Ender's Game Trailer Released 470
The first trailer has been released for the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic Ender's Game. It gives us a good look at Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham, and Hugo's Asa Butterfield as Ender. It also demonstrates just how much money they put into the special effects for this movie.
Re:Slashdot really has changed... (Score:1, Interesting)
This. Please mod up. Also sad to see Slashdot become a hope for politically correct groupthink.
Re:I'd be excited about this movie, except... (Score:5, Interesting)
The most fascinating part of this, for me, is that I connected with Ender's Game more easily as a young adolescent precisely because I was gay and understood how harsh and how quickly a child has to grow up. I also understood empathizing with my enemy, my enemy not understanding the degree of harm he was doing to me, and not trusting adults or authorities.
I also keenly felt the idea of being tested in subtle ways, in manipulating adults and politics with their own fears, and deeply appreciated the affects of demagoguery before I even knew what it was called.
I felt like Orson Scott Card so deeply understood the plight of being a bright, homosexual child with more self-awareness and introspection than many an adult, that I was shocked to find out that he was so antagonistic to it. This was after I read Speaker of the Dead which seems to so perfectly capture that sensation of oppression.
Maybe my sense of connecting with the author and his general outlook on human emotion was so great, that to find out he is as homophobic as he is caused a deep-seated sensation of betrayal and cognitive dissonance. Also, I don't even want to separate my knowledge of the artist from the art, which is a topic worthy of an essay itself.
Also, I feel that while it seems a bit pushy and bitchy, and will evoke the typical "uppity homosexual" response, complaining about a popular person's homophobia and suggesting that they, and even their art, be considered as lesser because of it, still seems to me to be an effective way at showing strength and causing people to realize the tenuousness of their position.
No art or artist is held to account for all their crimes, and in the fullness of time people will forgive Card as a fuddy duddy for his homophobia, but in the here and now where it has extreme political relevance to my life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on this globe, I say he is an ass for his views and I do not wish to patronize him. Let the future enjoy him unfettered by these concerns like I can enjoy Wagner now.
Re:Climax (Score:2, Interesting)
The climax was Ender realizing that it wasn't a video game simulation, but that it was actually real and he just destroyed the homeworld of another species, killing billions, and more importantly, killing the only ones that had brains.
Re:Slashdot really has changed... (Score:4, Interesting)
We didn't change, OSC did. Well, actually, he didn't change, he just stopped hiding the crazy and became an embarrassment.
The seven digit crowd grew up only knowing OSC to be a horrible little shit, so Ender's Game doesn't have the same influence for them.
Re:every time i see "Ender's Game" (Score:1, Interesting)
When I read Shakespeare, my money doesn't go into the hands of an asshole that is trying to restrict the civil rights of others. Shakespeare is dead. So is Lincoln and Jefferson. And when Orson Scott Card is dead and if his family doesn't use the profits from his works for hate, then I will buy his work. But while he is alive, I am not going to support that bigot. I understand the concept that art is separate from the artist. But I also understand the more important concept of not giving money to bigots.
Here is my question for you: if you knew someone was a bigot, would you still do business with them (for example, they told you a story about how they kicked some Jews out of the store)? I've answered your question, now you need to answer mine.
Re: every time i see "Ender's Game" (Score:5, Interesting)
You're describing elements of the Hero's Journey. That shows up damn near everywhere because it's a compelling template - the reluctant or unlikely hero who turns out to have more strength than they thought... it's an easy model to imagine yourself into, to draw inspiration from, as well as providing counterpoints to what would otherwise be "Awesome person saves the day again, the end"
That said, Ender's game does particularly gel with certain geek-guy stereotypes; the bullied outcast who gets to be entirely justified in striking back, and whose unique genius makes them valuable. There's a potential comparison with Twilight also; both books make for good escapist fiction (for the gender they're aimed at) whilst having some somewhat disturbing moral assumptions buried just below the surface.
The difference (I think) is that Ender's Game does that at least somewhat knowingly, to force you to consider some ugly ideas that it's holding up as virtues.
Re:every time i see "Ender's Game" (Score:2, Interesting)
Quite right. Shakespeare, Jefferson, etc are all long dead and reading (and promoting their works) gains them and their personal views nothing. Supporting an artist who is alive now and using the money given him to support or further hate speech strengthens their platform. I'm not saying it should be the only factor in deciding whether to view the art in question, but I believe it should be a factor. Certainly something to consider if a person is on the fence.
Personally I'm not really a fan of Card's work. Ender's Game was okay, for a young adult novel, but it wasn't something I'd care to read again, nor see as a movie.
Re: every time i see "Ender's Game" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the deviations from the Hero's Journey that make a story interesting. The human brain is very good at looking for patterns; once a pattern is learned, the subtle changes away from the pattern are what provides the interest. This is how we distinguish faces, and it's why all Asians look alike to a westerner (the base pattern is tuned to one facial style, but Asian faces introduce more than just subtle differences from that pattern, which really throws things off).
