What kid didn’t grow up wanting to be a super hero or go into space? We all had dreams of great things as a kid and for many, Ender’s Game was an escape from reality to a distant future where remote drone wars, the internet, hand held computer devices and electronic surveillance were a reality. But wait, isn’t that the world we live in today?
Yes it is true that is the reality today, but in 1985 when Ender’s Game was written it wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is now. Making now the best time for the novel to become a movie. I am playing catch up and just now reading Ender’s Game, much to the shock of some of our fans, but do not despair. I plan to be 100% caught up by the time the movie is released so I can give you a fair look at how well they movie did compared to the book.
70 years after a horrific alien war, an unusually gifted child is sent to an advanced military school in space to prepare for a future invasion.
I don’t have to tell you that with so many books in the ‘Enders Saga’ that this new franchise could give the likes of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games a run for its money. A recent classic made into a movie, John Carter, may have flopped at the box office but it wasn’t because of the content of the story or the translation on screen. It was due to very poor marketing on the part of disney. Hopefully those behind Ender’s Game have learned from this and will do the series right by properly marketing it.
Reading the directors blog you can tell he puts a lot of attention in the details, which is very important in any classic scifi book. Unlike stories of the 2000s, books like Ender’s Game were written in an era that was not nearly in tune with scifi as we are today. Now let me clarify before people chop my head off. In the 70s and 80s, these stories were written for the people who read it and were in awe and shock over the ideas and possibilities the book purposed. With so much new technology at our finger tips, the stories written today are not nearly as awe inspiring or shocking as they were, because we are all use to those ideas now. In that respect, bringing to life a story written on true fiction during a time when technology was still emerging is exciting and hopefully as awe inspiring today as it was.
Filming started in Louisiana this past February and continues through June. The cast is a group of young new faces, familiar faces and hollywood veterans. Taking on the lead role of Ender Wiggin is Asa Butterfield (Hugo, Merlin). Playing Valentine Wiggin is Abigail Breslin, with Jimmy Pinchak playing his older brother. In the group of veteran actors we have Harrison Ford asColonel Hyrum Graff, Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham and Viola Davis as Major Gwen Anderson. The producers posted some interesting pictures in their blog that give us some insight into the dedication they have to making the movie as real as the book made us all feel. In this post the producers talk about getting the younger kids to understand how zero gravity felt and how you would react in it.
“Houston, we have a problem. We don’t know how to land the Shuttle.” Good thing it’s just a simulator safely on the ground at SPACE CAMP in Huntsville, Alabama. Aramis, Moises, Asa & Suraj (pictured above from a monitor in the MISSION CONTROL ROOM ) and the rest of our cast agreed that to do Ender’s Game right, they had to train as though they were really headed into ZERO G. And this wasn’t just an afternoon spent taking a vanity tour. From the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), which simulates extra-vehicular shuttle missions in Earth’s orbit, to the microgravity training chair that prepared astronauts for moonwalks during the Apollo program, the week at Space Camp was genuine prep for the feeling of reality that this movie deserves. And after all, the army that trains together stays together.
Here we get a first look at Asa as Ender, sorta. We get to see the implant and a little caption from the producers.
Though Ender’s world is one worth saving, it sometimes comes with a price. The novel was amazingly prescient about a great many things: remote controlled drone wars, the internet, the influence of blogging, hand held computing tablets like the I-Pad, and of course, electronic surveillance implants. Implanted tracking and monitoring chips are no longer a science fiction concept. They exist now. And one day, they may be as advanced as the monitor implanted into Ender, which allows Colonel Graff to “see through his eyes” and know: HE’S THE ONE.
The movie is expected to be released some time in Nov 2013.
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