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Benioff and Weiss To Write Ender's Game Script 507

Posted by Hemos from the dear-god dept.
nighthawk127127 writes "According to the Fresco Pictures website, David Benioff (writer of the screenplay for Troy) has been signed on by Warner Brothers to write the script for the movie adaptation of Ender's Game. Rumors of the Ender's Game movie have been circulating for a long time now, but this is the first time in a while we've gotten some definite information. The movie will be a combination of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card." Well, gosh, with Troy under his belt, all my concerns about the movie sucking are straight out! *cough*
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Benioff and Weiss To Write Ender's Game Script More

Benioff and Weiss To Write Ender's Game Script

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  • Hemos: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tim_F ( 12524 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:29PM (#12000944)
    In what way did Troy suck any less than your favourite movie of all time? What makes your favourite movie your favourite movie? What have you done to encourage a discussion here by posting such a flamebait comment?

    • Basic Plot Inaccuracies? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <<ieshan> <at> <gmail.com>> on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:55PM (#12001360) Homepage Journal
      Read the fucking Iliad.

      Achilles sits around for 9 books, while Diomedes (not even IN the movie) and Ajax (killed in the FIRST battle) and Menelaos (same) beat the crap out of people.

      Most of the action is dominated by the Gods, not the mortals.

      Achilles DIES before he gets to Troy, but that *isn't* in the Iliad.

      The Trojan horse bit is really written down in Vergil, but he was *never credited*.

      When Achilles and Hector fight, Hector *runs* first. The reason they fight is because Hector is trapped outside the city walls, not because he comes down to fight Achilles. Gods interfere with the fight.

      Aeneas isn't some random guy in the end, but he is a rather minor trojan prince who's the best fighter outside of Hector on the Trojan side. Read the Aeneid for more info.

      The movie Troy was a huge cinematic blunder ruining one of the greatest stories of all time.
      • Wow, I don't see a SINGLE bad thing about the movie in your whole post. At all. You just said it doesn't follow the old stories, which is not even a related matter in the slightest. You can't just say something is bad because it isn't like something else. (Well, clearly, you can, but you look like a moron if you do.) I might as well say that LotR (the books) sucked because they weren't based on real life.

        • Re:Basic Plot Inaccuracies? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by DarkFencer ( 260473 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:17PM (#12001722)
          At some point, when you are going to differentiate SO MUCH from the original story - that's when you should just create your own fucking story with a new title.

          • Re:Basic Plot Inaccuracies? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:25PM (#12001870)
            At some point, when you are going to differentiate SO MUCH from the original story - that's when you should just create your own f'ing story with a new title.

            Umm, you mean like calling it "Troy," instead of calling it "The Illiad?"

        • Re:Basic Plot Inaccuracies? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by DarkSarin ( 651985 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:24PM (#12001851) Homepage Journal
          I think the point is that we are discussing making a movie based on a book (Ender's Game). The guys they are hiring to script it just finished doing something similar, and weren't very good as sticking close to the source.

          The concern then, since you seem to have missed it, is that they will not stick close to the book (Ender's Game) when they do this movie, and it will not, by extension, be as good as the original (since his point is that the movie's aren't as good as the original--whether or not you agree).

          So the point is this: did the changes they make enhance the story, give it more depth and help it along, or did the changes merely dumb it down for the masses?

          Related to this point is this: since Card is alive (and well) at this time, how much say does he get in these movies? After all, if he is directly involved, they are much more likely to, if nothing else, stay close to what he intended. Which is what I want to see. I don't care if there are minor changes (even in the dialog), but I DO care if the intent is changed.

          That's why I like the LOTR movies--they make it about telling a story--not some political mumbo-jumbo. I think Tolkien would have been moderately pleased with the movies, had he been around for them.

          I think that if they screw with the plot on this one, Card will be ticked. Keep it close to the original (in this case), and the movie will be good. Otherwise, no show.

  • David Benioff ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by NoseBag ( 243097 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:29PM (#12000945)
    David Benioff?

    My heart soars like a brick.

  • news? (Score:2, Funny)

    by CarlinWithers ( 861335 )
    gee... i can't remember the last time a good book was looking like it was going to be made into a not so good movie.

