EnderWiggin.net – Ender's Game Movie Fansite

Category: Interviews

Harrison Ford: Ender’s Game is “Pretty Heady Stuff”

In an interview with Reuters, Harrison Ford talked a bit about what attracted him to Ender’s Game.

Q: In November, you star in “Ender’s Game.” Your character mentors a child who is training to be a military specialist and fight future alien invasions. Were you familiar with the book?

A: I was unaware of the book until the script came along and I was asked to be involved. The book was written 28 years ago and is remarkably pressing in terms of the things that are part of modern warfare. Also the questions of moral responsibility for military leadership, the questions involving young people in warfare, manipulating children possibly for the good of mankind – that’s pretty heady stuff.

Q: Do you have any thoughts about those things as they relate to today’s world news?

A: I’m real interested in what’s going on in the world. I have personal feelings and opinions, but it’s not the opinions that drive my participation. I participate in things because I have an emotional recognition in the scenes that I’m reading about that’s beyond subject and is about human behavior.

Ford can be seen in a new movie out this week called Paranoia also starring Gary Oldman and Liam Hemsworth.

Source: Chicago Tribune

August 12, 2013
VIDEO: Gavin Hood On Bringing Ender’s Internal Struggle To The Screen

More interviews from Comic Con, peeps! During the convention, Clevver TV caught up with Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld as well as producer Bob Orci and director Gavin Hood, but while they released their interview with Hailee and Asa weeks ago, they only made the ones with Bob and Gavin available on Youtube a couple of days ago.

In this one, Gavin Hood talks about space camp, training for Zero G and the challenges of bringing the imaginative environments of the book as well as Ender’s (mostly internal) struggle to the screen. If this pans out the way Hood planned it, it’s gonna be awesome.

Watch ClevverTV’s interview with Asa and Hailee HERE!

Watch ClevverTV’s interview with Bob Orci HERE!

Source: Clevver TV on Youtube

August 8, 2013
VIDEO: Bob Orci On Maintaining Ender’s Game’s Original Storyline

The Comic Con rush isn’t over, guys. During the convention, Clevver TV caught up with Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld as well as producer Bob Orci and director Gavin Hood, but while they released their interview with Hailee and Asa weeks ago, they only made the ones with Bob and Gavin available on Youtube a couple of days ago.

In this one, Bob Orci talks trying to get the Ender’s Game movie done in a way that would keep the integrity and storyline of the book. Spiderman and Star Trek fans can look forward to brief mentions as well. Watch it below!

Watch ClevverTV’s interview with Asa and Hailee HERE!

Watch ClevverTV’s interview with Gavin Hood HERE!

Source: Clevver Movies on Youtube

August 8, 2013
Gavin Hood On the “Queer Irony” of Ender’s Game

In the ongoing debate about Orson Scott Card’s anti-gay stance and the Skip-Ender’s-Game boycott, Gavin Hood has weighed in again in an interview with The Advocate, one of America’s leading LGBT news magazines. The article focuses on the fact that Card’s views seem in many ways to be the polar opposite of what the book is about and stresses the parallels between Ender’s experience and the experience of young gay people everywhere of having to reconcile the way they are with the values and beliefs of their loved ones. Says Gavin Hood:

The story of Ender is really a young person in search of his identity and in search of his own moral compass. And so for me, it is so ironic that the writer of the work that has helped so many [young] people, gay and straight, to find empowerment, to feel empowered, to find their own moral compass — it’s very sad that he, himself, is struggling with these issues. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that in struggling with these issues, he wrote a great book.

But while it may be ironic, Hood does not seem to be surprised by the discrepancy.

Frankly, that’s not unusual. Great art usually rises above the weaknesses and failings of its creators.

Repeating a sentiment that we have previously heard from producer Bob Orci, Hood goes on to voice his support for the current debate, saying that while he understands the boycotters’ stance, he would rather they watch the movie and use the difference between Card’s views and the messages of the book as a starting point to engage in a fruitful debate about LGBT issues.

[W]e would not be having this conversation if we hadn’t made Ender’s Game, and that’s the way you change societies, when you engage in meaningful conversation. So I’m thrilled we’re having this conversation […] And wouldn’t it be amazing if we could turn this thing into what the book is really about? […] As stressful as this is, it’s achieving, in a twisted way, exactly what we set out to do [namely tell a story about compassion and embracing difference – my note].

While quite a few reader comments on this article are unsurprisingly disparaging I am very pleased to see that a leading LGBT news outlet such as The Advocate is acknowledging the complexity of the issue and voicing a positive attitude towards the book and its positive message of tolerance and compassion.

Read the entire article HERE!

Source: The Advocate

August 5, 2013
Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld Talk Flash Suits and Heights

We keep hearing talk about how hot the flash suits were and recently talked to costume designer Christine Bieselin-Clark about how they had to wear another layer under the suits too! In this interview with USA Today, Asa and Hailee go into further detail on what it was like to work in the wire harness and the flash suits.

The filmmakers used rigs to hoist the actors and make them feel as if they were in space. “If you’re scared of heights, you just had to get over it,” Butterfield says. “There’s nothing you can do about it. We all had a great time up there.”

Steinfeld recalls about three months spent on wires “floating around, flipping around, being thrown into pads.”

“And shooting people,” Butterfield says.

“The list goes on,” says Steinfeld, who plays Petra Arkanian, Ender’s friend at Battle School. “I don’t really think we had time to worry about it.”

