Folks, I think Ender's Game is gonna suck.

[sofa king]

Yes, I know, it should come as no surprise to science fiction fans that a film adaptation of a great science fiction novel turns out to be a piece 'a shit. Just look back to the hours of your life that you wasted watching:

Dune
I, Robot
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Postman

All of which spawned from superlative science fiction novels (and notice that I did not include anything from Steven King or L. Ron Hubbard....).

Well, here comes Ender's Game. Remember the key plot point in Ender's game where a futuristic Audi was product-placed?

http://www.dvice.com/2013-8-8/meet-sexy-new-sci-fi-audi-enders-game

Neither do I.

Now, I know that it's impossible to condense a 50000+ word document into a 100 page double-spaced script without tossing something overboard, but one way to guarantee that you have to toss even more stuff overboard is to waste your time writing advertisements into your adapted script.

So there you go. I've claimed for years that even the darkest science fiction is optimistic fiction, for it usually envisions some sort of a future where humans still exist, and science fiction fans therefore tend toward optimism when films of their favorite books are made.

But that also leads to constant disappointment. So be prepared, my friends.

[kentauros]

1. I guess it's good that I haven't read Ender's Game.

There was some other Card book I read, a gift to me from a brother, but can't remember much about it now, only that I couldn't get into the sequel.

As for the hours wasted watching the four movies you listed, I think maybe I wasted about an hour total. That is, I liked Dune. I thought I, Robot was okay, not great and not bad. I liked Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy, and didn't bother with The Postman because it just didn't look interesting at all.

Of those four, I've read the radio-script for Hitchhiker's Guide and listened to it, and watched the TV series, and listened to the vinyl album, and read the five books of the trilogy, and watched the movie. In my opinion, they're all hilarious, and have Adams' hand in all of them.

I didn't know there was a book for The Postman, and if the movie's plot is the same as the book, then I'm still not interested.

Never was an Asimov fan. Make a movie of A.E. van Vogt's Slan sometime instead.

Hated Dune (the book.) I tried to read it, several times, even an illustrated copy. Still couldn't get more than twenty pages into it. I've had friends tell me, and I quote "If you just get past the first 100-200 pages, it's a great book!" Yeah, well, 100-200 pages is regular-sized novel to me. If you can't get to the good stuff within the first twenty pages, then don't expect me to keep reading.

So, I'll probably see Ender's Game, at least on Dish, and I doubt I'll waste nearly as much of my time as I did honestly attempting to read one of the "great" novels of science fiction.

[sofa king]

2. Fair enough!

I think that's a highly positive approach to take to films in general. My warning extends to the Ender's Game fanbois, who seem certain to be disappointed.

I'm not an Orson Scott Card fanboi by any means (and that has little to do with his vile personal politics, which I can successfully separate from his work).

But I am a huge fan of David Brin, who wrote The Postman. If the subject of that one doesn't interest you, you still owe it to yourself to take a look at his book Startide Rising, in which Brin kicked open the door for hard science fiction authors and allowed their legions to pour into the Space Opera genre.

If you like how Douglas Adams stood the standard list of science fiction cliches its head in the first forty pages of his book, you'll love how Brin does the same thing by introducing millions of alien species across five galaxies, dozens of ways to cheat the speed of light, and multiple sentient species on Earth. One of my favorites ever, and unlike his later stuff it has a pretty tight plot.

[kentauros]

3. It sounds interesting, and I have heard of Brin.

My biggest "problem" is I'm not a fast reader. I have dozens of books on my Kindle I haven't been able to get to because of that, not to mention all the B5 books I ordered recently

On top of that, I'm working on my own writing, and so much of my reading time is spent researching, or in "constructive" daydreaming.

I know Hollywood doesn't understand how to make a good science fiction movie (the last good one I can think of was Contact.) But, if any of those more intelligent producers out there manage to get any of the great science fiction books turned into movies, one I'd love to see would be Frederick Pohl's Gateway. Or Varley's Titan. That one alone could be a phenomenal movie!

[Dr. Strange]

4. You haven't read Dune?

Welcome to Ignore!

I liked the visuals from Lynch's (err, um, Alan Smithee's) Dune, but didn't care for what he did with the script. The SyFy Dune miniseries was the opposite: good script, okay acting, mediocre visuals.

[kentauros]

5. I liked the SciFi miniseries, too.

It was cheaply done, being on SciFi, but well-made. Still, I do like Lynch's movies, and Dune is a favorite, especially the soundtrack and Jürgen Prochnow

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. The sci fi miniseries was really quite good.

The Lynch one was ludicrous.

