Ender's Game

unclebob6958 said:
I've felt for a number of years that Pixar should have an "adult" division - R-Pix, perhaps? They could make films like "Enders Game," and the actors could be the ages they are supposed to be, and do a lot of the things that real child actors cannot do.

I'm expecting to be disappointed. I'm also expecting to be disappointed by the untitled "Dragonriders of Pern" film in the works.
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It was good even if it was PG13 and the actors were kids. Might have been a bit more apealing to adults if it was a bit more like Star Ship Troopers, but still a good story.

I see chatter about the Dragon Rider's of Pern movie has been going on since 2006/7, and it's been "in development" on IMBD for quite sometime, but no real movement. Any links to more current information on that one?
 
Saw it, been waiting for it for 25+ years, and -- it was okay. It was definitely very rushed, but -- overall, it was like all the power was sucked out of the story. I'm glad to see they didn't destroy the story entirely in a rush to glorify battle school, but still the story had all its power sucked out of it. The conflict with Peter and Ender, for example -- in the original story, that happened when Ender was six years old. Now, what happened is horrific anyway, but to think of it playing out between an 8-year-old and a six-year-old brings it to a whole new level; in the film it looked like a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old, and that's just a totally different dynamic.

Filming Ender's Game has proven nearly impossible, which is why it's taken decades to get to the big screen. I think they did it pretty well, certainly much better than I was expecting. But the constraints of keeping it within PG-13 really hampered how much they could explore -- when you think of the original story's way of playing out what happened with Stilson and with Bonzo, how could they possibly represent that, effectively, in a PG-13 environment? They couldn't. There's no way that you could film and display what the book version of Ender (at six years old) does to Stilson, and have that be PG-13... and yet, that conflict foreshadows everything that happens, it's perhaps the most important scene in the book and in the story. But you simply couldn't film that, so instead we get 14-year-old Ender and a watered-down conflict that never gets answered anyway. And, as such, it watered down the entire story and sucked all its power out.

I don't think we should be obsessed with comparing books to movies anyway; they're different art mediums and you can't fit 400 pages of a full-sized novel into 115 pages of a screenplay, that's square peg and round hole territory. I know people who were wigged out about the Harry Potter movies, or the LOTR movies, and -- hey, if you want the book to be the book, it still is -- nothing changed, go read the book, but if you want to explore this universe in an entirely new way, now there's a movie version. In general. Sometimes, that doesn't work, sometimes the movie version is such a horrific blasphemy that it needs to be called out as such ("Hitchhiker's Guide", anyone?) I don't think Ender's Game fits anywhere near that level, I think it's entertaining and decent, but just understand that it's "Ender's Game Lite" and if you want the full experience, the book takes what the movie has and ratches it up to 11.
 
Barry_Green said:
Sometimes, that doesn't work, sometimes the movie version is such a horrific blasphemy that it needs to be called out as such ("Hitchhiker's Guide", anyone?)
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I really liked Hitchhiker's Guide, but then I didn't read the novels so I had nothing to compare the movie to.
 
Gillvane said:
I really liked Hitchhiker's Guide, but then I didn't read the novels so I had nothing to compare the movie to.
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Interesting. I don't think I've ever met anyone who had experienced the film before reading the books, so that's an interesting perspective!
 
Well stated, Barry. I learned a long time ago.....the book and the movie....2 separate animals. Always. If I like a book, I rarely go see the movie, because I KNOW I will be disappointed.

And I read all of Orson Scott Card's books. He is that good of a writer. Personally though, I think Ender's Shadow would have been a better choice to adapt to film. Bean would make an amazing character study.
 
Once I realized they were going to make all the Harry Potter books into movies I quit reading the series. I'm not as entertained if I already know the plot and I wanted to see the movies. It works the other way as well. Im not as inclined to go back and read the books. Yes, they might have more character development, more description, or some other elements not in the movie, but the basic plot is going to be the same and I won't be as entertained because I already know what is going to happen.
 
It was a like a highlights reel of the book -- all main points; no real attempt to connect any dots. Way, way too rushed.

Honestly, if you haven't read the book, I have no idea how you'd follow it.
 
David Jimerson said:
It was a like a highlights reel of the book -- all main points; no real attempt to connect any dots. Way, way too rushed.

Honestly, if you haven't read the book, I have no idea how you'd follow it.
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Seriously! I'm three books deep right now and I have no idea how they're going to make a decent sequel. I was actually very let down by the movie. Waaaay too rushed.
 
little bobby said:
Seriously! I'm three books deep right now and I have no idea how they're going to make a decent sequel. I was actually very let down by the movie. Waaaay too rushed.
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I think the 'rushed' feeling probably stems from the fact that there have been several adaptations of series of books, that have not caught on like Harry Wildfire Potter, and so, rather than setting up for a 3-6 film series from the outset, they try to pack in a large amount of 'text'.

I don't worry about 'adaptation truthfulness to source material'... as some seem to. I have no problem with collapsing characters of the 'book' into composites for the purpose of filmmaking. This is done with 'true life' stories, as well as fiction. The PG-13 'target' also allows for watering down of any story element that would be viewed 'badly' by the MPAA.
 
Gillvane said:
Once I realized they were going to make all the Harry Potter books into movies I quit reading the series. I'm not as entertained if I already know the plot and I wanted to see the movies. It works the other way as well. Im not as inclined to go back and read the books. Yes, they might have more character development, more description, or some other elements not in the movie, but the basic plot is going to be the same and I won't be as entertained because I already know what is going to happen.
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When the "Lord of the Rings" series started coming out, I reread the books in German...
 