  • hmm. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by say__10 ( 768448 )
    Troy was not bad but it also was not good. I cannot imagine a movie will do those stories the justice they deserve. I've read through the entire series 3 times and Enders Game itself probably 8-10. Id prefer no movie, but if they do I beg DO NOT FUCK IT UP PLEASE!!!!

  • special fx (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mattspammail ( 828219 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:30PM (#12000977)

    According to the web site, apparently this movie will have significant "special effects". That was definitely noteworthy, because most viewers of this film probably would never have known that going in.

    Sometimes, it's better NOT to read the friggin' article. The summary sufficed.

  • What the fuck is wrong with people? Honestly, did they even read Ender's Game? It's not just some action movie with kids, you know. Well, at least I can get disappointed early.

    • What the fuck is wrong with people? Honestly, did they even read Ender's Game? It's not just some action movie with kids, you know. Well, at least I can get disappointed early.

      Scene: Ender's sleeping quarters.
      Mazer: "Get up!"
      Ender: "I just got to sleep."
      Mazer: "Get up NOW! You're on!"
      Cut to battle room. Other kids are there. All are tired. Lots of lights (two colours) are on the display.
      Ender rattles off some coordinates. Other kids rattle off coordinates. Lights blink out. All kids rattle off more coordi

    • I wonder about how they intend to depict certain scenes. For example, the scene where the kids are naked in the shower room and Ender fights and kills that other kid whose name I forget... Yeah, I want to take my kids to this movie!

    • OSC recently commented on this movie (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DoctoRoR ( 865873 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:29PM (#12001917) Homepage

      Uncle Orson talked about this movie at a signing a week ago. Here is the gist of his comments:

      • He's rejected quite a few contracts that try to use older characters. He would catch little clauses like the producers reserve the right to make modifications of age.
      • While this movie sits in purgatory, possible lead actors age themselves out of the picture. OSC, though, is confident the actor who will play Ender has indeed been born :)
      • They had to combine Ender's Game with Ender's Shadow in order to get at Ender's inner thoughts. If you look at Ender from the outside, OSC said, he just looks like an angry, dangerous boy.
      • He trashed Lucas and the new Star Wars films and thought Ender's Game, when it's finally made, will have a substantially better storyline.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:31PM (#12000986)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • LOL... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:31PM (#12000990)
    I heard OSC talking about this years ago... at the time, I believe he had written a script, was circulating it, wanted Jake Lloyd (Anakin) to play Ender, (he assured us that Jake was actually a very bright kid and a good actor despite what we might think from having seen Episode I) but at that point nothing was really definite. He just sounded optimistic about finally getting it done.

    My how times haven't changed.

    • Re:LOL... (Score:5, Funny)

      by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:34PM (#12001045)
      I heard OSC talking about this years ago... at the time, I believe he had written a script, was circulating it, wanted Jake Lloyd (Anakin) to play Ender

      As long as they get Hayden Christensen to play Ender in the sequel movie Speaker for the Dead, I have no problem with this.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • "But if the original author of a book is willing to rite the script as well, I fail to see why anyone would reject the idea, especially if the author is one as respected and experienced as OSC."

        Because writing novels and writing screenplays are worlds apart. One quick example: In a novel, the author describes actions and character's thoughts. The screenplay writer cannot do that. Instead he or she has to create everything through dialogue. It's like the difference between a book and a play. On the st

      • Obviously I have not seen Card's script, and might have different opinions if I could read it. But speaking as one who has read a lot of Card, including all the Ender books:

        Card sometimes does not understand what is most important inside his own books. In fact, IMO Ender's Game is the most prominent example of that. (See my other post where I rant about how it goes wrong the moment we go off to rescue the Bugger queen.) So I find it perfectly plausible that to someone who had read and loved the original bo
    • I'd be optimistic too if I had Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty (Xmen 2) hired on to write it.
      (circa february 2004)

      This change to Benioff and Weiss... not so much.
    • Judging how Hollywood works these days, it's either him or Haley Joel Osment [imdb.com]... where else are you gonna find another science fiction type-cast teen actor?

  • Well, I think that explains (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChipMonk ( 711367 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:32PM (#12001003) Journal
    the rather shocked expression on the face by the posting.

  • "a long time"? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:34PM (#12001048) Homepage
    The rumours have been out there "a long time"? That's an understatement. I swear, there are USENET postings from 1992 [google.com] on the topic.

    I had the idea of the movie filed away with Duke Nukem Forever and the like.

