I'm leaving out Xenocide for this, but isn't some of this shockingly familiar?
A tree network that stores all the knowledge of a people..
Trees that are thousands of years old?
A native species that are part of/become part of the tree network?
A researcher (Grace in Avatar...) who looks for the philosophy of things?
Yes, there are tons of differences, but in watching Avatar I kept thinking: this is the kind of technology I wish were put to use doing a Speaker of the Dead film Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
It's almost certain that you could draw parallels between any of Card's books and prior works too. Since it's not about pigs that grow up to be trees, and a different and powerful kind of funeral, I doubt they were consciously reusing any of Card's ideas.
Oh, btw, we have trees that are thousands of years old here on Earth, too.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Pft. Earth totally ripped of Card, that's all.
Posted by Clumpy (Member # 8122) on :
I definitely thought of at the very least the riot in (I believe) Xenocide, due to the whole "parameter"/"outside is dangerous" thing and the very real fantastical ways the planet works that are immediately dismissed by most people.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Pft. Earth totally ripped of Card, that's all.
The theft was cleverly disguised by layering on an obvious liberal bias.
Posted by Fremen (Member # 11984) on :
I think that if you look for those connections then they seem obvious, but the themes in these two novels are so different (similar only in their xenophobia and misunderstanding of non-human/terrestial life, which is a common theme among science fiction since we see that in society today).
I'm a huge fan of OSC's Enderverse, and I've read Ender's half of the Enderverse pretty recently, and the connection never even came to me.
Avatar always seemed much more similar to Dune than to SoTD to me.
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In regards to your second issue, I think that the technology is there for an SoTD movie (admittedly, my favorite book by OSC, and one of my favorites of all time), the budget is not. To make a SoTD movie, which I think would be better than an Ender's Game movie, because of the nature of the storyline. Ender's Game is more like an action film, while SoTD is a bit more of a drama. It has arguably stronger characters, and it will be MUCH easier to cast. Making a movie that stars almost exclusively children and making it a true representation of the book will be nearly impossible.
But, because of the climate of Hollywood, Ender's Game will have to be done first. I believe that an Ender's Game movie is in the works right now. Since my expectations for anything Ender are insanely high, I doubt it will live up to expectations, but after that, I think SoTD has great potential.
Also because of Hollywood and the economy, a lot of movies have been put on hold. This means that movies made two years ago are being released now. Because of this, even if an Ender's Game movie was being filmed now, it would finish in like 6 months, be in post production for like one to two years, and then maybe put on hold for one year before it's released. We probably won't be realistically looking at an Ender film for a while...
[ January 12, 2010, 02:53 AM: Message edited by: Fremen ]
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
"We probably won't be realistically looking at an Ender film for a while..."
A bit of an understatement. I think it's been in development for, like, a billion years or something.
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The theft was cleverly disguised by layering on an obvious liberal bias.