Hey Launchies, Crystal from Enderwiggin.net and Kelly from EnderNews.com were on a roll during Comic Con. After Episode 22 was posted only days ago, we now get Episode 23 – Ender’s Bullies. Listen to our hosts talk to Caleb Thaggard, who plays Ender’s primary school bully Stilson, and Conor Carroll, who plays Bernard, Ender’s launch group nemesis. You won’t believe how absolutely nice these two baddies are!
Bernard and Stilson chat about
the Ender’s Game Experience at Comic Con
how they were cast and how they felt about it
how they got into reading the book
Harrison Ford, chickens and other generally silly stuff.
Back in December, Crystal posted an editorial about whether or not the upcoming Ender’s Game movie needed to go as far as the book in terms of violence. In Pondering the Fate of Stilson, she argued that having Ender kill Stilson before he even gets to Battle School may not only be not necessary and severely stretch credibility (look a the size difference between Caleb Thaggard and Asa Butterfield), it may also be harmful in that it may lead audiences to despise Ender or even encourage people to commit violence themselves.
I think that all those elements of bullying, which is a great theme in the world right now, and how kids deal with being bullied, which we know is so powerful in the book, thatʼs in the movie. But what I try to do as a filmmaker in terms of handling questions of violence, is I donʼt believe in showing violence for violenceʼs sake and repetitive violence. For me, what I have found is an act of violence can be so sudden, whatʼs more interesting is the aftermath. And so, our movie is not, I hope, in any way, really violent. I donʼt want it to be a violent film, but the effect of the moment of violence on the psyche of the protagonist and the people around him is profound as it is in the book. It has to be, and so those key scenes in the book –Bonzo in the shower– are absolutely in the movie, and they shock in their suddenness, but they are not in any way indulgent. Iʼm not interested in showing blood flying around the room or any of, none of that. Whatʼs more important is to see how these young character handle it and thatʼs why I think itʼs an important film. As a parent, I want my kids to go to a movie and not be spoken down to, deal with difficult themes, but be able to talk about it, not celebrate that, just talk about it.
Looks like Gavin Hood has put a lot of thought into the question of how much violence is really necessary in the movie to have the desired effect on the characters and the audience, and how much would really just be violence for violence’s sake. He seems to have a pretty decent grasp on where the thin line runs between dramaturgy and pornography. Sounds like we are going to be sufficiently shocked, without being traumatised by watching graphic displays of kids dying in puddles of their own blood. (my emphasis)
Warning: This editorial contains MAJOR spoilers for the book Ender’s Game.
In the twenty or so years since I first read Ender’s Game, I’ve probably read the book around four additional times. Each time, I found myself marveling at the story and loving the way it was written, how it progressed, and what happened to the characters. It’s always remained a favorite of mine as the years went by. Yet the one thing in the entire book that’s never really sat well with me was what happened to Stilson.
Caleb Thaggard
The bully that torments Ender in the first chapter and eventually pays the ultimate price is very likely to be in the film. Stilson was first going to be played by the young actor Brendan Meyer. He even reported to the set in New Orleans and hung out with the cast.
At the last minute, a scheduling conflict required him to step down from the role, and in his place came Caleb Thaggard, an actor who bore an odd resemblance to actor Jimmy Jax Pinchak (Peter Wiggin), another tormentor of Ender. Once Thaggard stepped in, I began to wonder if they’d decided to change the script slightly because Thaggard looked decidedly bigger than Meyer, and with Asa Butterfield looking so slender, was it even going to be believable that Stilson was dead?
Which leads me to the big question: Does Stilson really have to die in the film adaptation? I posed this question to the EnderWiggin.net fans on Facebook and 100% of the answers came back with a resounding YES. Everyone who answered felt that Stilson’s death was completely necessary for Ender’s character building to become the leader he did and eventually led to him wiping out the Formics.
But I’m still not convinced of this. We never learn about Stilson’s death until the end of the book during Graff’s trial, and it’s safe to say that Ender never learns it until then either. So how does Stilson’s death play at all into Ender’s leadership building up until his final battle? It doesn’t, really. It was enough that Ender knew he’d beaten Stilson to a bloody pulp for him to feel deep remorse about it, and this was when he was six years old. It’s likely that due to both his heightened intelligence and the actions of his brother, Peter, Ender developed a moral compass much earlier than most children, and the incident with Stilson was enough to strengthen his character.