Upon seeing the first images of Baron Harkonen.... "I dunno, but I think this might be the bad guy"

[kentauros]

16. As I literally cannot read the book,

the Lynch version is still a fine movie to me. And I'm fine without reading the book. I'll let someone give me their interpretation so I don't have to bother attempting to read it again

[sofa king]

6. Years ago, I had really hoped....

... that computer graphics would revolutionize science fiction in film and television, because it would finally allow directors to accurately realize the visions offered by the written works. Large-scale physics could finally be accurately portrayed, like Fred Pohl's Dyson spheres, for example. Different gravity fields, or lack thereof, could be used.

But instead it went the other way. Now, we have bullshit like Sharknado. Now it's cheap to make CGI crap, and the CGI itself sells, whether it's any good or not. Every spaceship still has a gravity button. Every rocket still thunders in the vacuum of space. Every laser pulse can be seen and heard.

Science fiction in film, despite being completely freed by the use of CGI, is still shackled by film conventions that were established exactly because nobody except Stanley Kubrick could afford to do it right.

Someday, someone is going to come along, do it right, and blow peoples' minds. Maybe it will be me--but if it is, we all have a very, very long wait.

[Dr. Strange]

7. You know what I think would revolutionize sci fi?

Getting away from films, and taking the time to tell stories.

I love Game of Thrones and Dexter, and they work because in addition to the special effects, you have a story being told over the course of 10 - 14 hours. Same thing with Doctor Who; yeah, you have one-hour episodes, but there's always a story that spans the whole season.

I would love for Showtime or HBO to do to Dune what they did with GoT and Dexter.

[sofa king]

8. HELL, YES!

Damn, you nailed that one, Dr. Strange. Going back to my previous example of Startide Rising, there's a story that could be richly told over a season of hour-long episodes.

Back in the early aughts there were rumors that SyFy was going to pick up the rights for Joe Haldemann's The Forever War and make that into a series, which could have been really interesting and which would have put your theory into direct practice.

But instead, Ridley Scott snapped it up, and he's been writing and re-writing a screenplay for it that looks to have a lot going for it--but there's my fanboy optimism creeping in again!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War

Edit: I suppose I should not have overlooked one already extant, brilliant success: The Walking Dead. One might argue that it's not the same thing, being based on a horror-survival comic, but to me it has most if not all of the elements of science fiction. And I don't know about you guys, but that show, and Breaking Bad (which has the "science" part of the fiction), are the only two series that I regularly follow on TV.

[krispos42]

9. There are many long novels or series of books...

...that could made into good-quality, commercial-free series on a premium channel.

Movies are good, but trying to take a novel and turn it into a movie of reasonable length seem to be more miss than hit.


For example... "The Mote in God's Eye". A classic, militaristic sci-fi novel. Long, involved story to try to adapt to the big screen, but a multi-part episode on HBO? I think it could work. CGI is cheap enough now to make good Moties for HBO, right?

Harry Turtledove has written several series of novels that could be adapted as well. "The Misplaced Legion", about part of a Roman legion transported by magic to a world of intrigue and sorcery (based on the ancient Byzantine Empire) might do very well. And there are two other series, each a prequel, that also could be made into several more seasons worth of swords and sorcery fodder.

Or his series where the South wins the civil war? He follows that logically into 1914, when The Great War breaks out and the USA is allied with the Axis powers while the CSA sides with the Allies. I think there are four books on that alone, along with more books for dealing with WW2 along the same geopolitical lines.


There is a lot of stuff out there that I think could be serialized.

[Posteritatis]

17. That series actually ran through to eleven books

He carried it through to the end of the Second World War.

The sequence of books set in the interwar years are pretty harrowing; he gets across the "everything's going entirely to hell" feeling down.

[Orrex]

18. Nice post, oval-face.

[Dr. Strange]

19. Stop yanking my Chani, you insolent Face Dancer.

Else I shall have your water!

[uppityperson]

20. After Frank Herbert's wife died, he took up learning to cook

He learned to make pizzas and brought them to potluck barbeques. True story, met a little round man with a beard bearing a pizza to a bbq. It took a bit to realize who this "Frank" was. Nice guy, good pizza. Great writer.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

27. Frank Herbert may have been a nice guy

I dunno, I never met him. However, he was not a great writer. He was a hack who had one great novel in him. I will certainly agree that Dune is a great novel. Unfortunately, Herbert never wrote anything else at the same level, before or after Dune.

[AverageJoe90]

10. .....umm.....

I've claimed for years that even the darkest science fiction is optimistic fiction, for it usually envisions some sort of a future where humans still exist.....

Um, wow. Talk about a truly dark & depressing worldview.

