Ender's Game Trailer is Finally Here

[axlryder]

... but I have no intentions of putting money in the pockets of a bigot if I can avoid it.

Meh, people need to grow up. Your opinion of a man should not influence your opinion of a man's work. Looks interesting enough. Truth be told, I never found OSC all that interesting of a writer. Probably something to do with people always telling me I should like his work.

I would tend to agree. Can a piece of work not be viewed for it's own sake without a prejudgment?

I'm sure an artist would appreciate the effort.

... but I have no intentions of putting money in the pockets of a bigot if I can avoid it.

*sigh*

Captcha=right left

Oh. You are on fire today Captcha,

Art is the expression of the artist. If you want to call something art, you then cannot separate the art from the artist.

No matter the content of that artist?

On that note, literature is not art.

?!?
Really?

I think there are quite afew authors who would disagree with you immensely.

But when the Author then centers his works around his beliefs, that is where problems arise.
Ender's Game does not center around OSC's offensive beliefs, but a lot of his other books do.

So you ARE able to seperate a peice of work from the artist. Or is it content creator? :?

Then those authors are delusional, literature is educational and/or entertainment. Movies are not art, video games are not art. Does not mean these things can not be so good that people can compare them to art, still does not make them art.

What definition of art are you using? Literature and movies have been considered art for a very very long time.

EDIT: Not to mention the "Video games are not art" can of worms. How are any of those things not art?

Artistic =/= art.

Books, movies, and video games are meant to be entertainment sold to the vast public, that is why they exist. That kind of automatically disqualifies them as art.

Such utter nonsense. The Sistine Chapel's ceiling was a commission piece done for the church (the iconography contained within intended to convey Biblical stories). Norman Rockwell was paid to do all those covers for the Saturday Evening Post. Great works of art have often been done for money/mass consumption.

Trailer looks bad, btw. It appears as though they've played down the psychodrama in favor of generic action sci-fi. Not necessarily damning though, given the fact that a trailer like this is probably more likely to get asses in the seats than a trailer of people talking for 2 minutes.

 

[Belaam]

Ah so it begins again, people hating works of art due to the personnel beliefs of the artist.

OSC hating teh GHEYs gets people all up in arms. That and he is a strict Mormon.

This is a particularly odd one for me as I loved the initial trilogy (I was less fond of the constant rehashing of the initial plot for new paydays a la Ender's Shadow et al.). His Mormonism was never really an issue and I actually found it interesting that books featured both Mormons and Catholics as thriving with their religions in a future sci-fi setting. It's a topic that is rarely explored in Sci-Fi and I thought he had an engaging take on it.

However, why I find it odd is that those books had very strong themes of everyone being "people" and getting along while accommodating the differences between people. Political views. Different religions. Bug eyed insect aliens. Funky half mammal/half plant aliens. Everyone. They were books that I read in middle school that got me thinking about what it means to be a person and how this exceedingly open view of personhood (at least for the 80s, which is when I read them) and non-human "humanity" allowed for treating everyone as being worthwhile while letting each group do their own thing. Xenocide in particular had explicit scenes of "we are appalled by your behavior, but it's what you do and you are a self aware individual and so we shall support your ability to carry on with your behavior."

Which is why his bigotry strikes such a nerve with me. I expect higher percentages of elderly people, religious fundamentalists, and minimally educated people to be anti-gay. Kind of comes with the territory and poll after poll show that correlation. However, it continues to shock me that someone whose works influences me to be more open to others would be so bigoted themselves. It's as if Marx had used slave labor to print The Communist Manifesto. The cognitive dissonance astounds me.

TL;DR I love the works of art. I am appalled that the artist behind them seems to lack the themes of his own work.

 

[RA92]

I guess I am not explaining myself well enough.

Art is the expression of the artist, the point of art is to convey something; thoughts, emotions, illicit thoughts and/or emotions. Art is intent. Art would exist even if the artist thinks it will not be profitable.

Movies/games/books are products, the point of a product is to sell, make money. These would not exist if they are not expected to make money.

