Escape to the Movies: Ender's Game

[cerebus23]

The queen may have been left out since they probably aren't making sequels where this set up is necessary though how stupid it is may be up for debate in a location other than a forum like a chat room. As for the bloggers, I say it's a half truth. While one blogger may not have the power to sway millions, the few people they sway can affect other people in a chain. To use a relatively tired example, While the Arab Spring may not have been started by Twitter, it did form a rallying effect, allowing people to communicate their grievances and form networks that, as evident, change government for good or ill. So while bloggers may not have the power to sway millions, governments do pay attention (China's internet restrictions is light of this) and the effect of people's words have more effect than some may think.

Regardless, if the movie is as a lot of book fans say, it seems to have lost a bit of it's soul and meaning given the passage of time and of the issues of adaptations.

I saw the movie yesterday at an early screening and the extra queen was in the movie he rescues it and flies off into space just before the movie ends. Also, having not read the books or heard anything about the author, I loved this movie. I find myself disagreeing with just about every review movie bob does now-a-days.

Yea if he can't set aside his politics and objectively look at films its getting pretty old how he can rails on anything he does not like politically.

And from what i have read it seems bob would be utterly fine with facism if it was leftist enough, he seems to be of the mind that people he disagrees with should not be allowed to speak or create at all.

It is a free country and people have the right to be as crazy ignorant as they like, they have the right to pretty much say w/e short of inciting people to riot. As long as he is not physically harming people, perpertrating genocide, and the like he should be allowed to do as he pleases.

Dave Sim is another, amazing writer, but increasingly anti female as the series goes on, he even writes essays about why he feels the way he feels about women and the women in his life and is completely open about his views on women in general, its does not make the quality of his work particularly in the earlier years before he became more and more almost obsessed with his female issues in his work, any less brilliant.

People with alternative views have through history have made good to great works.

Not to say his work is good or great, or the movie is or not, but i have have never read the book never read about the man and i come here to see a movie review and i get a rant on bob about how big a jerk this guy is. And this matters to the movie exactly how?

Its not even about was his book ok or crap, is the movie as is a good movie for someone has read the book, is it a good movie for people that have never heard about the ender games. Inner hollowwood b.s. political squabbles and insider gossip should not even factor in unless you want to point to it as the reason why a movies script might be an utter mess.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

see, yeah, I can ignore this card guy being a homophobe, that doesn't bother me so much I mean the republicans are practically running on a campaign of homophobia, some old has been sci fi writer saying super offensive things about gays, not the biggest problem gays have right now he's not really that influential hell i'd never even heard of him or his views until the buzz for this movie started to ramp up. what DOES bother me is that he is infact a crazy person. like belongs in an institution, i'm saying that as an insult I mean it as fact. straight jacket and all he deserves the full anti-psychotic treatment. and even before knowing all that the movie didn't look too good to me, now that I know it was written by looney bin jim I have exactly zero desire to go see it.

as far as the plot twist and all that goes. it sounds kind of interesting if it hadn't been done better elsewhere. I think one issue with finally adapting all this old school stuff like john carter and this is that while this may be what inspired other works it still comes off as old ideas we've seen so many other places by now that it seems like a rip off. even though it came before unless you know that ahead of time it comes off as borrowing heavily from things it in fact inspired.

 

[Groverfield]

Here's the biggest question on my mind. Why is classic-style sci-fi so enamored with young boys? Is it all based on the Campbell-type hero where a boy becomes a man as the setting looks towards the future? You couldn't really call Roddenberry out on this from TOS, but then TNG brings in Wesley Crusher. Is this remenants of the 50's sci-fi when boy-wonder sidekicks had to actually be boys for paternal parenthood themes?

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Are people seriously upset about the author? Still? That's like not buying Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto, or Machiavelli's The Prince just because they're dicks doesn't mean you should deny yourself from purchasing literature and learning from the experience.

 

[Jedisolo75]

I agree with Bob that we should try our best to separate the artist from their art when it comes to politics. Artists are often eccentric people, and this is sometimes the source of their talent. Mr. Card may very well be a homophobic and bigoted person, with strong militaristic leanings, however, this does not diminish the book in my opinion.

Look, Card isn't even the worst. On the other end of the spectrum, Oscar Wilde -for all his brilliance- likely hired 16-year old boy prostitutes. Dostoyevsky wrote 'Brothers Karamazov,' one of the most brilliant works of its time, but was also likely at least a mild anti-Semite. T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound were two of the greatest poets of the 20th century, but were also sympathetic with Nazism, even after the holocaust became apparent. (Though, in their defense, they both voluntarily committed themselves to mental asylums, so they probably knew they didn't have it all together.) I could go on and on. Even if their politics are not messed up, great authors are often addicts, and not to be emulated.

