Tag: Yahoo! Movies

In a phone interview with Yahoo! Movies, director Gavin Hood talked about the size of the Battle Room.

“This is the high school football field, only it’s in three dimensions. It’s the size of a football field in all directions: up, down, left, right. And the idea is teams jump out from opposite ends of this amazing space and play this amazing game of 3D paintball, almost.”

Ever since we saw on set how they planned to show the Battle Room, I’ve been dying for other fans to see their vision, which makes my own imagination’s gray room and cubic stars seem so lame in comparison. So how did they arrive at the design?

One deviation from the book is that in the original text the Battle Room is described as being a giant hollow cube. But Hood felt that to really convey the size and dimensionality of the space, it should be spherical. Hood said he then proposed, “What if we could see through? What if we could see out of the space, and we’re moving around the Earth and turning at the same time?” He said he felt that would create “a really strange, disorienting experience,” that would better capture the notion in the book that in space there really is no up or down.

Strange and disorienting is right! I’d probably be downright terrified the first time I saw the Battle Room. With Earth visible right outside I can imagine the feeling that you’re floating in space takes some getting used to. Or do you think that young children would have an easier time adjusting to such an intense arena?

Read the full article at Yahoo! Movies.