There are infact art that come in the form of a movie, there are a few on display at the closest art museum to where I live. The difference here is that the artists made the movies to be viewed by any and all, the artists made these movies with the sole purpose of saying something. Intent.

"Movie" is just a medium, it can be art or it can be a product. The difference is intent.

So every single work commissioned by a patron is no longer art?

Well, that basically discounts everything from the Renaissance.

 

[Flatfrog]

Being charitable, this may be another case of misleading trailers, which is a pet hate of mine. The three most heinous examples of interesting, thoughtful movies which I nearly didn't watch because of crappy, generic trailers were Fight Club, Three Kings and A Bridge To Terabithia. All of them did the same thing: take a few moments from the film that looked 'exciting', present them out of context and give the impression that the whole movie had that flavour.

So it's entirely possible that this is the same thing - they've taken the footage of the first Bugger war, a few bits of the Battle Room and some of the final war, spliced them together and missed out the 90% of the movie that consists of the kids training and battling against one another. That's perfectly possible and par for the Hollywood course.

But for me, the most heinous thing in the trailer is the age of the kids. The whole point of Ender's Game is that these are *children*. Not teenagers, children of eight, nine, ten. The whole thing is about the abuse of innocence. If you make them thirteen, fourteen, then that's a very different experience. Now, I understand it's hard to get compelling performances out of kids that young, and also they want a teenage audience to be able to identify with the characters, but it seems to me that the casting rips the soul out of the book more than any focus on spaceship battles and explosions.

As for the author thing, I'm very torn. I want to boycott Card for his opinions. But I still recognise the quality of his writing, and at least as far as the Ender books are concerned, his opinions are certainly not evident there. So I don't know. Maybe we've finally found a moral case for movie piracy

 

[Scarim Coral]

I guess I'm a slowpoke as this is the first time I have ever heard about this book series so I guess with that in mind, I find the trailer to be insteresting. Time to do some research on this book series!

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Why the fuck does every sci-fi movie these days look the same? Why bother if this is the best they can do?

 

[kingmob]

Don't misunderstand me, I liked the books, but the story is actually pretty silly. I think it will take almost a miracle to translate that to a film without it becoming completely ridiculous. Add to that the problem of child actors in a story that requires a lot of character building and this project is likely to fail. An animated movie would work much better imo.

And why would they show the climax in the trailer so clearly?

 

[Vhite]

Kids, and especially Ender were supposed to be around 6 years old. They have of course made him more mature so they can force in there boring teenage romance. This is exactly why author of the books rejected earlier movie offers, I don't know what made him crack and accept this one but I doubt it's gonna be anywhere as good as books were. Something tells me that it is completely gonna miss the point of books and fans are gonna hate it. Also great way to spoil the most shocking ending I ever seen in a book and show him using the doctor device right in the first trailer.

 

[Kilo24]

Kids, and especially Ender were supposed to be around 6 years old. They have of course made him more mature so they can force in there boring teenage romance.

I'm pretty sure that the casting was done because it's quite hard to find six-year-olds who are competent actors.

Spoiler

Also, they're very evidently on Earth with Graff watching on: I'm pretty sure that's his sister.

But I can't say that I have high hopes for the movie, either. Ender's Game was the story of an exploited kid put through hell by a desperate military all to slaughter an alien race that he found empathy for. This movie looks like the Chosen Teenaged Hero put in a fantastic environment saving the world: more like Harry Potter than its source material. Granted, the former is really hard to convey in a trailer aimed at the mass market - but there still have been far more poor adaptations of beloved books than good ones.

 

[Vhite]

Kids, and especially Ender were supposed to be around 6 years old. They have of course made him more mature so they can force in there boring teenage romance.

I'm pretty sure that the casting was done because it's quite hard to find six-year-olds who are competent actors.

Spoiler

Also, they're very evidently on Earth with Graff watching on: I'm pretty sure that's his sister.