[sofa king]

11. Hee hee!

Perhaps I should elaborate. The future is HUGE! Our significance in it is probably negligible. Science fiction is usually about the future, or some alternative timeline, and because it's literature it's primarily for and about people.

There are an infinity of paths the course of future humanity can take, but it seems to me that several possible ones present themselves. We are quickly unlocking the secrets of our own biology and reproduction, and so far we're showing every inclination fiddle with ourselves, to improve and forcibly evolve ourselves beyond what we are. We are discovering the mathematical underpinnings of thought itself and applying those to machines, who may supersede us or merge with us or exterminate us or whatever. We are reaching for the stars with physiologies not designed for weightlessness or other gravities, and even if we don't mess with ourselves, some of us shall evolve and diverge if we make it out there.

Or, we can burn the earth and exterminate ourselves, or bomb ourselves back to the stone age and continue as we are for a little while longer.

Most likely we're either gonna die or change, and whatever the case the importance of us as we are will be merely a brick in the ziggurat of time.

But not in science fiction! In science fiction, we are silent passengers anywhere in space and time, beyond ourselves, beyond our ultimate significance--and always at the center of it all. That's one of the reasons I love it--science fiction always goes where we ourselves will never go. Optimism.

[Codeine]

12. The Dune film was very good, IMO.

Hitchhiker's Guide was doomed by the fact that so much of the humor in the books was narrative; it's hard to make a film from funny lines that aren't delivered by any of the characters.

I avoided I, Robot. I avoid all films starring Will Smith. He's just gawd-awful in everything.

The Postman was a dire, dire book. Just terrible. David Brin has written a lot of very fine stuff, but that ain't one of them. The film couldn't be any worse, really.

Anyway, they wanted a car in a scene, and I don't think the film will be helped or harmed by the fact that it sports an Audi logo.

[MrModerate]

14. In the proper hands (think Peter Jackson) brilliant novels can be rendered . . .

. . . into brilliant films.

But a simple product placement should have zero narrative impact.

The larger problem would be, in the case of Ender's Game, the need to work with the author, a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone.

[MrModerate]

15. Even accounting for taste, it's hard for me to imagine . . .

Not loathing every single frame of Lynch's Dune. Especially since it's so obvious that Lynch hated the book himself.

But then again I hate (or at least find unwatchable) just about everything Lynch has ever done — and the only ones I don't hate are the ones I haven't seen.

However, millions (or at least tens) of otherwise rational people luuuuurve Lynch's work, so I guess I have to account for taste whether I want to or not.

The others in your list were OK, with the knock on HGTTG being that it wasn't as funny as any other iteration of Adams' work. I'm also one of those rare birds who didn't hate The Postman, although I admit that it failed to capture Brin's vision (and apparently the interest of the moviegoing public).

[JesterCS]

21. I just

finished watching the movie. Have never read the books.

I enjoyed the movie, maybe its because I'm a really lenient critic. Usually I like what most others don't.

[sofa king]

23. Did you like the "trick" at the end?

I assume that the film has the same sort of big reveal at the end. Did you like it?

[quakerboy]

22. I dont plan to watch it

very very over Card, given his love affair with libertarian themes and his religeous twisting of things as time went on.

Also, given that his stories themselves were only modestly compelling, his talent mainly lying in the realm of character development, and given that 2 hour movies are maybe not the ideal venue for developing characters, I think that even at its absolute best case, this movie would not be likely to be very good.

[sofa king]

24. Reviews have been largely positive.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/enders-game/

Rotten tomatoes gives it 62% critic and 74% viewer positive ratings, which puts it behind Gravity, about equal with the latest Thor movie, and light years ahead of Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas. Salon, for example, felt that Ender's game was pretty true to the book and interesting to watch--the exact opposite of what I expected in the original post.

So I guess I was wrong. And I was wrong about another thing, too, because in another post above I lamented the lack of actual science in science fiction, and then along came Gravity, which I also still have not seen but which I am told is a pretty solid film in every way.

So I am pleased to be disappointed!

[mzteris]

25. Of course it is.

The book was written by a far right wing nutjob homophobe.

[OrwellwasRight]

26. Well. . .

I think we have very different tastes.

I loved Dune (of course I was 17 and had not read the book yet). However, after reading and liking the book, I have seen the movie again and still like it.

I hated the Postman -- the idea I found intriguing, and since Tom Petty was in it, I thought how bad it could be? Well, I found out. Still think that story could have been made into a good movie. Did not know there was a book until I read your post.

I thought I, Robot was mediocre when I first saw it. Since then, i have seen it several more times and it has grown on me. Never read the book.

No comment on the Hitchihiker's book or the movie.

Wanted to see Ender's Game, but it seems to have come and gone from theater's too quickly for me to catch it.