  • I don't understand the fascination with this book. I found it very dry and poorly written. Most of the text seemed to revolve around "zero G" training tactics. I could not truly fathom why this would be an interesting primary subject. Does the interest come from the fact that the main character was a juvenile, and that is the target readership? I read the book when I was in my twenties, on the sole basis of the rave reviews I have heard and the fact that it won so many SF awards. Maybe that is why I dislik

    • Re:Enders Game (the book) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kin_korn_karn ( 466864 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:39PM (#12001116) Homepage
      A lot of people in the 'geek community' that gave this book rave reviews and SF awards also had childhood experiences similar to Ender's, where they were used for various selfish purposes by the adults in their life. If you didn't go through something like that, the book will resonate less with you.
    • The appeal to most readers (if I can generalize my own reactions to the book) is the deeper psychological impact that the circumstances surrounding the "zero G training tactics" have on Ender, and those around him. The psychological destruction of a young boy in order to save humankind, the deconstruction of the brutalities of military life combined with a "Lord of the Flies" environment, the mental games Ender plays with his enemy in order to love them and destroy them at the same time. I think those are
    • In my experience, most people who are zealous fans of the book (myself included, I'll add, for the sake of removing any pretext of impartiality) are ones who read it when they themselves were children. If not quite as young as Ender, at least in their early teens. I think it's on that level that the themes of the book really resonate. Ender's manipulation by his elders being the major one, of course, but also in the subplots of Val and Peter. His psychological dissection of Peter, for example, was excel

  • Disappointed by Ender's Shadow? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:36PM (#12001067) Homepage Journal
    Was anyone else disappointed by Ender's Shadow? Mostly I'm trying to forget about it. I truly enjoyed Ender's game, and thought the sequels were... medicore (except for Children of the mind, which was simply appalling). Then I went and read Ender's Shadow and it was Card quietly destroying Ender's Game for me. It was the whole "Well actually there's this other kid, and he's even smarter and better than Ender! He could have done the whole thing singlehanded without getting tired like Ender!". There seemed to be a need to "go one better" and hence make Bean "much better than Ender" which, at the same time, required a lot of Ender's speeches and actions (from the original book) to be recast as stupid and poor. Ender had enough flaws and issues in Ender's Game without making him semi-incompetent as well.

    Jedidiah.

    • Re:Disappointed by Ender's Shadow? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JayBlalock ( 635935 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:53PM (#12001325)
      Since the Shadow books are told from Bean's point of view, of course he'll be critical of Ender's actions. I thought the entire point of Shadow was that, while Bean was technically smarter and more competent, he utterly lacked the people skills necessary to get the job done. Ender succeeded for the reason he was selected in the first place - his combination of Peter's ruthlessness AND Val's empathy. He had to be *balanced* in these things to win, and Bean would have failed in the end just as Val or Peter would have. What I took away from the book was that it emphasized even more Ender's flawed humanity and how, ultimately, those flaws were needed instead of simple machine-like perfection.

      Don't forget, BTW, that while Bean had awesome deductive powers, he could also get off on wildly incorrect tangents precisely because he was too self-reliant. Unwilling to really trust any source outside of his own head, he lacked any real "reality check," and that too would have likely proven fatal had he been the child chosen.

      (don't take this as uncritical praise of Card, BTW. He seems to have a long history of taking a good idea and then running it deep into the ground. I was disappointed in Shadow Puppets and, while I haven't read Shadow of the Giant yet, I have a sinking feeling that he'll end up torpedoing the series by the end, just as he did the "Ender Saga")

      • Right on -- sometimes I want to smack Card upside the head for not knowing when to leave well enough alone!

        You're exactly right about Ender vs Bean and Peter. And that is why I have good hopes that if Ender's Game is scripted akin to Troy, it will be about the people -- about how personality traits and flaws interact to create the mess we're in (and maybe how we get out of it, or don't as the case may be). Because that's precisely what Troy focused on -- character interactions.

    • I liked Ender's Shadow. The whole point of Ender's Shadow was that Bean could NOT have done what Ender did, despite being "brighter". Bean lacked Ender's social skills, and his "killer instinct". Ender was a natural leader, while Bean was an awkward, self-conscious, loner. Ender could form and lead a team - a task the Bean struggled with. Ender killed his enemies, Bean humilated and angered his.

