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10 Speculative Questions About The Upcoming Ender’s Game Movie

Speculating about movies is kind of stupid. I find it more than just boring and relatively useless, but often it affects expectations so profoundly that the movie in question is no longer able to be taken in on its own terms, but on the terms of its marketing efforts as well as the breadth of anticipatory opinion and hope displayed throughout the internets. It’s not something I find productive, although I see the appeal of generating momentum in viewers’ hearts and minds toward the release of a project tons of people have worked really hard on. I do think, though, that the months, sometimes years of buildup to big movie events leads to the “best movie ever!” or “worst movie ever!” reactions that are more prominent and voiceable today. Big movies either live up to insane hype or disappoint high hopes.

[h2]3) The novel’s good though, right?[/h2]

ender's game

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Yeah, so I haven’t read the book, if it isn’t obvious by now. I understand it is an award winning teen sci-fi novel that author Orson Scott Card turned into a book series. It seems to contain the type of futuristic galactic combat component that can be made into pretty dazzling cinematic fare. I have been assured by multiple colleagues, the type of folks who “knew” Game of Thrones was going to be a massive success, that Ender’s Game is the next “sure thing” for genre adaptations.

Again, this is almost a double-edged sword. If it’s already being compared to one of the most daring television fantasy adaptations ever made, that’s a lot to live up to. On top of that, adapting a novel this heralded for a movie can be a nearly impossible task. Any false steps become magnified. It takes people with a combination of deep passion and extensive knowledge of the source material to turn magic on the page into magic on the screen.

One assurance we have, though, seems to be that this source material is fairly solid—that is, more along the lines of your Harry Potter or Hunger Games than, to pick another comparable franchise completely at random, The Twilight Saga.

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