But I can't say that I have high hopes for the movie, either. Ender's Game was the story of an exploited kid put through hell by a desperate military all to slaughter an alien race that he found empathy for. This movie looks like the Chosen Teenaged Hero put in a fantastic environment saving the world: more like Harry Potter than its source material. Granted, the former is really hard to convey in a trailer aimed at the mass market - but there still have been far more poor adaptations of beloved books than good ones.

Then why bother making a movie if you can't do it properly? They just want to use the name to attract already existing fanbase and they are the ones that gonna hate it most. If they wanted an easy movie they should have used Shadows series which is Enders Game spin off with more action and romance.

 

[keiji_Maeda]

I will probably go to see this - I love the book, and as long as it doesnt go too Michael Bay it shouldnt be awful...although that said, it annoys me that

Spoiler

the trailer contains one of the final moments of the book; the climax where Ender destroys the bugger homeworld. Trailers in general need to stop blowing plot points.

Lets hope that OSC keeps as far away from it as possible.

Exactly my thought, something tells me that "the little doctor" isn't going to be the mind shattering zeitgeist it was in the books.

 

[keiji_Maeda]

... but I have no intentions of putting money in the pockets of a bigot if I can avoid it.

Meh, people need to grow up. Your opinion of a man should not influence your opinion of a man's work. Looks interesting enough. Truth be told, I never found OSC all that interesting of a writer. Probably something to do with people always telling me I should like his work.

I would tend to agree. Can a piece of work not be viewed for it's own sake without a prejudgment?

I'm sure an artist would appreciate the effort.

... but I have no intentions of putting money in the pockets of a bigot if I can avoid it.

*sigh*

Captcha=right left

Oh. You are on fire today Captcha,

i do agree with seperating the artist from his work. i like lovecrafts work even though he was a rascist sod scared of women for instance.

you forget the social darwinistic part about lovecraft, and anti-semitic, but all in all, nie out of ten for political opinions.

 

[keiji_Maeda]

Spoiler

bugger homeworld.

Am I to believe these children are striking back against the catholic church?

I really dont understand what you mean... :s

"bugger" is english slang for turd burgling.

I am English, and technically it does, but no one says that...bugger is just a general everyday expletive, like crap.

Well everyone still knows what crap means, and the context is rather heavily

what meaning he's using

I honestly thought he was making some kind of "catholics are aliens" comment...I havent been here long, dont know how tolerant people are of religions and whatnot.

Catholics are alien? I find the notion kind of hilarious, most of my close knit circle of friends think that this is hilarious as well.

It actually goes quite a ways to describe how most second generation immigrants are perceived by the kind of people who disregards someone purely by their beliefs. Or the way that they were raised....

YOu've made my day hen.

 

[Kilo24]

Kids, and especially Ender were supposed to be around 6 years old. They have of course made him more mature so they can force in there boring teenage romance.

I'm pretty sure that the casting was done because it's quite hard to find six-year-olds who are competent actors.

Spoiler

Also, they're very evidently on Earth with Graff watching on: I'm pretty sure that's his sister.

But I can't say that I have high hopes for the movie, either. Ender's Game was the story of an exploited kid put through hell by a desperate military all to slaughter an alien race that he found empathy for. This movie looks like the Chosen Teenaged Hero put in a fantastic environment saving the world: more like Harry Potter than its source material. Granted, the former is really hard to convey in a trailer aimed at the mass market - but there still have been far more poor adaptations of beloved books than good ones.

Then why bother making a movie if you can't do it properly? They just want to use the name to attract already existing fanbase and they are the ones that gonna hate it most. If they wanted an easy movie they should have used Shadows series which is Enders Game spin off with more action and romance.

Because Hollywood can make nearly any book into an easy movie. Because all the people who loved the book are still quite likely to watch the movie and/or buy it when it comes out. Because it's a potential teen franchise like Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter. Because there's a lot of people in Hollywood who view simplification a necessity for adapting a book into a movie, and don't think that the movie is missing the point of the book so much as being a fundamentally different product from the book.

