For anyone who enjoyed "Ender's Game" this month, I wanted to mention that Marvel has just completed a comic book adaptation of the novel. This comic book series was several years in the making and is now available in several easy-to-acquire graphic novel compilations. The comics are a completely faithful adaptation.
Interestingly, at the same time, Marvel also published a comic adaptation of "Ender's Shadow," the companion novel to "Ender's Game," which is a retelling of the story from Bean's perspective. They published both series separately, but released them in a way that followed both stories chronologically, as if they were happening at the same time.
On the topic of adaptations, there has long been a rumor of an "Ender's Game" movie in the works. In fact, if you were to visit a used bookstore and pick up a copy of "Ender's Game," chances are good your decade-old edition might say "Soon to be a major motion picture!" on the cover. Of course, this film never happened. The movie version never got beyond the script-writing phase because Card vetoed all the adaptations he saw because he didn't feel they lived up to his book. Eventually, Card himself undertook to writing the script himself but it's unknown how far he's gotten with it or if he's even still working on it. Currently, the film version is in developmental limbo. It might be made and it might not. I expect one day we'll see a film version of the classic novel and we can only hope it's a quality product and not, as my wife Laura would certainly agree, a "Nightfall"-type adaptation disaster.
An interesting topic of discussion for this group in regards to "Ender's Game" would be: now that you've read the book, what challenges do you think would exist for a film adaptation of the novel and what would you most look forward to seeing on the big screen?
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3 comments:
I think Ender himself would be hard to get across on the big screen. The book narration is so close to his character that you know his motivations even though he rarely tells anyone. He'd come across as a prick in the movie if he's not done right.
If there would be a way to show the buggers rummaging through his memories toward the end, that would be cool. I love those buggers.
I don't think I'd like a film adaptation of the book-honesty! I LOVE the book, love, love, love it (heck, I named my kid after it), but I just don't think a movie would have the same impact. It would be really hard to do a lot of the scenes with actual kid actors and I think it'd be dang hard to find an actor that can portray him correctly-he'd have to do it perfectly or people would hate Ender.
Have any of you read the newest-Ender in Exile? I'm starting it now and so far it's kind of boring (which I hate to say being such a big Ender fan)!
I think a good film would be really tough to do. I agree with the previous comments that Ender himself would be tough to cast and to present it in a way that would really work.
With all the great options out there for film, they could do some really cool "training" and battle scenes.
If, by some miracle though it was done well, this would be a blockbuster film! People would eat it up!
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