucking it up. What about Ender's siblings? Cutting room floor I'm guessing? As other's have said, Ender's story is a tragic one until the very end. He's not anymore hip and cool than he is dorky or goofy. He's a nondescript kid who has a very 'nondescript kid' brain. Capturing that on film without being pretentious will be difficult. Especially for the creators of Origins (sigh). I think Ender's might just be one of those novels that only works in one's imagination. There's simply to much exposition to fill to validate who and what Ender is in the context of story to fit in any single movie without having soliloquy like moments as tried in Fincher's Dune (which was quite distinctly hated by many).
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Graff takes him aside and gives him a choice before leaving with him. It's largely to escape Peter that he agrees.
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The movie being animated would allow them to have one actor be age 6-12, while not being entirely trapped by the fact its a kid... or multiple actors. And since the battle room will no doubt be all cgi anyway... The easiest workaround is to just make him 15. As for kids that age being smart... I first read the book when I was 12 years old. And my reaction? YES, kids DO really act and think like this! We ARE smarter than given credit for, and can be like this! I've read the book a few times since, but didn't touch it for a long time after coming to dislike the author himself. I then read it again at age 28. My reaction while reading it? NO, kids don't talk like this at all! This rings completely false! And it was very strange to have that personal experience, to know, as fact, I once thought their thinking was exactly right, and now as an adult to think it doesn't work. I trust the me that was that age. Kids ARE smarter than we think, we just don't truly remember being that age eventually. Incidentally, this is also why Card could only write the book when he was 20. He shouldn't have attempted the Bean stuff when he was 40.
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He died of autoerotic asphyxiation 2 years ago, and is therefore unavailable for filming at this time.
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Do you mean " 'Lynch's' Dune"? Because, I quite liked it. Great cast - great costumes/sets. As close as you'll get to the book, unlike that Sci-Fy abortion. In fact- it resides on my DVR right now.
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All indications are the script is incorporating EG and ES, so Bean will likely serve as "narrator" to all of Ender's internal conflict. I will be hugely disappointed if the movie is equal parts Bean and Ender, but probably just so happy to see an Ender's Game movie I might let it slide. Of course, I was also excited to be seeing a version of John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany", which turned into the historically awful "Simon Birch" and Dean Koontz's "Watchers" which turned into a super-lame Corey Haim vehicle. So... there's that. I hope Robert Crais holds out and never makes an Elvis Cole/ Joe Pike movie, unless he can get Christian Bale and Josh Holloway.
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They are not only key to the story, theyre key to the whole series, especially Valentine. If the movie focuses around battle school only, this will end up a b movie approaching "wing commander" level of silly.
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Dec. 1, 2011, 7:19 p.m. CST
Article got me excited so I re-read Ender's Game today
by David Cloverfield
The book is better than I remembered. You don't know if you want to hug poor little Ender or bash his face in. The way OSC describes video games, tablet PCs and even the net (I'm pretty sure it will be more like his description in a century, than the online wild west we have today) sounds pretty prophetic. And the buggers, while they fit the "FICTIONAL INSECTOID ALIEN RACE 34343562" cliché are still pretty interesting as a civilization. And Graff rules. I also found a few very slight contradictions, but all in all a pretty fun book. I think a Zemeckis like 3D uncanny valley adventure would fit it the best. The kids could age digitally, and we could have 8 year olds waging zero G battles and kicking the shit out of each other.
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He'll be like 15 or 16 when filming is wrapping up, that's too old by a LOT. I know it's a hard sel to have a gigantic movie anchored by a 7 year old, but can't we find some male Dakota Fanning that's like 10 or something? Plus, this needs a real director like Soderbergh or Fincher, not just a studio hack. I've been waiting my entire life for a film adaptation of this book, and now I'm just dreading it completely.
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Dec. 1, 2011, 8:34 p.m. CST
Re: Carradine -- yes, I addressed his being dead in the very same post
by bah
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Dec. 1, 2011, 8:36 p.m. CST
Wow. A movie where people are ASKING FOR both motion capture and 3D
by bah
Who'd have thought?
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Dec. 1, 2011, 10:05 p.m. CST
Hood worries me, but if ever a project could make a director...it's this
by Raskolnikov_was_framed
I'm just hoping Wolverine is understood industry wide as a travesty of the Fox studio...why else would they be making another one?
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It's ain't it cool news... And it is. Cool news.
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I cannot, in good conscience, willingly pick up a piece of fiction knowing in advance that there will be zero chance of a minority being portrayed, or 100% chance of being deliberately portrayed in a distorted, negative lens. His twisted views run contrary to the real world, and his hate does real harm to real people that live among us. Frank L. Baum was a racist, and I'm well-versed in the arguments given where one can still enjoy his work. None of those lines of logic apply here. Card's novels are essentially set in the 'real world', and in his world he would like to see gay people, or at least gay behavior, erased from existence. Twenty years from now, he and his kind will be recognized for the frightened, superstitious, petty, angry little mental, emotional, and psychological children that they are, and this sad little embarrassing chapter in our history will fall away. Like those who still oppose interracial marriage, these venomous little kooks will be pushed to the fringe where they belong. Until then, fuck him, fuck his work, and fuck all that he stands for, particularly since it is abhorrent to what he *claims* to stand for - family, love, and acceptance.
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If you never heard his rants or read his essays, you would never guess he had such opinions from reading his fiction. Truly. If I had to profile OSC based on the Ender books, I would assume he was a Catholic-turned-atheist. It's an odd thing to think an author's fiction necessarily reflects their beliefs. That would be kind of terrifying, frankly.
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Hailee Steinfeld cast as Petra. Not bad. I'm still scared to death that they're going to fuck this up. If I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't have known what the hell was going on at the end of the comic book.
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