I don't want to judge the film too early, as trailers habitually murder any nuance that the film has. It could very well possibly be an excellent adaptation, especially since the original author seems to be decently involved. But my hopes are not high.

Ender's Shadow and its series might be a better fit for filming (I'm disinclined to agree with that, but it's been a while since I've read them), but it's going to have neither the same love nor recognition that Ender's Game does, nor does it have as many sequels to worry about. It's also much more into politics, which is really hard to convey well in film.

 

[UrinalDook]

Artistic =/= art.

Books, movies, and video games are meant to be entertainment sold to the vast public, that is why they exist. That kind of automatically disqualifies them as art.

So... the moment something becomes entertaining it stops being art?

Does this also mean that a painting completely loses its artistic value the moment it's sold by the artist?

Sigh, look at it this way, movies/books/video games are products.

Okay... While I'm still able to restrain myself from launching into a string of ad hominems, let me ask you one question.

What about poetry?

OT: Loved the book, and was apparently one of the few to be excited by the prospect of a movie. While I do share some of the grievances a lot of you do with this trailer - the inclusion of certain plot elements and the emphasis on busy visuals - I'm still excited. The reason for that is because I've known how hard it would be to tease such a slow burning plot. I'm hoping that the trailer we've seen there is using a large portion of the film's action scenes, and that we'll get all the required contemplative stuff for the bulk of the run time.

But coming in with that approach, I'd decided before watching it to ignore the content and focus on the presentation. The most reassuring thing is that it doesn't look like they've skimped on the budget. The visuals look good, the acting, direction and composition look decent and most importantly it looks like they've given the battle room the love it needs. The battle room scenes in the book are exciting on a cerebral level, but I've always had the sense that they would be just as impressive visually. Hopefully, those scenes will be the centrepiece of the film (perhaps why we saw little of it, that's what they want to surprise their audience with) and the brief look we're given shows a lot of movement and fluidity.

This film is not going to be ground breaking. The book has existed for years, and much of its originality has been transcribed into more derivative works. I'm not expecting a rehash of the book either, and I pity anyone who does as much as I pity those who complain about Faramir in the LotR movies, or the change ups in Game of Thrones. What I am expecting as an absolute visual treat, some well developed themes and something of a different emphasis than most sci-fi we see today. On that front, this trailer is encouraging.

 

[moggett88]

Spoiler

bugger homeworld.

Am I to believe these children are striking back against the catholic church?

I really dont understand what you mean... :s

"bugger" is english slang for turd burgling.

I am English, and technically it does, but no one says that...bugger is just a general everyday expletive, like crap.

Well everyone still knows what crap means, and the context is rather heavily

what meaning he's using

I honestly thought he was making some kind of "catholics are aliens" comment...I havent been here long, dont know how tolerant people are of religions and whatnot.

Catholics are alien? I find the notion kind of hilarious, most of my close knit circle of friends think that this is hilarious as well.

It actually goes quite a ways to describe how most second generation immigrants are perceived by the kind of people who disregards someone purely by their beliefs. Or the way that they were raised....

YOu've made my day hen.

As a second gen immigrant myself (my grandparents are originally from Poland) I can say that the locals treat us more like blood-sucking vampires than aliens :s

 

[Flatfrog]

TL;DR I love the works of art. I am appalled that the artist behind them seems to lack the themes of his own work.

YES. This is my feeling exactly. I was truly astounded when I read Card's writings on the subject of homosexuality because I just couldn't make it match in my head with the things of his I've read (admittedly, I haven't read his specifically Mormon-themed books such as Alvin Maker so I can't comment on those).

The first Card book I read was Songmaster, which from my memory (admittedly faded and filtered through a fourteen-year-old reader's eyes) featured an extremely sympathetic and rather warm homosexual relationship - admittedly doomed and tragic, but certainly not one that felt in any way homophobic. And as you said, Ender's Game and the rest of the series come across as fairly liberal-minded. So Card the person and Card the author just feel like two different people.