

"Ender's Game" movie happening - nl
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118047827

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goodweeds
I received this email from Hattrack today:

Want to Be in Battle School? Open Casting Call for Extras in New Orleans This
Weekend

Ender's Game open casting call being held at the Hilton Garden Inn located in
the Warehouse District of New Orleans on Saturday, January 14th from 11am to
3pm.

Alexis Allen, along with Batherson Casting, are seeking bright and talented
kids and teens ages 10-17 of varying ethnic background for the feature film
production of Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"; based on one of the most
famous science fiction novels of the last 40 years.

The film stars Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail
Breslin. Oscar-winning Director Gavin Hood will be filming Ender's Game in New
Orleans from February until June 2012, providing those selected with up to 8
weeks of work.

To be considered, please come to the open call this weekend, located at the
address below between 10am and 2pm

Hilton Garden Inn 1001 South Peters St New Orleans 70130

Please also bring a recent snapshot of yourself. Homeschooled students are
especially encouraged, because of the work during school hours.

Please visit this site at <A
HREF="[http://www.hatrack.com>www.hatrack.com</A>](http://www.hatrack.com>www.hatrack.com</A>);

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thesash
I am going to tirelessly promote this movie because it is one of my favorite
books from when I was a kid, but even more so because I _really_ want to see
the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, get made into a movie. Speaker for the Dead
is a much more mature, thought provoking book, in which a grown up Ender
struggles to come to terms with his actions from the first book. Speaker won
both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and if you havent read it, you should go
do so immediately.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812550757/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812550757/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpthesame-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812550757)
(yes, it is an affiliate link)

Fun fact: Orson Scott Card (author) had the idea for Speaker for The Dead
before writing Ender's Game, and essentially wrote the first novel simply to
set up the complex universe that unfolds in the sequel.

~~~
nl
Speaker for The Dead is good, but the book deteriorate quite quickly after
that.

~~~
thesash
The original quartet is epic, Xenocide and Children of the Mind get a little
bit off the cuff, but I really like them. Even the first few in the "Shadow"
series were ok, but then quality dropped off. Now there are dozens of books
set in the universe.

~~~
Harkins
The fairly magic particles in Xenocide are based on Mormon theology, so if
that's not compelling to you, the exposition of same in CotM is going to be
pretty boring.

~~~
redthrowaway
The moral philosophy espoused throughout the series, namely, the primacy of
intention, is heavily influenced by OSC's Mormonism. At least, that's what I
remember reading in an interview. I am by no means an expert on Mormonism, so
I would defer to anyone better informed than I on that matter.

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tsunamifury
This is, potentially, the only movie I can think of that demands a 3D
experience. Considering the storyline dives deeply into the tactics and
strategies of conducting war in a 3D space rather than on fixed plane -- I
really hope the film makers turn 3D into a useful storytelling attribute.

Note: Im a pretty ardent 3D hater.

~~~
baddox
How does that fact that there is space war defeat all the arguments against 3D
films? Namely, the fact that no one has ever had any problem determining depth
from a "2D" projection, because parallax is not the primary source of depth
perception in humans.

There are plenty of movies and television shows in 2D that feature air and
space battles, and never once have I found myself thinking "Gee, I really wish
I knew which of those objects was closer to me."

~~~
tikhonj
If I remember the book correctly, the 3D parts were actually games where the
participants _as people_ move around without gravity in 3D. In this particular
case--much more than for an aerial battle with airplanes or space ships--I
also think 3D would help with immersion.

~~~
SteveJS
I get queasy watching 3d shooters. I don't want to imagine how bad that could
be with Ender's Game in 3d on the big screen.

~~~
whimsy
Might I suggest you watch the 2D version? I don't get queasy; I would love a
3D version of this movie.

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jjcm
The cast looks great, but I'm honestly not sure about Gavin Hood. His XMen
movie was fairly campy, and there will be a lot of pressure to do the same
with the Ender's Game movie. I have my doubts.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I like the XMen movie. However, the OP says _Steinfeld plays Petra Arkanian,
Ender's trusted right hand._

As I remember it, Bean was Ender's trusted right hand. Petra was an anchor for
Ender's humanity, but it was Bean that was the real military genius, and
actually made everything _work_.

So I'm concerned about how well the movie will reflect the books.

