Escape to the Movies: Ender's Game

Piorn

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Orcboyphil said:
Nope the dream sequence is in there.
Awww geez, how embarrassing. I'm jumping to conclusions again.
To what extent though? I'm really curious now.
 

DeaDRabbiT

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themilo504 said:
Maybe it makes more sense in the book\movie but training children to be generals seems like a terrible idea for so many reasons, either way the movie doesn?t look very interesting to me.

I do hate it when something I like is tied to a cause I disagree with, I?m looking at you domino pizza.
Question, say we have AI, and Robots that can simulate input 1:1 on the battlefield, but need to be operated by a human. Do you use a bunch of old guys that are being trained for the first time in their life on operating these war machines, or do you use children unspoiled by years of dogmatic teaching, who have been interfacing with this technology for much of their young life.

Right, you use the children. Same premise with Ender's Game.
 

MB202

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Whenever I think of Ender's Game, I think of the Nostalgia Chick's "review" of the book... which is really just talking about the controversy surrounding the book... or rather, the controversy surrounding the book's author. Really, the dumb stuff Orson Scott Card says on his blog, it's beyond belief... Kind of a shame that would affect an otherwise pretty awesome book and this movie. ...Here's the video, to anyone who's interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5b1ZoxUeKc

Also, J.J. Abrams is being "difficult" during the making of Star Wars? What's that supposed to mean?
 

ForumSafari

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BreakfastMan said:
The difference being A: I can listen to all of Filosofem legally on youtube without giving Varg money, B: Lovecraft is freaking dead, and C: Card actually donates loads of money to hate groups, hence the reason people are hesitant to give him more money.
Of course there is a difference, it just strikes me as funny that people don't seem to know all that much about the content of a lot of Lovecraft's books. I don't know about the Vikernes analogy though, I think that while you can listen to his work on Youtube a lot more people will just shrug their shoulders and fund him by buying a CD or "steal" the music instead. The thing is that Varg is just a particularly insane example, they may not donate but the views Card exhorts are common the what seems like the overwhelming majority of commercial rap.

It just seems to me like people weren't realistically going to see this anyway and are now saying it's because homophobia because honestly if people like the product by and large they'll apparently look the other way. See Emperor at Download as well, no offense to my metalbros but realistically were most of the people going really going to watch a black metal band? Probably not, even without the controversy around them I'm guessing there weren't going to be that many Emperor fans in that group.
 

Gorrath

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I know it's terribly unlikely you will read nor care what I think, but I've come down pretty hard on you in the last bunch of reviews of yours I commented on Bob. Thankfully, for me anyway, I can say that I enthusiastically agree with every sentiment you had in this review. As a huge fan of the Ender story (though Speaker for the Dead was better than any of it), I felt that they would do exactly what you described and I'm glad you chided them for it. Removing the very soul of a novel in order to make a spectacle of it is ever the problem with these sorts of adaptations.
 

Ryan Hughes

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LysanderNemoinis said:
Yeah, but you have to remember how the world works. It's okay for an an artist to be an anti-Semite and hire underage hookers (as long as they're the same sex). If it's opposite sex, then it's wrong...unless your have the "correct" political ideology, then you can get away with anything. I mean, no one bats an eyelash when Sean Penn and other actors pal around with horrible communist dictators (who actually systematically kill gay people). At absolute worst people treat it as a joke (ha ha, Dennis Rodman hangs out with Kim Jong-Un) and nothing more. So yeah, Orson Scott Card is almost as bad as Hitler by today's standards.
You are correct in saying that there is bias here, many people in Hollywood turn a blind eye to people like Penn, and think that Hugo Chavez was the second coming of Salvador Allende or Caesar Chavez, an assertion that is likely making Allende and Caesar roll over in their graves.

At the same time though, I just cannot see answering his hatred with more hatred, that never leads to good places.

Also, Card has not invaded Poland recently. He has not assassinated or jailed people that disagree with him, not even Sean Penn. And he has not forced Jews, gays or any other group to live in Ghettos in preparation for their move to concentration camps. So, I do not think the comparison to Hitler is valid.
 

Izanagi009_v1legacy

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Piorn said:
Izanagi009 said:
Piorn said:
Wait, THAT'S the twist?
When I read the book, I basically more or less assumed that.
The bigger shocker to me was
the bugs were just one big hivemind that didn't realize they were killing sentient creatures because of the scale difference, and had long since moved on living their own life, until the fleet that was sent decades ago by the humans arrives, and Ender is having these strange dreams because the hivemind is begging him to stop, as the bugs finally realize their errors as they all die, and leave a temple of apology imprinted with telepathic memories for ender to find in the future.
To me, THAT was the twist ending, not the stupid "gotcha" at the test.
That actually does sound like a good twist, a stinging criticism of people's want of vengeance and how the military can go too far. I doubt though that the movie would have done it well at all and if they did do it, they probably have been compared to other works that have been made.
Yeah, and it would propably have been too weird. The book had an entire subplot of a game that was generated out of Ender's Psyche, with weird fantasy stuff and gruesome deaths, where he digests the stuff that happened. Towards the end as his psyche degrades, his dreams get weirder and bugs start appearing in places he saw in the game.
In the end he finds the landmarks of his game on a new planet, and realizes it's a temple that has been built by the buggers, out of his memories, because he was mentally linked to the fleet with the same kind of signal the hivemind uses.
There, he receives a telepathic apology message, together with the last egg of their race, so he can decide their fate.
Personally, I found it a profoundly sad ending, but maybe that's just me.

