Last week we told you aboutEnder’s Game: Battle School, a board game to be released by Cryptozoic. Now we have a hi-res version of the image Cryptozoic is using to advertise their new game. You can even read the words on the cards! Click the image for the hi-res version.
In case you don’t remember, here is the description of the game again:
Ender’s Game: Battle School is a two-player game set in the zero-gravity arena of the International Fleet’s Battle School. Players take the role of either Ender Wiggin and the Dragon Team or Bonzo Madrid and the Salamander Team, and then use Commander cards with special abilities (some for the whole team, some that only help the commander) to attempt to capture the other team’s gates or freeze opposing team players with laser-light guns. The player who completes either of the goals first (capturing all the gates or freezing the opposing commander) wins.
As the days tick down to the release of Ender’s Game, we’ll start to see more merchandise being released. One thing we can look forward to are Pop! Vinyl figures from Funko for Ender and Petra.
Thanks to a tip from EnderWiggin.net reader Bruna, we found pre-order pages for the Ender and Petra figures on Entertainment Earth. If you’re not sure what they are by name, you might recognize them from the photo below.
No photos are yet available for the Ender’s Game figures, but we’ll keep an eye out for you Launchies! Funko sells their figures on Amazon, so they’ll probably eventually show up there.
Hopefully it’s not just Ender and Petra! A Bean figure would probably do well and surely they’ll do one for Graff/Harrison Ford, no?
Those of you that have been waiting for more information about the upcoming Ender’s Game Board Game by Cryptozoic Entertainment can now have a peek at the game! Thanks to a tip from @AllUsGeeks on Twitter, who linked to ICV2.com.
Here’s a brief description of the game:
Ender’s Game: Battle School is a two-player game set in the zero-gravity arena of the International Fleet’s Battle School. Players take the role of either Ender Wiggin and the Dragon Team or Bonzo Madrid and the Salamander Team, and then use Commander cards with special abilities (some for the whole team, some that only help the commander) to attempt to capture the other team’s gates or freeze opposing team players with laser-light guns. The player who completes either of the goals first (capturing all the gates or freezing the opposing commander) wins.
The MSRP will be $25.00. In addition, here is a list of what comes with the game:
I know they’ve been long in coming, but here are the final photos from the “Ender’s Game” press conference held on 18 July 2013 at San Diego Comic-Con!
I had the amazing opportunity to sit second row, a mere ten feet from a fabulous ensemble: Writer/Director Gavin Hood, Producer Roberto Orci, Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin), Hailee Steinfeld (Petra Arkanian), and of course, Mr. Harrison Ford (Colonel Graff). I’m not really sure what they talked about, since I spent most of my time trying to snap photos and take video simultaneously. Though I’m pretty sure one of those surlier photos of Harrison came shortly after some silly reporter said the words “Han Solo”…
(These photographs are the property of Elizabeth C. Spencer and may not be utilized without permission. If you want to share them, link to them, no problem – just please make sure to credit your source!)
Update: This image is the bonus tablet photo from EW. For the Fall Movie Preview image, click here.
We’ve seen a slightly different version of this image from Entertainment Weekly and with the new Fall Movie Preview issue on stands this week, we’ve got yet another new photo of Ender as a launchie. In this photo, he grips a bar at the gate to the Battle Room with Graff smiling with approval behind him.
Any speculation on why Graff would be the one to take Ender to the Battle Room personally? Why wouldn’t Ender go with his launch group? Give us your thoughts!
Now that the final trailer for Ender’s Game has been released, armchair critics around the world are typing out their opinions on “the nets” with comments ranging from a simple, “SPOILERS” to “this movie looks amazing” to “this movie looks awful”.
For book fans, a common kneejerk reaction to the new trailer is the complaint that it’s made pretty clear that the major “twist” of the Ender’s Game book–that it’s all really happening–is not preserved for movie audiences. And yet, I’m sure we all can eventually realize that as long as the truth is hidden from Ender, the heart of the story is intact.
When I first saw the trailer at Comic Con, I tweeted about this audience perspective topic because it somehow surprised me. Since I think a lot about this movie adaptation, I’d known for a really long time that it was possible they’d open this part of the story up, but seeing it on the screen was still a bit of a shock. Now that I’ve actually had the chance to watch the trailer as many times as I’d like, the dust has settled and I’ve come to realize the amazing potential of such a decision by the filmmakers.
The most important thing to realize right from the start is that Ender’s Game is a film adaptation. A book is a book and a movie is a movie. I know we book fanatics can sometimes be so stuck to the pages of a novel that we can’t see the painfully obvious–that impactful scenes in books can translate into awfully dull scenes in movies.
Mind you, this is not a criticism of Card’s book. I obviously wouldn’t have started this site and invested so much into it if I didn’t truly love the book he wrote. They’re simply different mediums. Let’s look at Eros. The environment Card put Ender in worked exceptionally well for an individual holed up somewhere with their nose in a book because let’s face it, we all read alone.
We feel isolated in some way when we sink into the world of a story and that’s probably part of the reason why we felt a kind of relationship with Ender Wiggin. You felt alone with Ender Wiggin in that isolated simulator room with Mazer Rackham breathing over his (and your) shoulders. You can immerse yourself into his situation and for some people this creates tunnel vision, which is what makes the final reveal of the twist so jarring.
Movies, however, are an entirely different experience. Rather than relying on imagination, movies depend entirely on visual appeal, sound effects, and performances. Movies must also present a much broader picture in much less time, which becomes a crutch for telling such a complex story as Ender’s.
The reason so many of us are so attached to the story of Ender is that it made us think. After it was over, there was so much to talk about and contemplate regarding morals and ethics, which is probably why it’s taught in so many schools.
