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Ender's Game (2013 Film)


Jay

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it's not going to do well at the boxoffice either.

the crowds are simply not there.

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I was pleasantly surprised by the film. Keep your expectations within reason, and you'll probably enjoy it. For a $110 million film, it looks twice that, thanks to Digital Domain's excellent work. And it's well-paced, so not a lot of people will be bored.

Asa Butterfield was really good in this film, and if his parents keep him centered -- he's going to have a nice career ahead of him. Hood ends the film in that if it doesn't become a hit, it functions fine as a standalone film. If it makes money, the sequel(s) can easily build off that.

And Jablonsky's score has been a big step up from what he's done in the past. Some really good string writing (as Koray already pointed out), and at times, it seems like Jablonsky was flirting with Daft Punk's style from Tron Legacy. Some good choral work as well, and it works just fine in the film. I have no problem with Jablonsky's score at all. Enjoyable in parts, I daresay.

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it's not going to do well at the boxoffice either.

the crowds are simply not there.

"Box Office: ‘Ender’s Game’ No. 1 With $27 Million"

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni56379954/?ref_=hm_nw_tp_t1

it's a bit premature to say it's got 27 million, Sunday hasn't happened yet.

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You are gonna like it.

Probably not (even though Jason loves 97% of everything that flickers). I read they simplified it (the book is more 'deep') so the masses wouldn't feel stupid. This movie needs to be a popular blockbuster, you know.

The trailer doesn't appeal to me (I just don't like how it looks) and I guess I'm not the only one who feels this way. Most people just wanna see Gravity.

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Not everyone goes to the theater every week, KM. Take me, for instance, when was the last time that you saw me at the movies?

most people don't have agoraphobia.

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I was pleasantly surprised by the film. Keep your expectations within reason, and you'll probably enjoy it. For a $110 million film, it looks twice that, thanks to Digital Domain's excellent work. And it's well-paced, so not a lot of people will be bored.

Asa Butterfield was really good in this film, and if his parents keep him centered -- he's going to have a nice career ahead of him. Hood ends the film in that if it doesn't become a hit, it functions fine as a standalone film. If it makes money, the sequel(s) can easily build off that.

And Jablonsky's score has been a big step up from what he's done in the past. Some really good string writing (as Koray already pointed out), and at times, it seems like Jablonsky was flirting with Daft Punk's style from Tron Legacy. Some good choral work as well, and it works just fine in the film. I have no problem with Jablonsky's score at all. Enjoyable in parts, I daresay.

Nice to see that Digital Domain is still going.

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Digital Domain has definitely seen some rough patches, but I think they're on solid ground now. They co-produced the film with Summit/Lionsgate and OddLot Entertainment -- which gives them a financial stake in the film (and allowed the studio to keep costs down).

I don't think DD is at the level of Industrial Light & Magic or Weta Digital, but they're quite good. They definitely share company with MPC, Rhythm & Hues, Framestore, and Double Negative in terms of output.

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About halfway through and so far it's not the most compelling book I've read. The description of the environments isn't very good and it's hard to get a mental picture of what's happening, especially the battle games. It also skips time a bit too fast in the events without really knowing what happened in between.It also shows it was written before the Internet existed as the technology is more advanced today than the future depicted in the book

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I saw the film last night and mostly enjoyed it but the score was second rate copy of second rate RC. How does Jablonski have such a strong career when consistently producing such generic mediocrity? I do agree the expectations should be limited to enjoy the film.

Though I haven't read the book, one thing that I thought was a negative was how do you feel sympathy for the lead characters if you and they both thought the threat wasn't real since it was a set of training exercises? Only at the end do we realize it was real so difficult to have had much of an emotional attachment to the outcome. Though Orson Scott Card is considered a great story teller, doesn't the problem with the film lie with the story? The execution of it is fine, cast is good, special effects good but the story is not that good.

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The book is about Ender's internal struggle dealing with being told and forced to do things to fulfill this predetermined destiny that he doesn't really want nor understands. Card has said it took this long to adapt the novel because he felt that a film would never be able to capture his thoughts. Guess he saw something in the filmmaking here that you didn't.

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Mark, stick with it - the best part of the book is the ending (both climax and the denouement)

Yes, the last part got much more interesting.

Now I'll see the movie this week

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I just watched the film.

The best word to describe it is probably "meh". Meh story, meh characters, meh acting (for the most part), meh score... Only the visual effects are really spectacular, but that's not enough, is it?

The movie has an open ending, but I honestly don't know where this could go from that point onwards, and I'm not sure I even care...

5/10

Oh, and two things I'd like to mention:

- The first time the kids entered in the battle room, and they're using their weapon for the first time, why on earth do they go like: "

Shoot me!" How idiotic can you get? They have no idea what effect this will have on their body, yet they do it anyway. Really stupid moment.

- About the twist: were all the "simulations" prior to the final evaluation also real battles, or was it only the last battle that was real? It's quite unclear to me. I guess only the last one was real, since before that, he lost a battle where I think the "cannon-ship" got destroyed (the one he uses to destroy the planet), yet they only had one, but I'm not certain of that...

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I haven't seen the film yet, but in the book

everything at Battle School is a complete simulation, and once he gets to Command School, he's really commanding real ships, but he doesn't know it (and neither does the reader) until after he's destroyed their home planet

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He predicted tablets in the 80s.

So did Star Trek.

If you want impressive, HG Wells predicted flat screen tvs in the 1930s. That's pretty, pretty good.

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Is the Epilogue in the film?

I found that part in the book doesn't really hold up if you think about it too long.

Why did the buggers send just a single egg at the last moment for Ender to find and save their race? There should have been Queens already in the bugger colony planets, as long as they weren't in the ships to get destroyed

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The epilogue of the book is basically there to set up the sequel novel that came out next year, Speaker For The Dead, in which (spoiler for Ender's Game, not Speaker for the Dead)

the whole thing revolves around Ender having the one egg and looking for a place to let it hatch

I can't remember if the book gives a good reason why there was only one egg left behind or not..... I guess it's a non important detail

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I haven't seen the film yet, but in the book

everything at Battle School is a complete simulation, and once he gets to Command School, he's really commanding real ships, but he doesn't know it (and neither does the reader) until after he's destroyed their home planet

That's how it is in the film to I believe. I haven't read the book yet, but having watched the film, I had the same reaction as BloodBoal. It turned out to be exactly what I thought it'd be.

Meh.

It was alright, not particularly engaging or all that entertaining really. I didn't find the visual effects to be all that it was hyped to be either. It was sometimes very good, but not amazing. Overall, it doesn't make me very excited to bother reading the book.

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No, it doesn't, and it seems important to me

so Ender is in the sequel book?

Yes, Speaker for the Dead is about Ender in his twenties or thirties, but it takes place thousands of years later because of all the time he spent traveling around the galaxy so all the other characters are long dead.

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I finally saw it. I thought it was a decent adaptation of the book but they skipped a lot of the battle school parts and they kind of changed the way the epilogue goes in the book.

I think reading the book just before helped me like the movie better though

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  • 7 months later...

Well, the sequel was green lit. Legendary Pictures and Universal will release the film in 3D and IMAX on April 7, 2017.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/pacific-rim-2-confirmed-for-april-7-2017-release-1201251654/

Wonder if Djawadi will return to score. The first was such a fun 1990s MV throwback score.

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Huh? Djawadi definitely scored Pacific Rim. That's the sequel Matt C's post is about, and what the article he linked to is about.

Now, why he posted it in the Ender's Game thread, I have no idea.

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It would be odd if Universal and Legendary suddenly took over the Ender's Game franchise from Lionsgate.

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