On and on. And soon, we would be left with very few authors to read, inspire, and to make us think. It is tremendously sad that Card makes the statements he does, but the answer is not to mirror his intolerance with our own, but to tolerate him for who is his, rather than ostracizing him.

There's a big difference between Card and Wilde, Pound, Elliot, Dostoyevsky. And it's that he's alive and funding hate groups while they're all dead. If I buy a volume of the Cantos then I won't be supporting fascism, If I go see a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest I won't be funding paedophilia on the other hand the more I consume Card's work the more resources and reach I'm giving him to spread his hate.

is

Does that mean that when he's dead I can buy all of his books, or should I avoid that because his kids might be bigots too? Do I have to wait until they're dead? How long until it's ok?

Enders Game is an undeniable classic, and I love a lot of his other books. By reading them I've never seen any indication that he hates gay people, although he obviously does, and his books helped me out a lot when I was in high school and didn't fit in well.

Also, whether you like it or not Card is already rich, you aren't hurting him a bit by not going to this movie, but you might be hurting the careers of others that worked on this movie that aren't terrible people.

 

[Cpt. Slow]

Er... wasn't the new Thor film supposed to be coming out today and this next week?

Thor will be released on the 8th of November in the U.S.
Considering your nickname is H31neken I am guessing that you are from Holland or you just love Heineken. Either way, some countries are lucky that way with earlier releases. Don't worry though, I have a feeling *puts on sunglasses* that Bob is almost ready to lower the hammer [http://mirrors.rit.edu/instantCSI/].

 

[The Wooster]

I'm more than a little curious how many people who think Orson Scott Card is the Devil will overlook absolutely horrendous things by other people. For example, I really like Lovecraft but goddamn that man was racist jerk, pretty much anyone who wasn't a New England gentleman was some atavistic mongrel degenerate. Lovecraft softened his attitudes late in life due to the influence of his friends, but he was a nasty bigot. Then you got actors who remain beloved regardless of their reputation for beating people up, or threatening women with kitchen knives. Not sure if the real issue is Card's opinions or the bubble many people live in where they never have to listen to a contrary opinion.

The difference is, I'm fairly certain Lovecraft won't receive any royalties from film adaptations of his work.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

I've been living under a rock, and didn't know this about the author. I disagree with his beliefs and actions regarding gay rights, however I don't think he's "the mayor of jerktown".

 

[Knight Anon]

I wondered if Bob would go into Card's politics in his review. Since it was the first thing out of his mouth, I turned off the review right then and there.

I've heard too much about it already and am very tired of it. I go to movies for escapism, I don't want peoples political opinions in my movie reviews unless its directly related to the understanding the story being told.

 

[Callate]

Especially with something like Ender's Game, I think people need to take a moment before they rush to boycott. What message are you passing on if all you do is not show up? That audiences don't care for "big idea" sci-fi, that they'd rather see another Transformers sequel? That Harrison Ford is no longer a box office draw? That Harry Potter was a fluke, and one shouldn't count on a young ensemble cast?

I mean, by all means don't see it if you expect to be disappointed; life's too short, and all that. But if the issue is the author being a raging dick in certain areas, well, there's an awful lot of film, music, and art that you're going to have to stop consuming if that's the ish.

Personally, I'm torn; I think the book was one of the better works of science fiction to come out of the eighties. (And yes, the author is a very uncomfortable combination of demagogue and hypocrite.) I still feel like I'd like to see it, but I'm waiting for some reviewer to throw a switch that will ultimately inform my choice, even though I don't know what that switch is. It's hanging in a "fresh" but "blah" sixty-something on Rotten Tomatoes right now.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Unlike most modern artists, Card does not infuse his works with his political or religious leanings (I'm looking at you, Melissa Rosenberg and C.S. Lewis). This makes it really easy to separate the writer from his works. So, in my opinion, if you would like to see the movie because it's a good movie, then do that and forget the background noise for a couple hours.

Excuse me? The Ender books have a pretty good amount of barely hidden homophobia and anti-antisemitism. The Alvin Maker books are basically mormon fables, and Empire is a huge manifesto for his political views.

Also, while I have never read Maker, C.S. Lewis was not a political writer. Lewis infused his books with his religious beliefs, not his political beliefs. A very different thing, to be sure. Most people do not know, but Lewis was very much from the Kierkegaard/ MacDonald school of literary theology, i.e. he felt that politics itself was the enemy of humanity and humanity's search for spiritual truth. The only two major political stances he took were his opposition to WWI, and his acquiescence to WWII only once the Germans had begun bombing Britain. Also, later in his life, he married a famous Feminist and Socialist activist.

