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I say that it should simply be animated so that the Battle School kids look the right age. If Pixar has taught us anything it is that computer generated animation can be emotional and engaging cinema.
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While I'm sympathetic to the idea, you'll find with just a cursory search of the forums there are quite a few threads where live action vs animation as it pertains to Ender's Game is extensively discussed.
It wouldn't be impolite to indicate you are ressurecting one of those threads and then adding to that discussion, this allows the discussion to continue without people simply restating ideas they've written out carefully before.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: While I'm sympathetic to the idea, you'll find with just a cursory search of the forums there are quite a few threads where live action vs animation as it pertains to Ender's Game is extensively discussed.
It wouldn't be impolite to indicate you are resurrecting one of those threads and then adding to that discussion, this allows the discussion to continue without people simply restating ideas they've written out carefully before.
posted
I don't know if I agree. Without endless rehashing of old discussions, what's left?
In that spirit, I vote for CGI. Get the people who do Veggie Tales on it. With that kind of quality cucumber animation, what can't they do?
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
When are you fools going to wake up and realize that claymation is the perfect medium for Ender's Game?
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: While I'm sympathetic to the idea, you'll find with just a cursory search of the forums there are quite a few threads where live action vs animation as it pertains to Ender's Game is extensively discussed.
We actually haven't had an extensive discussion about ender's game, live action versus cgi. All the other threads were pretty much hijacked by a different discussion entirely, against one specific person.
I would like to talk more about the evolving CGI option. Selfishly, of course, because I have repeatedly asserted and qualified the notion I have that it's pretty much impossible to expect that we could make a live action Ender's Game that would survive the test of time and critical reception. And I'd like to see that in a thread that isn't completely belly-up derailed by the subject of anime.
quote:RLM went a little into how child actors can easily be the kiss of death for a movie, and it's something that A/V Club said you have to 'strike gold just to avoid.'
It's easier when you only have to strike gold once (Osment, Steinfeld, to a lesser extent, Fanning) and can mostly rely on dialogging where they're bouncing off of fully mature actors.
Ender's Game is children mostly dialoguing with other children children playing complex, credulity-stretching ideals (they're all supergeniuses, etc)
I really don't think I can overstate it enough: the challenge that casting and production face in having to pull together a workable child cast — and saw their performances into a workable screenplay — is stratospheric.
To top it off, they're all specific nationalities that have to be cast towards or fudged, and they're going to have to fudge them. I could offer you money guarantees. ("Okay, you're a spaniard kid, so .. like, drop the mid-american thing and use swear words like 'mearde.'").
As I put it, 'the near impossibility of making this movie with an age-appropriate cast without cheapening the pacing and themes' pretty much ensured that, as far as live action went, you could make this as a tentpole throwaway, but not much else. Even if the producers and property holders were working on the delusion otherwise, the producers would hit a point of no return where, no matter the problems present in production (and them hitting the observable limit of what they're going to be able to accomplish with a mostly child cast) — they've just got to go ahead and produce with what they've got. The end result would be problematic. As hardcore fans of the book, you would all (with the exception of one individual I can think of) be invariably disappointed with it.
So, that leaves CGI, mostly. Maybe, in ten years, there would be enough of a preponderance of sufficiently capable CGI studios to make production of this movie a reality
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Two of the worst CGI movies ever created..... Then again, most of that was due to writing. The technology behind it was pretty sound.
I don't know the reason you feel you have to use tired, worn out internet meme's to get your point across, but whatever.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: When are you fools going to wake up and realize that claymation is the perfect medium for Ender's Game?
I feel this would only work as a musical.
What about a one man musical claymation extravaganza, starring none other than that star of stage and screen, Robin Williams?
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: Two of the worst CGI movies ever created..... Then again, most of that was due to writing. The technology behind it was pretty sound.
Plenty of pretty visuals abound, but in addition to the movies just being incredibly bad in terms of writing/storyboarding, they were early examples of the limitations imposed by the uncanny valley. To the extent that Spirits Within still acts as a seminal example of the challenge that poses and the hurdle that it represents in terms of using CGI for certain visual representations and certain genres. I wouldn't imagine we're near at the level you would need for a CGI noir, for instance.
Still, yeah, easiest way to frighten potential production away from the CGI route would be to mention the Square Pictures debacles.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I think the main problem I had with Spirits Within (besides the writing) was that you could tell that they put more work into some characters than others. Cid for example looked absolutely amazing, but a lot of the other characters looked generic.
Advent Children.... Oh boy. Besides the movie being completely unnecessary, the movie was just bad. The plot was pitiful, the bad guys were stupid, and Cloud was still an emo kid. Advent Children would have been a lot better if they had continued the Genesis Storyline that Crisis Core had shown, especially since Genesis was so much better than Sephiroth anyways. Why? No mommy issues, and he actually had a personality.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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posted
Advent Children .. well, it succeeded at being exactly what it was capable of being: just wildly masturbatory fanwank. That's all. If it was supposed to represent the extent of what the company could produce, thematically and storywise, well .. all the more reason to be pleased that Square Pictures is dead and gone.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I can see a good live action EG movie being made...if the script is written around the trial of Graff, and his testimony and the lawyers presentations a defacto narration, with footage from different spy cams used as flash backs.