It's not so much faithfulness to the source material which was the problem -- what was there was reasonably so. It was simply too fast-paced at the expense of story and character development, in what looked like an attempt to make another Hunger Games-type thing out of it. Could have used another hour.

As for the Battle Room, it could easily have provided a LOT of fun visuals -- and Ender's development into an effective leader largely occurred at the Battle School. So, it was a double missed opportunity that the Battle School segment was so short.

Example: part of the point of Battle School was that Graff was purposely making it harder and harder for Ender's army to win battles, stacking the deck more and more unfairly against them as time went on. It was a lesson for Ender, who was expected to win every single time, no matter what. You got NO sense of that in the movie. It was basically one-and-done.

The movie could have used another hour.
 
David's spot-on in the pacing. They totally sucked out all the power out of the story because you never got to see who Ender was. You never saw the situation with Stilson. You didn't see how Graff progressively made it harder and harder to the point of sheer impossibility. How he took a ragtag bag of misfits and transformed them into the best army at Battle School, over time. Or how Graff finally "broke" him, by throwing two armies at him at once, and also letting them enter the field first -- so, at that point, Ender basically "quit", he quit trying to win honorably, he effectively cheated. Now, you saw that battle, but the film didn't show you anything of what it meant... and, that battle was the foreshadowing of the ultimate final battle. But in the movie, it didn't MEAN anything. It was just "oh, Ender's smart, he won."

I most certainly wouldn't have begrudged them another hour, to do the central theme right. As it is, it's like counterfeit money; it looks like the real thing, it acts sort of like the real thing, but it's pretty much a polar opposite of the real thing, there's no real value in it.

As for fun visuals in the battle room -- that's the part I would have cared least about. That's, in fact, what I was worried they might do, is spend too much time prancing around in the battle room because hey, look at me, I'm a movie... they didn't really do that, but they certainly didn't spend enough time there. That was the crucible where his character was forged, where his relationships were formed, where his leadership and troop loyalty were developed, and they pretty much just glossed over all of that.
 
Yeah, that's one of things you know by having read that book that's totally lost on the casual viewer -- the reason Ender and his army were awakened at 3:01 AM is because the other two armies were already in the Battle Room. With NO previous battles depcited, other than the abbreviated Salamander Army battle, you had NO IDEA what that meant, and how the battles had gone from fair to slightly unfair to just plain impossible, all the while Dragon Army never lost and continued to build the resentment of the rest of the school. It's all part of grooming Ender's character, not to mention forging the other characters, too, who got VERY short shrift.

When, in the final battle, Bean said "Ender, the enemy's gate is DOWN," it meant NOTHING in the movie. There was NO development. In the proper context, it was a very poignant moment.

I don't think it should have been "aw, COOL! BATTLE ROOM!" -- but those scenes in the book were clearly cinematic, and they would have served a purpose instead of just being gratuitous. Could have stood more.
 
David Jimerson said:
Yeah, that's one of things you know by having read that book that's totally lost on the casual viewer -- the reason Ender and his army were awakened at 3:01 AM is because the other two armies were already in the Battle Room. With NO previous battles depcited, other than the abbreviated Salamander Army battle, you had NO IDEA what that meant, and how the battles had gone from fair to slightly unfair to just plain impossible, all the while Dragon Army never lost and continued to build the resentment of the rest of the school. It's all part of grooming Ender's character, not to mention forging the other characters, too, who got VERY short shrift.
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While not having read the books... despite buying it before the film actually hit theaters... I did perceive the progression of minor 'irritation' to 'awoken at 3:01, and battle to already in formation groups'... as 'making things difficult if not impossible' and trying to get Ender to 'wash out'.

The story as depicted in the film, does follow many 'military' stories... including 'Starship Troopers'... in that respect.

The part of the film which I thought was a somewhat total disconnect, was the finale, where there was sort of a brief 'hint' earlier (not much earlier...) on that Ender was questioning the accepted view of The Bugs... but not much more than a hint.
 
Barry_Green said:
We can only hope that they pull a Peter Jackson and release an extended, hour-longer version for the home video release...
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Just watched it last night, so, no . . .

I did NOT miss the whole Peter/Valentine Demonsthenes/Locke subplot, which was entirely superfluous to the story and only served to set up the sequel, so it was rightly discarded.
 
Barry_Green said:
We can only hope that they pull a Peter Jackson and release an extended, hour-longer version for the home video release...
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I checked, and yeah, at 114 minutes it does seem 'short'. The Wife and I watched 4 of the Best Picture nominees last Saturday, and while I was ok for the 'marathon' the Wife was flagging a bit, especially after the 3 hours of "Wolf of Wall Street"...
 
David Jimerson said:
Just watched it last night, so, no . . .
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No as in not YET maybe? As in, if I remember right, the original LOTR releases were the theatrical issue, and then afterwards they reissued the extended-length.

I did NOT miss the whole Peter/Valentine Demonsthenes/Locke subplot, which was entirely superfluous to the story and only served to set up the sequel, so it was rightly discarded.
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Rightly so, except that it diminished and effectively exterminated Peter from the entire story, since the only thing we saw of him was the initial "let's play buggers" thing -- which would have been epicly horrifying at the proper age of six, but as portrayed at 14, it was meh.
 
Here's what's interesting:

Having NEVER read the book or knowing anything about it, I loved the movie, thought the pacing was great and had no issues with anything.

Friends on the other hand all said the same thing that's being said here - should have been longer, battle school was too short, etc. Funny - hearing that and now knowing that, I agree. Partly because I've had that with other movies where it irks me how they cut some of my favorite stuff, and partly because I enjoyed the movie so much that I would have gladly sat through another hour. And at the same time, without knowing this background, I still thought the movie was great and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Anyways, just a thought. No point. I'll leave it open :)
 
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