Ender’s Game
I remember the moment I realized, midway through reading the book about five years ago, that nobody would ever be able to adapt it into a film. I smote my forehead with the palm of my right hand in darkly self-deprecating humor for getting hooked on (and greatly enjoying) a transmedia dead-end, cul de sac. The principal characters were all too young to buy beer, and the moral/psychological gradients ranging through the book would tax the talents of deeply-contemplative middle-aged actors to do justice to the thematic material — not kids — or the nauseating compromises would result in an exploitative abomination, a typical Hollywouldn’t. No fucking way.
And in the five-or-so years in which I wasn’t looking it got made. Brilliantly! In spite of the employment of young actors, whose work-hours are proscribed and carefully monitored, and numerous layers of dark implications involving genocide, totalitarianism, authoritative disinformation, and increasingly-accurate predictions regarding the soul-destroying cost of the conduct of warfare by increasingly-youthful soldiery, it got made more carefully, intelligently and far more precisely than I would have guessed was possible. I credit Gigi Pritzker and Gavin Hood for realizing an absolute impossibility — and if I heard their commentaries correctly, they credit everybody involved in making this obviously-unmakeable film.
Ironically, the reason I stumbled onto the book was its author’s, Orson Scott Card’s, profoundly-supportive appearance in Done the Impossible; the fan’s tale of Firefly & Serenity.
And just for the record, I think the red carpet/cobra(dragon) was the key metaphor for fame, blame and shame. Even more than the book, the film facilitates passonate, civil conversation on matters that need voices.
No comments yet.
About
Recent Comments
Scott Ellington's Blog 
Leave a Reply