      I also enjoyed seeing the events of enders Game from a new viewpoint.

      And I agree that "Children of the Mind" was

    • I agree entirely.

      OSCard also wrote a nice howto book, "How to Write SF/F" in which he says that one of the most important things is to know when to END a story. Well, he certainly fails to take his own advice. Ender's Game properly ended at the point where we killed off the Buggers. It went wrong from the moment the next section started (where Ender goes off and rescues the Bugger queen). It took the book from a heart-squeezing and memorable high to a "WTF? why??", and the sequels went downhill from there.

  • Shades of Dune? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nixman99 ( 518480 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:36PM (#12001072)
    I get this feeling it will turn out like Dune; in other words, there will be a big Hollywood production, and it will suck. Then fifteen years later, the SciFi channel will do it right.
    • Except that the SciFi version didn't get it right. They stuck to the original story far more, true enough, but the acting was, in general, horrible. Lynch's version at least got the mood of the book right, and you must rememeber that Herbert was very deeply involved in that project.

  • Muahahaha (Score:4, Funny)

    by SmokeSerpent ( 106200 ) <benjamin@nOspaM.psnw.com> on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:37PM (#12001085) Homepage
    Now all of you OSC geeks will suffer for endlessly bugging us to read your sacred texts! *cackle*

  • Hopefully... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bman08 ( 239376 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:43PM (#12001186)
    He can do for Ender what he did for the Illiad. It was nice to see someone get the whole Achilles-switching-sides-and-joining-the-Trojans thing right for a change.

  • Fears I have about the film (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:44PM (#12001206) Homepage
    I have the following concerns/predictions:

    1. The ages of the characters will be upped by 5 or so years because the film execs won't think that people would find 5 year olds killing each other kosher. Ender will be 10+ years old in the beginning, almost guaranteed.

    2. The actor. There are few actors that could pull off the role of Ender. Haley Joel Osmont is the closest I can think of, but he's been getting older ("I see dead kittens") and would probably have a beard by the time this films.

    3. Peter.

    4. Conglomeration of enemies. Will Achille be combined with other baddies? This might not be bad, but if Bean and Ender both come from the same elementary school, that might be a little too pat. I understand that the story must be pruned to fit in 16:9, but I worry...

    The final worry: The ending. So many people have read the book, will they use the same ending? I've seen other movies from books where, to get a new emotional response or 'gotcha', the ending was changed from what you expect. The original ending is powerful and chilling (namely, the disposition of the final simulations), who knows what screenwriters the caliber of those who wrote Troy will produce?

    Here's my nightmare:

    MAZER: Ender, the bugger fighters are almost on me!
    ENDER: No! They've taken away the woman I love, they won't take away my teacher too!
    MAZER: Ender, (blasting noises in the background, static) there's something I haven't told you. I am.... your father.
    ENDER: Noooooooooooo!
    MAZER: Tell Valentine and Peter I loved them!
    (scene of Mazer's snub fighter being destroyed while doing the trench run on the Formic mothership that is approaching Earth)
    ENDER: NOOOOOOOOOO!
    (A Formic fighter pulls up behind Ender, whos ship has been damaged. Just as he is about to die, the fighter explodes and the shuttle that brought him to the Battle school descends into the picture)
    (radio): Hey Ender, thought you could use some help.
    ENDER: Valentine? Is that you?
    VALENTINE: It's me, and I brought some help.
    PETER: Hey Andrew, you were right. Let's blow this thing and go home.
    ENDER: Ayeeeeee! (fires D.R. Device)

    • Yeah, me too. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow might be too good for a movie studio to make money off of it. Perhaps it could be better as an independent film, where the risk of actually depicting young prodigies in battle and the annialation of an entire race are less risky towards the bottom line?

    • That was the worst thing I've probably ever read. Even worse is that knowing Hollywood, it's entirely possible as well.

      I just read Starship Troopers, and I am quite angry at them for blowing that book-to-movie transition in retrospect. The folks in the movie industry need to either stick to the stories or not produce them. Do or not do, there is no try.

    • Re:Fears I have about the film (Score:5, Funny)

      by jonastullus ( 530101 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:10PM (#12001621) Homepage
      you seem to be very much in touch with your worst nightmares.
      maybe you should do some script writing for george lucas there!

