The Glade 4.0

Ya know, it's funny, but I thought something in the trailer looked like an ending. Don't know why I had that feeling, except that now that you mention it, yeah, I was wondering. And, no, I haven't read the book.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

They do that on so many trailers now. "Oh maybe if we show them running from a big explosion of the building the entire movie takes place in without context, they won't know it's the last shot of the film!" I think it's because they NEED to get those final, expensive set-pieces in every media possible, and damn the story consequences.

I was kind of disappointed, although I don't know what I was expecting. I think they followed the book too closely. They tried to cram everything they could in, and it just felt rushed/disjointed. There was no time to establish Ender's skills in the battle room, or his struggles at battle school. They should have cut a bunch of unnecessary plot elements in order to be able to flesh out the other parts better.

A prime example of something that should have been cut is his trip back to Earth to talk to with his sister. And probably half the stuff at the end.

But yeah, it was pretty and kind of entertaining. I guess it can be fun for those who like the book and want to see things fleshed out on the big screen. It actually reminds me a lot of The Golden Compass movie adaptation...

But if they cut the talk with Valentine and the stuff at the end, they couldn't start making Speaker for the Dead sequels...

I agree, it felt very rushed. They did a piss-poor job of showing Ender learning lessons one at a time from his repeated runs in battle school, which instead left a sense that he was just a born commander proving to the command structure that he was worthy of command. That really sucks in comparison to the harsh regimen of battle school and the cruelties inflicted on him by his teachers and classmates shaping him into the commander they needed.

That said, to their credit, they didn't cut the mind game entirely, which I sort of expected. They probably made *too* big a point of his fights with Bonso and the kid in the beginning, spelling out all the rationale behind it and whatnot (wasted time! could have fit another battle room or two in without it?).

And then there were flashes of brilliance. The Battle Room was singularly delivered; setting it up as a stationary mid-section with rotating endcaps was a stroke of inspiration. The design of the station itself was delicious and meaty for a hard sci-fi buff. It made me smile to see the concave floors in the hallway, and it made me gasp to see Graff's office had a viewport that overlooked the Battle Room itself. Command School's simulation room was very adroitly adapted to the twenty-first century.

But there was still just the one Battle Room fight, with none of the rising tension as his fellow army commanders slowly growing to resent him more and more with each victory, effortless at first, and then sound despite growing odds stacked against him. Bean was given awful short shrift, and his special tactics squad wasn't even mentioned. Shoehorning some kind of awkward thing in with Petra, ugh.

Asa did a good job, though. Ford was actually solid, which was a nice change of pace from some of his recent works. I liked the casting for Valentine, too. Bonso would have been brilliant if they had been allowed (I assume it was an executive mandate?) to use an appropriately aged Ender; while he's supposed to be short with a Napoleon complex, he lost a lot of his menace looking sharply upward at Ender.

It could have been a lot worse, in short. It was a serviceable adaptation of the novel, but I can't help but think it would have shone more brightly for having been a two- or three-part series adapting the novel, or chosen to adapt the short story, instead.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Hey, hey... don't knock Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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I want to see the extented cut now. The whole thing felt rushed, they could have gotten two movies out of this easy. For the most part, I agree with just about everything Kaffis said.

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Raell Kromwell