Ender's Movie

There's been talk of an Ender movie for ten years now. The special effects should be good enough to do a film like Ender's Game which basically needs weightlessness.

Orson Scott Card once said that the film, Searching for Bobby Fisher said all he wanted to say in Ender's Game. Still, I think people wouldn't mind watching the story in film, even if its themes may have been covered elsewhere.

The director most associated with the film has been Wolfgang Petersen. Petersen directed the great Das Boot in German, which I still have yet to see. He then began directing English pictures, but I don't think any of them have been great.

He's done In the Line of Fire, Troy, Poseidon, and Air Force One. I haven't seen most of these films. I did enjoy In the Line of Fire, which stars Clint Eastwood who plays a secret service guy who still feels guilt about not taking the bullet when Kennedy was assasinated. A guy says he plans to kill the President.

That guy happens to be John Malkovich, who can play creepy like falling off a log, and it's really his film as he taunts Eastwood's character before reaching a point where he snaps , when Eastwood's character has gotten underneath his skin.

I dunno, though. Since then Petersen hasn't done a good film (so I hear, anyway. I should give him the benefit of the doubt). I'm not sure who would do a good job. I could see Spielberg doing this film, as he's often done well with kids, and his style might work well with Card's writing style. There's something about the exaggerated way Spielberg likes dealing with kids that reminds me of Card.

I had a rather simple idea for the film, which admittedly, is a bit of a gimmick. In this film, no adult would ever be seen face-on and at adult height. The film would be shot almost entirely at kid height. The exception might have to be Mazer Rackham. Just this simple gimmick would put everything from the perspective of kids, and the adults would simply be in the background, kind of like the story.

This is a film that almost cries out for a stylized treatment of kids. While a naturalistic approach would be interesting, something more like Broadway-style acting might work better, except for Ender himself, who needs to stand out as different.

By the way, I think the Harry Potter series has yet to hit its stride. People have pointed out Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell have moved the franchise beyond Chris Columbus's first two efforts. It's become a kind of Alien franchise with decent directors taking their hands at leading this ship.

Newell was complimented on his ability to recreate a more British school, and he's been the only director whose British. Even so, the film is hampered by having to deal with at least one character who's a non-characer, and another whose not fleshed out enough to care what happens to him. And the quidditch match? Again? Like Klingons in a Star Trek film.

Actually, you know who I'd like to see direct Ender's Game? Kim Ki-duk. Yeah, I know. It probably wouldn't work out. Kim's not big into dialogue. He's fantastic in scenes with no dialogue at all, and might have made a credible Brokeback Mountain.

But where he and his fellow Korean directors are amazing is their portrayal of gritty violence. There are at least two scenes from the book that are rather violent, and Kim could give it a kind of grisly realism that might punctuate the scene, in something that might otherwise be filmed in some banal fashion.

IMDB has slated Petersen to direct, though it appears tentative. Petersen is juggling his schedule, and may not go with Ender's Game. Casting is key too, although more so if they go into the Ender's Shadow series.

We'll see how it turns out.