And BTW, contrary to other here, I didn't enjoy the second book, and I really
hated the third. But when the "Shadow" books came out, I found them really
interesting. I thought it was a great device to re-run the story, but entirely
through the POVs of characters who, in the original novel, we thought were
nothing but bit players. It challenged my mind to try to resolve the _real_
story between the conflicting perceptions, and I think OSC was trying to show
us something about our own personal views of reality.

~~~
Steuard
When you say "Bean was Ender's trusted right hand," I suspect you're thinking
mostly of "Ender's Shadow". Reading the original book on its own, Bean comes
across as very creative with his small team but not really as a "right hand".
(I'd think mostly of Petra and Alai in that role, in somewhat different ways.)

As you point out, there really were some conflicting perspectives (and to some
degree even conflicting "facts") in the two stories, and at least for me those
"retcons" made the newer book less enjoyable. The few bits of Bean's dialog or
internal thoughts that were carried over directly from the original book feel
really out of place in the retelling.

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fennecfoxen
Is it _seriously_ happening? I mean, Harrison Ford name-dropping is all well
and good, but I'm skeptical. The first I heard rumors of this movie happening
Real Soon Nowish was on USENET.

~~~
kbutler
Along the same lines, I had a paperback copy of Battlefield Earth in the mid
80's with a "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!" emblem and a tear-out card to
order the soundtrack.

Hopefully waiting decades for an Ender's Game movie turns out better than
waiting decades for Battlefield Earth did.

...or waiting decades for the Star Wars prequels.

Maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up - but LotR turned out well!

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I think I still have that edition in my basement.

I'm expecting the worst for Ender's Game. I really can't picture anything of
the real story remaining in battle high-school.

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kkihara
As much as I loved Ender's Game when I read it the first and subsequent times,
I lost all respect for the man and his works after finding out what a
homophobe Orson Scott Card is. He's so full of hate.

~~~
mst
A good friend of mine discarded his entire Pratchett collection after the
author came out in support of assisted suicide.

Personally, I find myself sympathetic to Pterry's morals in the case in
question and unsympathetic to Card's in the case in question; but in neither
case do I particularly see the point of linking the author's values and one's
appreciation of their work.

However, if you really do feel that strongly, I'd suggest taking the approach
my friend did - donating all of his works that you own to a library on the
principle that his own personal disagreements with the author were much less
important than enabling people to read books full stop.

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darien
"Set in Earth's utopian future..." If I recall correctly, the earth society
and government was actually pretty dystopian. Does that mean that Hollywood is
altering the story for the worst??

~~~
waiwai933
It (i.e. the book) was more utopian than dystopian, but neither "utopian" nor
"dystopian" are really appropriate terms here. The Earth-wide government
wasn't much more than an UN (that changed after Peter got put in charge), but
there was international peace and harmony since the Buggers were the primary
concern, so one could say that that was better. But no significant oppression,
etc.

~~~
fennecfoxen
To say that such a thing is "no significant oppression" is a _contentious_
statement at best. The world government had imposed a two-children-per-family
population-control policy, imposed on many members of society against their
will, against religious objections. This _is_ visited in the book(s), though
not for overly long. Also, the young child has a government monitoring device
implanted on his neck at the beginning of the book. That's pretty creepy.

I suppose that if you're just saying that the oppression is not as gratuitous
as 1984 or whatever, that's true.

(The secret genetic engineering experiments to make people extra intelligent
but then give them OCD to keep them under control is a _later_ book, it's
true.)

~~~
e_proxus
An utopia without birth control seems a bit unrealistic (that's what utopias
is all about anyway), especially when you consider future medical advances. So
I usually see birth control as somewhat orthogonal to the utopia vs dystopia
discussion.

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smhinsey
This might be a minority opinion, but even as a huge sci-fi fan, I'm not sure
the story holds up once you know the ending. I'm sure I'll end up seeing it
anyway though.

~~~
chc
I don't think it'll detract much at all. The war with the buggers is
essentially a MacGuffin. _(Spoilers ahead for anyone who's managed to miss
this for the past few decades.)_ The real heart of the story is in the stuff
that happens to Ender at Battle School, his evolution from innocent child to
military genius to embittered pacifist and his relationships with the other
characters. The twist ending is great because of the way it reflects
everything that's happened to Ender so far, not because the surprise is just
so surprising.