 

[Darkness665]

The original Ender's Game was a short story. The reveal was that Ender himself realized that the 'game' was in fact very, very real. The final gut shot at the reader was that Ender gave the order and turned away as there was nothing else he could do as the general. Also, the ships were all run remotely (like our drones) and no human lives were lost, changing that is just plain strange and weak - missing the modern day comparison seems like a coward's choice.

It was very clear in the short that the reason for using children was the leadership felt they desperately needed the brilliant general that each generation would deliver. They had not found one and continually decreased the age limit for the academy until they found one. Specifically, the 11 year old Ender.

The Novel threw a bunch of panicked writer crap in that felt like, because it probably was, OMG I have to make this a book because they paid me money to stretch this short into a real book. Most of it was junk and just made the final much less significant than in the short story. The follow on novels are junk as well and mostly, IMO, just trying to correct the accurate account of what happened. Speaker for the Dead should have been named I Killed Them All and I Feel Bad Now. And I was only 11 so cut me some slack as a sub-title.

I will watch it eventually. I might borrow it from a friend for a night. Or watch it on Amazon Prime for free. That would work fine and none of my cash would go to that horrible person. Pirating it would imply that I would want to keep it. I never wanted anything except the brilliant short story.

 

[Darkness665]

Here's the biggest question on my mind. Why is classic-style sci-fi so enamored with young boys? Is it all based on the Campbell-type hero where a boy becomes a man as the setting looks towards the future? You couldn't really call Roddenberry out on this from TOS, but then TNG brings in Wesley Crusher. Is this remenants of the 50's sci-fi when boy-wonder sidekicks had to actually be boys for paternal parenthood themes?

Define classic SciFi because that does not translate to my experiences. What age are you currently and have you read the books from the 50's and 60's?

Wesley Crusher was not a SciFi character. He was an attribute tossed into the Next Generation of a mostly failed TV show. TV and books are not even closely related in my view. If you are one of the hoard of Wesley haters that is fine, but tying that minimalist character to significantly better SciFi stories fails as there is no actual connection.

As far as 50's style Classic SciFi how it that hard to figure out? A significant amount of SciFi was sold in pulp format. Cheap enough for ... young boys to buy and to fantasize about getting off this rock and away from wherever they were at. I read SciFi for decades and recall that the boy-wonder was actually a small percentage. The Hero's Journey was constantly bandied about often (and the hero was a young man but not a boy) but the greatest thing, for me, was the exploration of alternate results based on technology or imagining what Technology X would do to the world in several hundred years. The only format that allowed that in the traditionally hide bound publishing world was SciFi.

Tying all this to Ender's Game is very thin as well since the entire point was they pushed the boundary in desperation, not as a matter of course

 

[Darkness665]

So the author said some negative things about homosexuals and that basically makes him the worst person ever? Unless he's calling for them to be killed, I don't see how that makes someone "King Asshole".

Read his rantings. He barely stops short of that. Probably because that line being crossed could get him sued.

 

[irok]

Kind of sounds like they killed but , but I always expected that to be the case, it was always going to be too big to fit into a movie without trimming everything down and making ender look psychotic, which is basically peters game. I bet this movie wont be misinterpreted at all into some kind of video games cause genocide, but maybe fox will have a slow day or something.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Sounds to me like an incredible opportunity was missed given the state of gaming in the 21st Century, but then I haven't read the book or seen the movie yet.

And incidentally how exactly is JJ Abrams being difficult? I'm a little behind here.

 

[weirdee]

yeah, the entire point of the minimalist wargames display, and likewise in the ender's game book (the fleets being represented by tiny arrows/dots) was that it was both dehumanizing in the way it portrayed the deaths of thousands, and served to demonstrate how easy it was to gloss over that fact when you're so detached from it, which then connects with the real horror silently echoing across the screen, and on the face of a child, while everybody else high fives each other for utterly destroying an entire civilization

and this shock extends into the real ending

i'm not sure if anybody growing up in this age will actually understand what that meant, though

 

[Guestyman]

Random aside not related to anything: Not meaning this in an overly frustrated tone, just as a suggestion on how to improve. (If Bob reads this) can you make sure in future if you put a link in your videos you either include that link in the description or use a URL shortener service like bit.ly so we don't have to pause the video and keep switching back between your tab and the new one we're trying to open the article in so we can copy it accurately?