My guess would be that they cut the fantasy game/dream sequences because they're too weird for general audiences.
And few people can cope with moral ambiguity, nowadays. Seems like they tried to keep that to a minimum.
Shame really because it would have elevated the movie past a simple "boy grows as both leader and psychopath" story into political/social allegory. To be fair, you are right about your assessment, a lot of the standard moviegoing audience wouldn't like the thing with the Bugger queen or the political bloggers and those who do could probably find other more recent works that do the same thing but either better or more complex; anime fans already have gundams and the new Space Battleship Yamato so what could Ender's game do to beat the recent stuff other than massive changes in vision or perspective.

I guess Moviebob was right, the movie does feel a bit old given how many people have used themes and ideas from the book.
 

Iceklimber

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Overall I think it's a great movie and the sci-fi effects of the Space Battles are really amazing. They are also in crystal clear high definition as opposed to, say, Thor 2 where a lot of the CGI had muddy textures or extensive use of Blur to cover up muddy textures or incorrect crash-physics (Thor 2's CGI effects are alright, just the ones in Ender's game are superior). The only thing I really disliked was how the Scene from the trailer with Jets fighting Alien battleships that you see in the trailer lasted only a few seconds, and was reused three times.

Also I don't quiet get the logic of Ender: He had no problem with doing training simulations for fights he thought were upcoming, then what was the big deal with actually fighting out the very battles he trained for?
 

Hoplon

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Seems like the "Ender was literally bred for this purpose" has been eliminated as well. which was always one of the creepier overtones of the book. That and peter.
 

Izanagi009_v1legacy

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Jim_Callahan said:
Coruptin said:
eck, just reading the synpsis of the book is enough to make me cringe, even now. the super miracle caucasian genius boy genre is just not my cup of tea
If you want to cringe, read the original short story (or, if you're feeling pretentious, "novelette".

Same thing happens to the enemy's home planet at the end. Except the enemy isn't named, isn't identified as aliens, and no evidence is presented that humanity ever colonized beyond Earth and some space stations.

Also, "Caucasian boy wonder" is pretty much the opposite of the point. Ender's tactical "genius" is only genius by the standards of a ten-year-old kid, he actually wins by intentionally doing something so stupid that the enemy can't comprehend the magnitude of the fail, because he's essentially throwing a tantrum in the form of throwing the test.

And if he wasn't a child, he'd be pretty much the most vile, bloodthirsty, slimy, irredeemable protagonist in science fiction... which is kind of the point. It's a book about governments kidnapping and brainwashing child soldiers, when Ender starts his tenure in the military via the school abducting him by threatening to murder his little sister in the first chapter it's immediately clear that all the gung-ho patriotism is a cynical deconstruction of warfare "for good cause", not sincere Henlein 'hooray military' crap.

(This is actually what makes Card's transformation into one of the most contemptible, theocratic repressive hawks imaginable so puzzling. Ender's Game is so vehemently anti-war and left-wing that it makes Karl Marx look like George Will. It's almost a damned polemic, the agenda is so un-subtle. I mean, come on, "even righteous war is literally genocide"? Christ.)

EmilShmiengura said:
I mean any science-fiction movie that doesn't have heroes in costumes (preferably from the marvel universe) isn't worth it anyway. See this is exactly why we won't any have good SF that thinks outside the comic-book box.
This year, Elysium was pretty decent, if unsubtle. Pacific rim was, if not the best thing ever, still pretty great, and the World's End was pretty much the funniest thing I've seen since hot fuzz.

If you're willing to tolerate a little more surreal and low-budget stuff, John Dies at the End was fun, too.

So that's four science fiction movies that weren't based on comic books, and only one even based on a book, in the last year. Four is more good movies than you get in any other genre in a year, so I'll take it.
I honestly wish someone could have made the movie far more politically divisive in it's view of the military and politics. Since you seem to know a bit of the book, the removal of the political bloggers may have made the movie worse in your mind and I can agree that something like that and the repulsive acts that Ender pulls (hell, i remember him beating a few people near death and defending it with something along the lines of "power make you supreme")would have the movie more than a Sci-Fi visual fest coasting on the name of the book; I just wonder if there are people with the talent to make it and if there is a large enough audience for it.