~~~
smhinsey
You could be right. It's been a long time since I read it but I recall
thinking, when I finished it, that I was glad for the twist ending because it
gave much needed weight to the rest of the story. This might just be due to
the fact that I've read many other hawk-turns-dove stories in other contexts,
so my bar for them is high (e.g. If I Die in a Combat Zone).

~~~
mst
I re-read it over christmas. I'd note that firstly, I don't believe Ender was
ever truly a hawk, and secondly, on a re^n-read (I don't remember how many
times now) I find that the weight is in Ender's progression through Battle
School, and that the part of the book set after that felt to me like obvious
consequences playing out.

To be frank, I'd be quite comfortable with a version that ended on the shuttle
out except for the fact that the remainder of the book is necessary to set up
the preconditions for Speaker.

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tibbon
I grew up in Greensboro, NC and ran into OSC and his family members a good
bit. I'm glad to see that the movie is _finally_ potentially happening after
several false starts. I remember in high school (99?) seeing a section of a
script/screenplay that one of his nephews had somehow procured and him talking
about his uncle being excited about it.

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swiecki
Confronting aliens in cowboys and aliens? Really? THATS the movie they pick
for where ford had a role confronting aliens?

Oh, how quickly they forget.

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zASTvOUGHH4/TnCuHuN64PI/AAAAAAAACc...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zASTvOUGHH4/TnCuHuN64PI/AAAAAAAACco/MzYjfmA7KyE/s1600/han%2Bgreedo.jpg)

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ender7
For a long time I was skeptical that this movie could ever be made, simply
because it would be impossible to find someone to play Ender. You need a
11-year-old who can seem simultaneously sympathetic and capable of killing
another child.

Then I saw Hugo. Asa Butterfield might actually be able to pull that one off.

~~~
e_proxus
In the book, Ender does'n knowingly kill the other children, he just beats
them to the ground with, arguably, little empathy as a counter reaction to
bullying.

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waterlesscloud
The fun part here is that since it's being made by Summit, it's being funded
at least in part by the insane profits from the Twilight series.

Of course, Summit and Lionsgate are in merger talks, and if that happens all
bets are off.

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paul-woolcock
Now let's just hope they do OSC justice...

~~~
garyrichardson
I think you should change your comment to "Now let's just hope they do the
story justice"

Ender's Game is a story that a lot of people from different walks of life can
connect with.

OSC is a homophobic asshole.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
> OSC is a homophobic asshole.

He has a fear of homosexuals so intense that his mind is diseased?

Let's stick to facts, not misdirection.

~~~
nilchameleons
To be perfectly honest, that's a great way of describing how he feels about
homosexuals (or anyone that breaks his heteronormative ideals).

More importantly, though, making an incredibly inane distinction over how much
he hates a group of people misdirects readers from the fact that OSC has some
incredibly harmful views on society that should not be tolerated.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Ugh. Whatever happened to "I don't agree with what you have to say, but I will
fight for your right to say it?" that has made America great? Is it so quickly
forgotten?

If he's a jerk and he's wrong and you think he's overrated or should be
boycotted, you know, go ahead and say so, but "should not be tolerated"?
That's the language of "they belong in jail or Siberian labor camps".

~~~
scarmig
I think it's a bit of a stretch to read "threaten personal or state violence
on" in "should not be tolerated."

He's entitled to say his opinion, but he can't prevent me from saying he's a
bigot.

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yanksrock777
The only way you can have a story from Variety on HN is if you are talking
about Ender's Game.

So excited!

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hengli
I read this book when I was in 6th grade. I liked it a little. By 7th grade I
thought it was lame (I read all the sequels up to Shadow of the Hegemon). I
now think it's fairly terrible sci-fi. Anime (I understand that's a very broad
stroke) is much better.

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georgieporgie
Apparently, I'm the one and only nerd who read Ender's Game and found it
passable at best, and slightly creepy and inhuman in general.

~~~
jerf
You are _meant_ to find it slightly creepy and inhuman in general. Ender
spends a great deal of the next three books self-flagellating.

(Which are, incidentally, not much like the first book. The first book was a
juvenile sci-fi book, the next three are fairly serious works you wouldn't
hand to a 12-year old and expect them to enjoy. Or understand, frankly.)

~~~
georgieporgie
What I meant is that the children are comically pure, and utterly inhuman.
Endlessly droning on about how much he loves his sister, never misbehaving or
having a crush on a pretty girl; it all reflected a very strange impression of
childhood.

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Zelphyr
I've never read the book. I'm debating on whether to bother or not considering
Orson Scott Card is a bigoted douchecopter.

~~~
jfoutz
hugo and nebula winner. was a great book. Apparently Heinlein was pretty crazy
too... but stranger in a strange land is a good book.

You, of course, need to work within your own set of ethics. This story is
iconic sci fi. Even if you don't like it, it's a classic.