Some people argued that Stilson’s death played a huge role in the sequels, haunting Ender for the rest of his days. This is something I completely agree with, but the thing about that is we’re not really sure they’ll make Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind movies right after Ender’s Game. In fact, I think it’s highly unlikely they will because those books would require a completely new cast and frankly are a bit too politically and morally centric to fit in with a franchise starting with the more action-filled and young-adult-targeted Ender’s Game. I do feel they could eventually be made, but other movies keeping the young cast would be likely to come first, and in the process, a lot more weight could be added to Ender’s load of guilt that would make up for a change in the fate of Stilson.
One of the biggest reasons I thought Orson Scott Card and Ender shouldn’t have killed Stilson was because Ender was six at the time. I can see why he withheld that bit of information until the end because the thought of Ender being a murderer at age six is a pretty repulsive thing. Reveal that at the start and people would have had a hard time falling in love with the character.
The same can go for movie Ender. Given their difference in stature, is Ender going to take a 2×4 to Stilson’s head in the movie? Or has he taken self-defense classes on Earth and is already a deadly weapon? In this case, how will Gavin Hood prevent people from recoiling from the main character if he goes so far with Stilson at the start? Sure, we all had a laugh when Peter Parker punched Flash down the hallway and got food spilled onto his face, but Peter Parker never killed his bully to make a point.
Which brings me to another concern. With the influence of media on today’s youth, is it even wise to have Ender kill his tormentor from school? School bullying is an increasingly large problem in schools, and I’m sure it’s at least part of the conversation that the studio could end up sending the wrong message about how to go about solving one’s problems with a bully in school.
The Dark Knight Rises theater shooting was horrific and cast a huge cloud of gloom onto the movie. We all looked in horror at what he’d done and probably thought to ourselves, “How could he do that? It’s just a movie!” To the vast majority of us, it is just a movie. But to that one kid out there who’s just been pushed a little bit too far, watching something like this in a movie could be enough to push them over the edge. And it only really takes one real-life incident influenced by a movie for it to be too much.
One point someone brought up was that killing was simply what he did, thus the name Ender. But Ender never intended to kill Stilson, which means he was convinced that a beating would do the trick. So why is a death necessary if Ender himself doesn’t think it is? In a way, the death of Stilson in the book became essential to cementing the notion that Ender was a monster, looked upon by the world the way they should have looked at Peter, which is why it’s always stood out to me that this was an author’s technique and not entirely flowing with the natural story.
In short, I feel a beating with a little blood and Stilson in the hospital with broken bones could have the desired effect to convince moviegoers that this incident and Ender’s answers are why Graff has chosen Ender for Battle School and at the same time wouldn’t carry all the baggage that a Stilson death could potentially bring into our real world outside the movie. If they wanted to, they could always follow the book and say near the end that Stilson died of complications in the hospital, but at that point I think the rest of the movie would have caused people to almost forget about Stilson completely, much like how I had when I first read the novel.
It’ll be interesting to see which way they chose to take this on. Stilson plays such a small part of the story but lays the groundwork for Ender’s journey and is therefore very important. Until the movie in November 2013 or until someone’s counterargument can convince me otherwise, I maintain that Stilson’s death in the film isn’t necessary for a successful movie adaptation.
Due to a last minute scheduling conflict, actor Brendan K Meyer, who had previously been cast as the schoolyard bully Stilson, announced via his Facebook page that he would be dropping out of the production for Ender’s Game.
A replacement for Meyer has not yet been announced.
According to an insider’s source of the Hollywood Reporter, 17 year old Brendan Meyer from the Disney XD series Mr. Young has been cast as the bully Stilson who torments Ender Wiggin at school.
Although the role is very small, the character Stilson has a lasting impact on Ender as he makes his way through Battle School, coming back to haunt Ender when he begins to play the fantasy game Giant’s Drink.
Meyer joins Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin) in the production, which begins filming in New Orleans next February, while Hailee Steinfeld and Ben Kingsley are still in negotiations to join the cast.