      BTW, those visions were awful, damn close to my personal nightmare of an ender's game movie adaptation. thanks for bringing this up so early, so i won't be shocked when the final film will actually be even worse!

      jethr0
  • Ender's War (the short story) was a much better story than the novel Card expanded it into. Plus, it'd be easier to fit into 2 hours on the screen. Pity they didn't pick it instead.

    The ambuiguity at the end over just who the Enemy was is wonderful - see, there's no aliens in there, and the one reference in the short story to the planet Ender's living on implies that it's noth Earth, so it COULD be a rebellious colony... which would make the Enemy planet Earth.

    Whoops.

  • Yeah, cause we all know that the script is never.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Assmasher ( 456699 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:46PM (#12001236) Journal
    ...changed after it leaves the writer's hands.

    "Well, gosh, with Troy under his belt, all my concerns about the movie sucking are straight out! *cough*"

    - Rather a stupid thing to say when you realize that the director has far more influence on a movie than the script itself.

  • 25th Hour as well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GunFodder ( 208805 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:48PM (#12001264)
    David Benioff also wrote 25th Hour, which was an interesting movie. I guess all the geniuses here on Slashdot are too smart to bother spending 30 seconds on IMDB for more comprehensive information.
  • I'd get to decide what projects Peter Jackson takes next
  • First, the movie will not take place near Earth. Nor will it feature aliens or space warfare. Instead, it will be about a virus that infects people and turns them into zombies, but there WILL be a double-barreled shotgun. The reason? The writer claims, "The original book was so suspenseful and scary that we could never hope to top it."

    I can't wait.

  • Make in a mini-series. Sci-Fi did ok with Dune (Kept to the story line but the acting and visuals sucked). BattleStar Galactica is working out better than I had hoped. Eathsea sucked but maybe they could pull off Enders's Game.
  • This is likely to suck just as badly.
  • Well.... that one took me by surprise.
    I've read both Enders Game and Ender's Shadow in the past, and I for one don't think merging the stories will exactly do them any good.
    They're both good books, but it's the different perspectives that differentiate them and make them two separate books, even though they share the same story, and still keep it interesting. Taking both accounts of the story and putting it into one script might ruin some of what makes the story so appealing.

  • This suggests an uncertain studio (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JayBlalock ( 635935 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @12:59PM (#12001415)
    The original Ender's Game book has more than enough material in it to support a movie. (as someone else commented, the original Ender's War short story alone could make for a movie) I don't know why they're roping Ender's Shadow into this UNLESS someone in the studio doesn't trust them to be able to adapt the book and make it work. Perhaps they realize a writer accustomed to writing spectacles is probably not going to be that good with detailed character work. Or perhaps they fear that they won't find an actor who'll be able to capture Ender and make his story, alone, compelling enough. Either way, I see the inclusion of Shadow as a way for them to be lazy. Instead of focusing on the character of Ender, they can have a half-dozen running subplots and keep the audience "entertained" that way. My hopes for this project have definitely sunk a couple notches.
  • Please don't make Ender 6 Years Old. You aren't going to be able to pull it off with a real 6 yo kid, and casting a 13 yo kid to play a 6 yo isn't going to help. Just make Ender 22 and find some guy with actual acting talent play him.

    And if Hayden Christiansen so much as drives by the set, I'm going to hurt someone. Badly.

  • There is still a chance... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oren ( 78897 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:08PM (#12001581)
    ... that this will be a good movie. I heard OSC give a talk where he refered to the movie, about two years back. It sounded as though he was going to great lengths to ensure Holywood doesn't ruin it.

    It seems he once (almost) sold the movie rights, and as soon as the ink was on paper the studio started making changes like raising the age of the actors to teenagers, adding romantic interest, changing the plot to add a final confrontation between Peter and Ender, and so on. When he protested, they pointed out that the contract gives them the final say on the script. If you want an idea of how bad it would have been, think "Starship Troopers".

    That deal fell through for various reasons, and he swore that next time he'll make sure he has the final say. That's one of the reasons it took so long for the movie to get started - he absolutely insisted that the children be played by, well, children, that the script will not be butchered, etc.