“I guess we don’t really know any different,” Steinfeld says. “It is very uncomfortable and hard at first, to say the least.”

[…] “It was like a sauna,” Butterfield says.

Because of the sound, filmmakers couldn’t run air conditioning to keep them cool, says Steinfeld, though Butterfield notes that they did have fans in their 8-pound helmets, “which kept it from fogging up.”

[…]

“I doubt they were comfortable 50 years in the future,” Butterfield figures.

“Yeah, I don’t know how we managed,” Steinfeld adds before giving him a high-five. “Maybe we’ll see. We’ll go to space in 50 years and see if the spacesuits are comfortable.”

Read the whole interview at USA Today.

Definitely sounds like they had a tough time doing the Battle Room scenes, but from what we’ve seen in the trailers so far, it looks pretty fantastic. And to think I thought my flight suit costume was too hot!

July 30, 2013
VIDEO: Harrison Ford Talks Working With Asa Butterfield

During Comic Con, Popsugar managed to catch Harrison Ford for a tiny one-question interview. Watch what he had to say about the young cast in general and Asa Butterfield in particular.

Source: Popsugar

July 30, 2013
VIDEO: Hailee Steinfeld Talks About Bonding With Asa Butterfield

While at Comic Con, Popsugar caught up with Hailee Steinfeld to ask her a few quick questions about her work on Ender’s Game. She talks about what drew her to the project, bonding with Asa Butterfield, and working with “Mr. Ford.”

Source: Popsugar

July 30, 2013
VIDEO: Asa Butterfield Talks Training and Harrison Ford

More Comic Con videos! Watch Asa talk to Popsugar about the “coolest stuff to film,” training for the battle room, the characters’ ages, and being intimidated by Harrison Ford!

Source: Popsugar

July 30, 2013
Roberto Orci and Gavin Hood on Adapting Ender’s Game

While at Comic Con, producer Bob Orci and writer/director Gavin Hood sat down for yet another Ender’s Game interview, this time with FirstShowing.net’s Alex Billington. This interview focuses almost exclusively on the challenge of adapting Orson Scott Card’s complex book for the silver screen. Here are some of my favorite parts.

Bob Orci on why the time is right for an Ender’s Game movie:

[Audiences ha]ve seen everything. They are tired of the usual fare. This is a book that has a unique structure and has complicated themes. But it’s also a grand space adventure.

Gavin Hood on the different media:

The tricky thing in the adaptation of this is how do you make these characters and what’s going on in their heads real on screen when you can’t use what the author can use, which is lots of description of what he’s thinking. … [H]ow do I use different tools, the tools of cinema — lensing, long lenses. When do I go tight? When do I go wide? What kind of structure do I put into the scene? How do I put these characters against each other? To generate the same feeling in the audience that those descriptive passages generate in the book.

Check out the rest of the interview HERE.

Source: FirstShowing.net

July 30, 2013
Harrison Ford on Why Ender’s Game is Still Relevant Today

During Comic Con, Harrison Ford found the time to talk briefly to Zap2It about why the book and consequently the movie was (still) relevant today. Ford commented on general social as well as political issues in the book that speak to a contemporary audience. Here is what he said:

[Y]oung people are very curious about the future and their place in the world and how they’re going to fit in and their utility to their culture, and they’re very suspicious of the older generations and the uses to which they’re going to be put, and curious about their future and anxious about their future. This movie deals with all of those issues and more.

I think [the book] was prescient in recognizing [drone warfare] as a potential issue in the future because of what was written 25 years or so ago. I don’t think it’s a metaphor.

Ford goes on to talk about special effects and some of his iconic roles. Read the rest HERE!

Source: Zap2It

July 29, 2013
Bob Orci on Filming the Unfilmable Book

During the obligatory Comic Con press line, Ender’s Game producer Roberto Orci talked to Zap2It about spoilers in the trailer, sequels, and the Orson Scott Card controversy. Asked about why this new script was the right one to finally make an Ender’s Game movie when the book had always been called unfilmable, he answered this:

I heard various pitches of the movie over the years that totally changed the ending and made it like ‘Star Wars’ in a sense, like totally like ‘and then they go and they blow up the Death Star,’ essentially. Completely changed what the intent of the book was. … We just thought audiences have seen everything nowadays. They’ve seen all the big spectacle, now they can handle this movie, and it’s still spectacle but it’s still a young protagonist in an adult situation dealing with war and peace and tolerance and all kinds of other things.

Check out the rest of the interview HERE!

Source: Zap2It

July 29, 2013
Hailee Steinfeld On Building a Backstory for Petra

Zap2It managed to get a short interview with Hailee Steinfeld during Comic Con. In addition to chatting about training for the battle room scenes, Hailee talked about building a backstory for Petra. This is what she had to say:

It was really fun building a backstory for her …. We had so much freedom and so much time to do that with Gavin. He was so great in sort of helping us. He had so much to sort of bring to the project from his own personal experiences. So much about him had so much to do with my character and sort of exploring her and getting to know her

Read the rest of the interview write-up HERE!

Source: Zap2It

July 29, 2013
Asa Butterfield On the Hardest Part of Shooting

During Comic Con, Zap2It caught up with Asa Butterfield for a quick interview about the filming of Ender’s Game. When asked about filming the dramatic climax of the movie, he had this to say:

Shooting that was probably the hardest part about filming, and it was near the end of filming. It was hard and reading the book gave me a lot of insight and ideas about how to play it.

Check out the rest HERE!

Source: Zap2It

July 29, 2013