Books have the luxury of having pages and pages to explain the complexities of plot, but to preserve his twist, Card doesn’t actually do this during Ender’s “gaming”. He left the explanations for the post-war section of the book. The movie could do the same, but the flow would be interrupted because people would have to think back to what he did. With prior knowledge of what the teachers are hiding from Ender, audiences are set up for a bigger emotional investment for when Ender finally learns the truth. This isn’t The Sixth Sense, nor does it have to be.
Revealing the real “game” the teachers are playing also gives us a much better look into the characters of Graff and Mazer, who are, let’s face it, marquis players in this movie’s cast. Hiding it actually seems like wasted potential for the film. By expanding upon the teachers’ moral dilemma over Ender, their characters become more complex and therefore more interesting rather than being straightforward domineering superiors.
We’ve seen only a few seconds of Graff in the trailers and a lot of it could be taken out of context, but I’m liking what I’m seeing so far. One of our readers on Facebook said that he doesn’t like how they’ve been portraying Graff, that he’s much too hardass and not the Graff he loves. I have to respectfully disagree because the brief glimpses of Graff that I’ve seen are to me true to the heart of his character.
While the book-Graff we know clearly cares for Ender, what has always made him compelling is the fact that he knows enough about what’s at stake and sets his sights on the end goal, which is the safety of the human race. He is the cornerstone for the conversations people have about this story. Do the ends justify the means? Is what they did to one boy “excusable” in order to save billions? And while Graff in the trailer does sound cold and jaded, this is the steely determined Graff that molds Ender into who he is. Without his drive, Ender may not have succeeded.
The conflicts between Graff/Mazer and Graff/Anderson would serve to highlight these issues and with audiences aware of the true nature of the destruction that Ender is causing, it ultimately makes for a much more powerful finale. In short, the emotional impact of the movie shouldn’t be that you didn’t realize what was going on. The impact should be with Ender’s realization that what you’ve just watched with the same horror as Graff and Mazer was, in fact, not a game.
“He’s in command, there’s no stopping him now.”
Regarding the complaint that the trailer shows the movie’s twist, it’s really all in how you look at it. There technically is no audience twist like with the book. Instead, there’s only Ender’s twist. With the look on Graff’s face, you can imagine all his fears, his hopes, his regrets, and his sorrow. He looks as though in this moment, he finally realizes the scope of the “weapon” he’s created in Ender. And yet, the true horror he has to face is yet to come when he has to face Ender and tell him the truth. This will be the movie’s heart. And it’s not in the trailer.
I could be wrong. Perhaps the trailer has been very cleverly edited and I only think I know what they’re saying because I’ve read the book. But movies have a different level of power when it comes to evoking emotion. Gavin Hood has talked about putting pages of thinking and emotion into a single look on screen and I think that’s indicative of his own awareness of the importance of the ending.
Last December, I wrote a piece in which I talked about what Ender’s Game ultimately needs to accomplish. I said that what mattered most was that audiences realize what they’ve done to Ender and I think at that time, I thought that it rested solely on Asa Butterfield’s performance immediately following the final battle.
I can see now that the setup for that scene will be a key factor in making that performance truly successful. With that setup, his performance would be given so much more weight. And so, I want audiences to know. I want audiences to feel and despair over Ender’s actions so that when he’s finally aware, every little part of that scene clicks into place. To make people feel what I and so many of you felt when we first journeyed with Ender Wiggin would be an amazing accomplishment and a rounding success for Gavin Hood and his cast and crew.
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.
The other day, Forbes did an article about how they do something pretty cool called the “Fictional Fifteen” in which they determine who are the richest fictional characters out there. And while Ender unfortunately did not make the list (he’d have ranked #1, beating out the likes of Scrooge McDuck and Carlisle Cullen) because of too many unknown factors, they did lay out how they came to the conclusion that he’s worth about as much as Bill Gates at a cool $66 billion dollars.
After the Formic War in Ender’s Game, there was a lot of geopolitical strife, conquest and wars. But at the end of it all, Ender’s brother Peter Wiggin created a one-world government. It’s stated in the books that Starways Congress was basically the next step in evolution from that government, so we’ll say that the Yen became the world’s official currency when Peter Wiggin ended up running everything.
Card’s universe post-Ender’s Game is remarkably geopolitically (and technologically) stable. Three thousand years in the future, the only technology that’s really advanced significantly is genetic engineering –in part because humans took advanced technology from the alien Formics, but never figured out the physics of why that technology worked. So we’ll operate under the assumption that the economics of Ender’s universe is similarly stable.
So now we can make a guess at the value of the Yen before it was used as the base for the new Starways Congress dollar, and figure out how Ender’s year 5189 net worth of $400 trillion SCD translates to 2013 U.S. Dollars.
[…]
Ender’s $400 trillion Starways Congress dollars are worth about 16,920,473,773,265 modern-day Yen. If we convert that to U.S. dollars at the 1985 exchange rate, the figure we arrive at is a little more than $66.6 billion. That means Ender Wiggin’s is worth about as much as Bill Gates.
Don’t we all wish even more now that we had a friend like Jane?
Read the full article at Forbes.com. Thanks to Anthony for the tip!
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.
looks like we are going to keep finding these little gems from Comic Con for a while. Here is an awesome interview Screen Rant did with Gavin Hood. He speaks about how he personally relates to the story of Ender, what Space Camp did for the kids and the filming process, how they deal with Ender realizing that “the enemy’s gate is down,” and Hood’s opinion on Orson Scott Card and his views on gay marriage.
Here’s a scan of a new image of Ender in the Battle Room in his Salamander Army flash suit. This image appeared in the print edition of Entertainment Weekly’s op-ed piece Pop Culture’s Big Gay Panic. If you’re not sure which issue it is, it’s the one with The Walking Dead on the cover.