Yes it would be a difficult bit of writing to keep the twist ending secret, but it would still be a lot easier (and better IMO) then the risk of so many child actors.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I guess I can't deny that it might make a good movie, but it wouldn't be "Ender's Game". Shifting the point of view that drastically makes it a different story. See Ender's Shadow.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Shifting the narrative focus of the story to Graff would act as an example of the aforementioned cheapening of the themes and the story. Purely for virtue of compensation over the issue of most of the cast being kids. I agree that this would be better than dealing with the unalloyed problems of the child actor thing, but it's .. well, essentially, everything I'm talking about.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I'm not sure I agree Samp (shocking, isn't it?)
The book says that the trial of Graff is just a ploy to really put Ender on trail anyway.
OSC says that he doesn't want a narrator or a thought voice over tack, but this book is so much in Ender's head that without one, I can't imagine it being the same story anyway.
This way, you can have analysis of the thought process without the banned narrator/thought track.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: Just get the cast from Super 8 and shoot the movie. Elle Fanning as Petra. The chubby kid as Shen. Patrick Stewart as Mazer.
Let's get this done.
A white guy as Mazer?
They should use the kind of CGI they used in the Final Fantasy movie.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: Just get the cast from Super 8 and shoot the movie. Elle Fanning as Petra. The chubby kid as Shen. Patrick Stewart as Mazer.
Let's get this done.
A white guy as Mazer?
They should use the kind of CGI they used in the Final Fantasy movie.
Yeah, but come on Lisa.... Its freaking Jean Luc-Picard!
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I can see a good live action EG movie being made...if the script is written around the trial of Graff, and his testimony and the lawyers presentations a defacto narration, with footage from different spy cams used as flash backs.
Yes it would be a difficult bit of writing to keep the twist ending secret, but it would still be a lot easier (and better IMO) then the risk of so many child actors.
I think this would not only be interesting to watch, but also a very interesting book.
But, it wouldn't be Ender's Game.
Posts: 1574 | Registered: May 2008
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I always imagined Patrick Stewart as Graff.
Morgan Freeman as Mazer as I lacked an actually Maori actor in my head whose voice I knew.
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quote:Originally posted by johnsonweed: I say that it should simply be animated so that the Battle School kids look the right age. If Pixar has taught us anything it is that computer generated animation can be emotional and engaging cinema.
What say you?
CGI is already too old to play Ender and be believable.
But I hear Daniel Radcliffe might be available soon.
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by odouls268: John Ratzenberger for the win.
("Cliff" from Cheers)
Honestly, is anyone from Cheers working much right now? They can be the live action foils to the muppets.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Let's be fair here, their is a real advantage to an animated Ender's Game. For one, casting become massively easier. You don't have to cast actors the look the part, and they don't have to be the same age as the characters.
Casting a movie like this with live action actors has to be a nightmare, even with an enormous budget, which we don't actually know for sure.
Elijah Wood could play Ender. Freddie Highmore could play Bean. Christopher Minz-Plasse could surely play somebody. Will Poulter could play someone else. Now, I'm not specifically suggesting these actors, but it illustrates the point. The age of the actor doesn't have to mirror the age of the character.
Live action actors have to be very carefully picked. I think they auditioned something like 40,000 kids to find Harry Potter/Dan Radcliffe. And there are a lot of speaker roles in this story. Many kids can simply be local school kids filling in the background. But, many kids have to be sufficiently competent actors to effectively interact with the main characters.
Personally, I would prefer live action actors, but that process does not seem to be going well at the moment. Every kid who has been suggested for the lead, has been suggested based on PAST performances. We have to cast kids at the age when the movie is make, not at the age they were when an obscure movie was made years ago.
To do justice to this story and to properly cast the right characters, and to properly produce the special effect necessary for it to not come out cheesy, is a monumental task. I'm sure most fans would rather they not did the movie at all, rather than to do it badly.
As a classic example, take "The Last Air Bender", really a fantastic classic fantasy tale, but the movie, was marginal at best. I was like the cast California surfer kids, and then set them into ancient China. The cast "Air Bender" based on his martial arts skills, but beyond that he had nothing going for him.
I was eager to see Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, Skins-UK), and I think he was well cast, and did his job. But the writer and director simply didn't give him anything to work with.
Poor casting, poor directing, poor script set in a very beautiful and compelling setting. Don't do that with ENDER'S GAME ... PLEASE!
Again, I would rather it not be done, that be done badly.
The same is true with an animated version, if it can be done well, then do it. Though I think animation instantly moves the story to a much younger audience. Still, if well done, I think the movie would span generations.
So, in my view, it is not how the story is done, but HOW WELL the story is done.
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