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Ender's Game


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My daughter just informed me that Summit Entertainment has announced plans to make Ender's Game into a movie. Asa Butterfield from Hugo to play Ender Wiggen and Harrison Ford to play Col. Hyrum Graff. Viola Davis and Ben Kingsley sre cast as well. Supposed to be out November 1, 2013. Here's hoping they don't screw it up too badly. One of my all time favorite sci-fi stories.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm in the same camp as the others...The book is in my top 5 and every time an Ender movie is mentioned I start feeling bi-polar. If they get it right it could be awesome!

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It's my absolute favorite book and there is no way a movie adaptation can do it justice... I actually hope they take the Starship Troopers route and don't even try to do a faithful adaptation and instead do something totally different. (and for the record, I enjoyed both Starship Troopers the book and the movie as totally different works that share only the title).

Edited by Griz
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I haven't done much research, but from what I understand they're going to make all the kids a little older. If I remember correctly, it was something like 10-12 before kids start going to battle school. Like you guys, I adore this book, and really hope the movie does it justice.

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The fundamental problem is that most novels don't translate well to film. They are too long so have to be drastically cut and frequently contain "inner dialog" which doesn't work in a movie.

Then you have the fact that the producer(s), screenwriter(s), editor(s), and director all want to put their interpretation into it and you end up with something that is often abandoned before it even starts shooting. Frankly, it's a wonder that any novels have ever successfully been made into movies.

If you want an example of how badly wrong even a good attempt can go, look at what happened to Christopher Paolini and Eragon. The story had the guts ripped out in order to compress it into a movie and the result, now matter how well intended, was a flop - even with fans of the book.

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My daughter just informed me that Summit Entertainment has announced plans to make Ender's Game into a movie. Asa Butterfield from Hugo to play Ender Wiggen and Harrison Ford to play Col. Hyrum Graff. Viola Davis and Ben Kingsley sre cast as well. Supposed to be out November 1, 2013. Here's hoping they don't screw it up too badly. One of my all time favorite sci-fi stories.

That was a great book. I'm not a sci-fi book person generally. But I read it many years ago, on a recommendation from TGO himself.

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I see it being really difficult to capture Ender's genius. All his internalized thoughts will be hard to incorporate. I have a feeling they'll just go largely for the action of battle school and the bugger battles. Maybe have a sweet soundtrack and possibly turn it into another Tron. Don't get me wrong... I freaking loved Tron, but I just really want to see this done properly.

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  • 5 months later...

Enders Game is one of my favorites as well, the other really good book of the series is Ender's Shadow, it tells the story in the same time frame but from the point of view of Bean. It is quite good as it offers a different perspective on the story that is fresh and entertaining.

At the end of the audiobook for Ender's Shadow Orson Scott Card talks about eventually making Enders Game into a movie and he discovered that it would be possible to do a good film if he kind of combines the two books as the story in each one is pretty much from an individual perspective...

"The enemy's gate is down"

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+++ to the above. One of the best books I have ever read, I have read it twice in the last 15 years. The second time just for the enjoyment of revisiting it. This is one movie I would wait in line to see.

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  • 10 months later...

Ok, going to bring this one back to life. ******Possible Spoilers Below*****

Saw Ender's Game earlier today and wanted to share my thoughts on it. My biggest fear was Hollywood was going to take the name and make something totally unrecognizable out of the story, like they did with Starship Troopers. I have to say, that was not the case in my opinion.

They stayed true to the overall story from the book, but they were obviously constrained by the medium of film. Yes, there is a boat load of CGI in this movie, but I did not feel like I was watching Transformers or Battleship. The effects moved the story along and I did not find myself distracted by them. Quite a bit of the movie dialog came straight out of the book, which I always appreciate. They did a fair job of trying to show how the adults tested Ender by setting him up to be hated by the other kids at Battle School, but they did not spend much time on it. As noted in several preceding posts, much of the book takes place in Ender's head and that just does not translate well to film, but I believe they did a passable job portraying the stress and anguish Ender experienced. They also compressed some things quite a bit (the Mind Game and Battle School), but I don't think they really had much choice there unless they wanted to make a 6-8 hour movie. This one is right at 2 hours.

I was a bit disappointed that Bean did not play a larger role in the movie, as they made the relationship between Ender and Petra much more significant than it was in the books. Yes, the actors portraying the kids are much older than the kids were in the book, but I am not going to find fault there. It is a tough proposition to find 7,8 and 9 year old actors who could pull off these roles.

Not a perfect translation of the book to film, but overall I found it to be entertaining and I did not leave the theater wanting to curse the makers of the film for trashing one of my all time favorite SF stories. My daughter, who finished the book a few days ago, felt much the same way. If you are a fan of the story, go see the movie (we did it at an afternoon matinee so we wouldn't be out the price of full admission if we were disappointed) and I think you will be pleased with the way they handled it.

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I was pleased. Maybe not perfect, but I thought they did a good job. I wish they could have gotten more of Enders genius, which you get, but I felt not the full extent.

I loved battle school and thought they did good depicting it on film, but thought they missed showing how Ender completely dominated it.

All in all, I'm buying it when it comes out on blu ray.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Saw the movie then read the book again and Enders Shadow for the first time. I don't know how they could have done a better job in the context of a 2 hour movie. Make it any longer and it's too boring for modern audiences. The book takes place over 6 years, the movie maybe 3-6 months. They crammed as much as they could into it. While we don't see the whole of the psychological toll on Ender and the burnout of other students I think the heart of the story was still there.

The thing I was worried about the most was that they'd just tell us how smart Ender is without showing us. They did show us and Asa convincingly acted intelligence and a wide range of emotions.

I liked it a lot, and while I've seen people saying it misses the themes of the books I just don't see how it did

Edited by SinistralRifleman
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Glad to hear it was good. I was hesitant because of how much i LOVE the book. Now the sequels ……I could do without . Xenocide and Speaker for the dead do NOT have the same feel that Ender's game did. Got far too political and preachy . Certainly not entertaining or even scifi at that point .

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