Friday, January 16, 2009
NOOOOOO.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117998641.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
G*damnit, Keanu. You have good taste in projects but ABSOLUTELY SH*TTY ACTING ABILITIES and you ruin everything. Even our shared hapa-ness will not absolve you from the crime of this if you eff it up, AND YOU WILL.
And if that Ender's Game live action movie ever makes it out of the options/production lot and into theaters, I may just give up entirely and never see another scifi movie again.
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2 comments:
haha ... welllll i have to say i think an ender's movie COULD be good. i'm intrigued.
think about harry potter! and ltr!! the movie adaptations make my life more wonderful with each passing day...
Well, I mean, not to be all Schrodinger's cat about it, but everything that hasn't yet been effed up has the POTENTIAL to be good. I'm just saying the odds are super stacked against it.
LOTR was definitely a great translation from book to movie; and the HPs have gotten successively better (obviously I love them now). But I will say that the first 2 HP movies were not that great, and part of the reason is because it's so damn hard to get good acting out of really young kids. With the HP series, not only have the actors improved as they aged, but their characters in the early novels are written as kids. In Ender's Game, part of the main conceit is that the kids, despite all being ages 7-12, don't act like kids: they're special, adult, in their thoughts and actions. Ender kills two other boys in hand-to-hand combat! It's just going to be so hard to find that many decent child actors for dramatic, non-comedic acting. I really think only Haley Joel Osmont and Dakota Fanning have hit that quality that age bracket (acting as characters under the age of 10 in serious, dramatic, non-cutesy, non-comedic roles). Even the Narnia kids ... um didn't really cut it for me.
Also, I get really worried when delicate storylines have to transfer to the big screen. Like, the battles at Battle School will definitely be awesome, but the actual last 1/4 of the plot is all Ender being isolated and mind-f*cked in the simulator, and the terrible things he does without realizing it, and his horror at the realization afterwards. This is all handled so delicately, without lots of big action or crazy emotional outbursts. There's no big climactic battle scene, because the last battle is part of the simulator process and the big reveal (that he was directing real-time pilots and ships) is AFTER the battle concludes. Then he's all depressed and sleeps through the Earth-based war. And the emotional resolution, with him looking for a place for the young Queen to be birthed, is more implied than shown.
Anyway, I guess I just worry that they're going to make it all action-packed and heroic at the end to fit the movie format. I mean, it makes sense because movies and books are different beasts and need different things to be successful ... but that's why I don't want to them to try to adapt it if it doesn't fit already. Part of what makes EG so amazing is that it's not just an action story, it's also about what it means to be human, and a child, and responsibility and guilt and hope. And I worry that that will all get cut in turning this into a blast-the-Buggers, Starship Troopers kind of thing.
ANYWAY. I feel very strongly about Ender's Game. Ok?
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