As for the second part, it does seem odd that there has been a large selection of Sci-Fi this year but a lot of it has been good and I honestly can't complain since i'm a sci-fi fan. I just hope directors that plan to do Sci-Fi take this to heart: Sci-Fi is more than just cool technology and flashy visuals, it can also be a commentary on humanity, the direction it takes, and our ethics and some of the best in the genre have done this to spectacular effect.
 

Orcboyphil

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Hoplon said:
Seems like the "Ender was literally bred for this purpose" has been eliminated as well. which was always one of the creepier overtones of the book. That and peter.
Nope, there's some dialogue about how he was the third child and his parents had spent a lot of money on him (implying his birth) in order to get him into the academy after his siblings failed. Peter is shown as a demon in Enders subconscious dream sequences and apart from an episode of bullying there not much of an explanation why. Heck the midget leader of Salamander is far scarier.
 

Hoplon

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Orcboyphil said:
Hoplon said:
Seems like the "Ender was literally bred for this purpose" has been eliminated as well. which was always one of the creepier overtones of the book. That and peter.
Nope, there's some dialogue about how he was the third child and his parents had spent a lot of money on him (implying his birth) in order to get him into the academy after his siblings failed. Peter is shown as a demon in Enders subconscious dream sequences and apart from an episode of bullying there not much of an explanation why. Heck the midget leader of Salamander is far scarier.
So they do miss the "military who's running a eugenics program allowed a promising couple a third child after the other two where close but not quite right" and good for the dream, peter is fucking evil.
 

Izanagi009_v1legacy

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Jim_Callahan said:
Izanagi009 said:
the standard moviegoing audience wouldn't like the thing with the Bugger queen or the political bloggers
The extra queen he rescues was likely left out because it ruins the entire premise of the book and is the one SciFi epilogue that's dumber and makes less sense than the end of 2001.

The political bloggers was cut out, because the idea that random anonymous people could post their thoughts and words, and those words would be so compelling that it would change the course of nations, is HILARIOUSLY inaccurate now that several billion people have tried it and everyone knows how it actually works now.

These are cuts of which I approve. If they try to tone down how quickly he goes psycho under the training, though, I'll be annoyed, since that would actually undermine the core anti-war premise of the story. Bob's little bit about "it seems like the adults just think he's a ticking time bomb and want to set him off near the enemy instead of humanity" is... actually a really, really good summary of the book/short story. The kid wasn't actually that much of a genius, they were exploiting his instability and bloodthirst more than anything, they were just telling him he was smart to keep him obedient. The adults outmaneuver him at every turn and Rackham clearly outclasses him in actual military skill by orders of magnitude, to the point of essentially proxy-playing some of the battles for him (to mislead the enemy).
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.
 

kasperbbs

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Coruptin said:
eck, just reading the synpsis of the book is enough to make me cringe, even now. the super miracle caucasian genius boy genre is just not my cup of tea
pretty much this and the fact that i find letting children be in charge of thousands of peoples lives sounds stupid as hell, what if that snotty brat decides that hes bored or wants to take a dump and loses the game on purpose? Well maybe it was explained somehow in the book or the movie, still sounds idiotic.
 

ZZoMBiE13

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C.S.Strowbridge said:
ZZoMBiE13 said:
"Oh. November. Goodie"

Words never rang so true. I know this is an aside and I apologize for the indulgence. But I swear to anyone reading this, our Halloween merriment of last night was barely complete before I started seeing Christmas ads on some of the channels I watched as I tried to shake off last night's sugar high.
I review DVDs / Blu-rays as part of my job and this is the first year I can remember that I didn't get a Christmas release in September. I've gotten screeners for Christmas movies in August some years. I'm happy if they wait till after Halloween before they brought out Christmas.
Yikes. You poor poor person. I empathize with your pain. :)
 

Eddie451

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Izanagi009 said:
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.
 

kasperbbs

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Jim_Callahan said:
kasperbbs said:
Coruptin said:
eck, just reading the synpsis of the book is enough to make me cringe, even now. the super miracle caucasian genius boy genre is just not my cup of tea
pretty much this and the fact that i find letting children be in charge of thousands of peoples lives sounds stupid as hell, what if that snotty brat decides that hes bored or wants to take a dump and loses the game on purpose? Well maybe it was explained somehow in the book or the movie, still sounds idiotic.
Child soldiers are a real thing used very effectively in many parts of the world for essentially exactly what the book describes. You might know the middle Eastern variant as "suicide bombers" or Al Quaeda foot-soldiers. African warlords use them a lot as well.

I'm assuming you're trolling and sticking this in for the benefit of other people... if you genuinely didn't know this then I guess apologies for probably ruining your day by revealing to you how big a set of bastards humans tend to be the moment they get a bit hungry or find religion.
As far as i know noone puts african child soldiers or suicide bomber children in charge of groups of people so i don't see how this compares. Perhaps Al Quaeda's terrorist operations are being run by a 12 year old, what do i know?