    Another reason is that he wanted to wait until special effects caught up with people's expectations - specifically, getting the battle room scenes right. If you give it a moment's thought, you'll see that this is very, very hard. A *lot* of people at arbitrary orientations very energetically trying to shoot each other out of the sky, creating formations, hiding and launching from the "stars", all in believable zero-G... I can't wait for "the making of" DVD :-)

    At any rate, OSC made it clear he'll have the final word on the movie, otherwise there would be no movie (it isn't as though he needs the money :-). As long as he keeps his word, getting a professional *cough* script writer involved is actually a good thing; books and movies are very different mediums, so being a book good writer doesn't automatically make one a good script writer.

  • Expand your awareness ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chromodromic ( 668389 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:09PM (#12001603)

    Well, gosh, with Troy under his belt, all my concerns about the movie sucking are straight out! *cough*

    Many times I've been shocked about how little some people know or understand about the Internet, especially considering that it surrounds so many aspects of their everyday lives. And yet, since this is the same with film, a much older medium [cln.org], I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise at all.

    I'll constantly read commentaries blaming the suck-factor (in their opinion) of a film on this particular actor or that particular director, or on the quality of the writing. Let me offer only that it isn't that simple.

    Many, many, many people touch a film and can have the power to change it significantly before any public audience views it. By the time a studio movie is publicly released, the script has gone through, oh, ten, twelve, twenty major revisions, producers have had their say, the director his, and the editor his (all masculine pronouns used for the sake of convenience, now lost completely due to this note). During that time each major player in the production of the film has been presented with choices -- choices, mind you, not creations from their own brains, but choices based on the quality of the people who've been hired, and who may have been hired for any number of experience, quality, or political reasons -- about costuming, production design, sound design and mixing, and even photography which, although affected by directorial input is almost always actually executed by a director of photography who, like the others, makes *strong* suggestions and provides choices.

    Given how collaborative and varied film is, it's almost a miracle that any good movies get made at all. And yet, there are still many times I'll hear comments like the one above, as if the writer had any real input at all on the quality, good or bad, of Troy. Believe me, they were fucking given 10,000 notes, and expected to make changes quickly. And they did so, with a smile, even when they were faced with the problem of taking a fucking stupid note and trying to figure out how to incorporate it into the script without having to rewrite the entire story to justify it. And it was a *they*. I don't care if only one (living) writer is listed, there were more who didn't get credited. That is the way it works.

    Keep in mind that this is the industry that employs Harvey Weinstein, the man who, when he owned the Lord of the Rings rights, wrote to Peter Jackson asking, "Why does there have to be so many hobbits?"

    I realize that the above quote doesn't exclude the possibility that the film sucked, in that opinion, due to the efforts of others. But it would be nice if, sometimes, people could keep an open mind and realize that when a film sucks, there may be no direct reason. Sometimes they just suck. Same for the reverse, sometimes they're just great and all of the elements came together. But it's not useful to assign blanket blame or congratulations to anyone in film, unless they've got an established track record and what you're doing is evaluating a body of work.

    I rescind my comments in the case of Joel Schumacher, whom I still blame for Batman's nipples. I hate you with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, you bastard.

  • Mixing two stories into one. . ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:10PM (#12001625)
    At what desk in the editorial process does the brain damage occur?

    I would think that the condition should be easily detectable. --A medical professional should be hired to follow the process of making a screen play proposal along its natural path. Each time somebody says, "No, No! The public doesn't want a screen play written in close parallel to an amazingly popular book which was practically written in movie format to begin with! No! Listen to my small ego! Listen to MEEEE! We have to completely change things around!"

    Then simply have the brain-damaged individual put all of his desk things into a cardboard box and walk him kindly to the exit.

    Repeat the process until all the brain damage has been detected and burned away, (fired).

    The practice of medicine and film making ought to naturally go hand in hand, I think.


    -FL

  • buggers (Score:3, Funny)

    by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:14PM (#12001674)
    Anyone else think that his "wiping out all the buggers" plotline is just a little too obvious?

  • in case you haven't seen Troy (Score:4, Funny)

    by revery ( 456516 ) <<ten.2cac> <ta> <selrahc>> on Monday March 21, 2005 @01:42PM (#12002100) Homepage
    In case you haven't seen Troy (or even if you have), go here [livejournal.com] and read Troy in 15 minutes [livejournal.com]

    There is also a Van Helsing in 15 minutes [livejournal.com] as well, if you like this sort of thing.

    I should warn you though, don't drink anything that will burn your nose while you read these...

    --
    my monitor is still dirty

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