Yep, Ender understanding the enemy, loving them, and the using that to destroy them is kinda the whole point...
As if mainstream Hollywood understands any point.. my bet is a generic resolution. Ender has some super secret awesome military tactic (he probably was inspired by or learned from Rackham) up his sleeve and pulls it out at the very last moment to win the day.. cue The End. I just don't believe they'll go with the book ending as good as it is. And on an unrelated note: I was really bummed out when i learned that Orson Scott Card is such an ass
I can't see them putting the twist into it. The trailer kinda gave away the ending: Spoiler: the ending, duh Ender shouting "Now!" and a planet blowing up.... Though this could be clips from two different parts of the movie, that's not how it's being presented. I'll wait to see if posters here like it.
I don't like the trailer. I've seen it several times now and I think the casting for the adults is all wrong. Maybe if i could see an actual clip of the movie I would disagree.
I just finished reading the book tonight and I really enjoyed it. I consider it another novel I wish I had read years ago. I'm not sure how it will adapt onscreen. I did read in the Entertainment Weekly last year that the dark ending would be retained.
It is currently at 63% at Rotten Tomatoes. That could be a lot worse, but it is not boding as well as I had hoped. Especially since some of the positive reviews sound just barely positive.
I'm definitely going to see this and ignore Scott's assness. Genuinely could be better than Star Wars if it turns out right. RAMA
Just watched the HBO special. Some of the visuals are amazing. The work they did for the zero-G in the Battle Room was pretty incredible and groundbreaking, perhaps even Oscar worthy. One thing I noticed is they never mentioned Uncle Orson by name. Usually the author gets at least one name drop in these things. Wounder if there really is that much bad blood...
Considering there's talk of boycotting the movie and forming picket lines outside theatres because of him, I'm not surprised.
Its possible to still tell a compelling story if you let the audience in on the twist before letting Ender himself be in on it. The whole point is for the audience to feel pity for Ender. Sure, it plays a different emotion, and you lose the shock value, but instead it also adds a whole dimension to the sense of urgency expressed by the adult characters. Now the audience gets to go the whole movie knowing what the stakes are. Spoiler: Ender's motivation The reason Ender blows up the planet at the end is because he is pissed off at the adults, and thinks his little stunt will get him expelled. He doesn't have any idea that a) its real and b) that's exactly what the adults wanted to happen.
I don't know about that, regarding motivation. The whole point was that Ender, all along, did not know. He thought he was playing a game up until the end. To remove that from him and from the audience? I don't know...to me, it negates a significant aspect of the story, one of the core themes. Honestly, there are a lot of themes that could be discussed in this book. Damn Card and his attitude. I'm really torn about seeing this in the theater--but I don't want to dismiss the work of all these others because the conception was by a jerk.
If Card wasn't a producer, I would be willing to go see this. But since he is a producer that means some of the money does go to him, and now that I'm aware of his politics I'm not willing to support anything that gives money to him. It's aggravating, because I read the book years ago in school, before I knew about his politics, and I really enjoyed it.
Look at it this way: Would you knowingly go to see a shite film just because the guy who wrote it is a really nice person? I know I wouldn't.
Agreed, which is why I said the film is still going to preserve that (hopefully). Ender won't know the stakes, but the audience will.
Its already out in the UK btw. Saw it on Friday for something to do (I don't think I knew anything about it all other than seeing the poster and a 10 second advert on TV for it.) It was ok, the posters say 'Harry Potter meets Star Wars' I suppose I can see that, having never seen the HP's mind you. The zero-gravity scenes were awesome. Aaaaand Spoiler: spoiler for ending Looking through this thread... yep that does happen at the end. Ender and co think they're playing the final simulation but in fact they actually have just blown up the bugs planet for real. I will say it ends very abruptly, like literally, the voiceover seems to spit his words out as quick as possible. Odd way to end it if there isn't a definite sequel on the cards
I really don't know how they would go about a sequel. Speaker for the Dead would be difficult to impossible to turn into a movie and would require a whole new cast. I'm reasonably certain that when they signed actors on for certain roles in Ender's Game, they probably had options for sequels in the contract, especially for Ender himself. If they do go for a sequel, it'll mean the film series will go in a different direction than the books. Which won't be that bad an idea, Speaker for the Dead was crap, IMO.
They could make sequels based on the Shadow novels, although that would not excite me. I slogged through a few of them. I liked Petra, but the stories didn't grab me.
It's not just OSC being a "jerk" versus a "nice person." He's a person with a large following and platform due to his writing who has used that public platform to espouse utterly hateful and despicable views on a particular minority group, implying that they are genetically inferior and should be denied basic civil rights.