Bob Orci on Filming the Unfilmable Book

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6 responses to “Bob Orci on Filming the Unfilmable Book”

1. 

   July 30, 2013

   Mikefulton

   Changing the age of the kids involved completely changes the moral tone of the movie as well as the relevance of many of the events. It doesn’t really count as “filming the unfilmable” if you so completely alter the main premise of the story.

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   1. 

      July 30, 2013

      EnderWiggin.net

      While it does change the moral tone, I don’t think it changes it so drastically that people won’t be aghast at what is done to Ender. Katniss Everdeen was 16 when she went into the arena, surely what they do to Ender at 13 will be terrible as well.

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      1. 

         July 30, 2013

         Mikefulton

         It’s not just the question of what people do to Ender, it’s what Ender does to himself, and the conflicts amongst the kids themselves at Battle School. Case in point: the significance of Ender’s fight with Bonzo is drastically altered if they’re 13 instead of 6.

         Filming ENDER’S GAME with young adolescents may have been hard enough, but the label of “unfilmable” was based on the idea of filming it with 6 year olds. The movie may be great even so, but “we did it!” really should be “we did something… close.”

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         1. 

            August 1, 2013

            MajorAnderson

            I see where you are coming from, Mike, and sure, it would have been weirder if it had been little kids, but I gotta say, seeing a 13 year old kill another teenager is pretty darn disturbing for me. Equally, manipulating a 12 year old so that he is constantly encouraged to use his more violent instincts over his caring ones gives me chills, too. He is still an innocent kid. (And by the way, when Ender fought Bonzo, he wasn’t 6, he was about 10.)

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            1. 

               August 1, 2013

               Mikefulton

               You’re right. Ender was a bit shy of 10 years old when he fought Bonzo. I was originally thinking of the age when he entered Battle School and didn’t adjust.

               As to the question of manipulating the kids, that’s another thing that would have been harder to depict, in many ways, if the kids were the age they were in the book. There’s also the fact that Ender’s self-awareness and the way he responded to the attempts to manipulate him are far more impressive for a 6 or 7 year old than a teenager. With the book, the reader is amazed at Ender’s self-awareness and analytical abilities. At least, I know I was. But in the movie, with a teenage Ender it’s not quite so amazing. In fact, the older they get, the more one has to wonder, if these kids are really Earth’s finest, why aren’t more of them on the same page as Ender?

               I dunno… maybe the screenwriters have this all figured out, or maybe they’ll keep us sufficiently distracted that we won’t have time to think about it. At least not until we’re on our way home from the theatre.
   2. 

      August 1, 2013

      MajorAnderson

      Who said that the “unfilmable” label was attached to it solely because of the age of the kids? I can think of a number of reasons to call the book that. From interviews with Card, who always said that his book was practically unfilmable, he said that because he thought that the internal perspective of Ender would not translate onto the screen, and that from the outside, Ender would appear as a violent little boy. So to make Ender likeble, to make us feel for him, without the use of constant voiceover, is probably the greatest feat, and it has as much to do with the screenplay and the camera and the music as it has with the actor’s capability to convey emotions with a look.

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