Also interesting reading, a list of examples of the Hero's Journey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monomyths [wikipedia.org]
Why bother watching? (Score:2, Interesting)
The entire movie was shown in the clip. I don't even need to go pay to watch it.
And the book wasn't about the special effects and the space battles. It was about Ender. This would've been much more interesting to see filmed on a tight budget, with all the focus on acting, not graphics (which look the same as all of the last space movies released within the last two years).
Ender's Game hasn't aged well, for me at least. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes I read the book, I thought it was garbage pulp fantasy for those of limited breadth and imagination.
At the time I read Ender's Game as an adolescent, I thought it was awesome. Years later I picked it up again, and came to the same conclusion you did.
On the other hand, I didn't take much note of "Speaker for the Dead" as a young reader; it seemed a rather ho-hum sequel. I've since since changed my mind -- as a work of Science Fiction literature, it is the superior work. OTOH, Children of the Mind is still crap, Full Stop.
Re:every time i see "Ender's Game" (Score:5, Interesting)
(and no, this isn't a spoiler post, because if you haven't read the book then you won't know what you're seeing or what it means)
Re:every time i see "Ender's Game" (Score:4, Interesting)
So much bullshit in 2 sentences! (Score:4, Interesting)
"what you are effectively saying is that you are trying to do is to force someone to change their beliefs or lose their job... remember that by doing so you are going against those ideals of free speech and belief that the US was founded on"
Logically inconsistent. This is what passes for +5 these days?
TL;DR: It's not his personal beliefs that we're objecting to, it's his attempts to force them on the nation as a whole. That's directly counter to the ideals of the USA, incidentally.
First of all, none of the people I've met who have stated their goal of avoiding giving Card money have said it was because they don't agree with his beliefs, it's because they don't agree with how he spends his money. It's more akin to not giving money to a wino who spends every cent he acquires on turning himself into a human-shaped puddle of urine and rags in an alley. That said, there are almost certainly some who would nonetheless boycott his works even if he announced that henceforth he would have nothing to do with, nor provide any funding to, the National Organization for Marriage or any similar group, yet stood by the beliefs he had expressed, so that's a relatively weak point.
On to "force somebody" in paricular: if a street preacher or televangilist shouts at me about sin and hellfire and damnation for anybody who doesn't donate to his particular church, and I choose not to donate, would you claim I am attempting to "force somebody to change their beliefs"? Not at all! I don't care whether his beliefs change, but I'm not going to pay him after he shouts them in my face and attempts to indoctinate me in beliefs that are contrary to my own. People whose beliefs are in line with his will take care of him, or perhaps not, but it's not my job to ensure he has a job!
Of course, that's really the crux of the issue: "forcing" somebody to do something by voting with your wallet. Hypothetically, is OSC gets blacklisted by all major publishing houses and all bookstores refuse to carry his works - an extremely absurd hypothetical, but that's pretty much what it would take for an author to "lose his job", he can still self-publish and start his own distribution system. Nobody is stopping him from authoring books. The decision of whether that's worth doing when nobody will buy them is on him, but nobody is forcing him not to.
Oh, and while we're discussing "forcing somebody...[to] lose their job", bear in mind that people lose jobs as a consequence of actions which are unappreciated by their employers (and for an author, one's "employers" are really "the people who purchase your books") all the time. If somebody breaks into a house and steals a TV, they can be fired for that. "Thief" is not an employment-discrimination-protected category of person. Nor is "homophobe". Incidentally, in many states, "homosexual" is, though that's not really relevant here.
That brings us to the "ideals of free speech and belief" part of your post. Exactly which ideal upon which the US was founded indicates that we should financially support people who use their wealth to push for institutionalized discrimination against a minority population, again?
Card is allowed to talk all he wants. The government isn't going to shut him up (unless he starts threatening violence against people). Any citizen who tries to shut him up will be committing a crime, and be prosecuted for it. Nobody has to give him a podium, though. The podium Card uses is the money he receives in return for his writing. Why do you imply that he is entitled to that podium? "All men are created equal" certainly doesn't suggest that just because one person writes good science fiction, that person's opinion on civil rights should be given more weight than those of a pauper in the streets!
I could also turn your argument right back on you: a boycott is a form of speech. Why should Card be permitted to preach hate and prejudice, and the rest of us not permitted to tell him that we refuse to support his position?
As for "... and belief", that's really the crown on the
Re:FX spaceships are cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
There's an interview with Card where he mentions the script he wrote, all the way back in 1998:
http://hatrack.com/research/interviews/1998-scott-nicholson.shtml [hatrack.com]
If this is keeping with that, then they are telling the story from the adult perspective, because 'keeping the secret' until the end makes it necessary to leave out too much of the story when you're telling it by film. So instead the audience knows, but Ender doesn't, so we get to see his actions knowing entirely what the consequences are. It also integrates some of the Ender's Shadow elements, like more information about Bean.
In a way this is even more brutal than how the book tells it.