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two days until Enders Game movie comes out

 
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I wonder what happens. Oh wait. I've read the book who knows how many times. Still looking forward to the movie.
 
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I'm still torn. Orson Scott Card is kind of a jerk. He seems to have advocated a violent overthrow of our government if it allows gay marriage. I don't want to support him.

However,

many of the people involved with the movie DO support gay marriage, and many are gay themselves.

Maybe I should go see the movie, but also make a contribution to a charity that advocates for gay rights...
 
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I'll not be seeing the move at the theatre. Maybe, perhaps, I'll watch it when it becomes available on Netflix. Maybe.
 
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Nope. Not going to see it.
 
fred rosenberger
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I'm just curious as to why you both won't go see it.

From what I understand - OSC has no back-end deal. He's already made his money when he sold the rights, and does not get a piece of the box office. So you going or not going doesn't have an impact on him financially at all (source)

and many cast/crew members are gay, or LGBT advocates. Here is an op-ed piece arguing you should go see it.

I am truly torn. This is one of my favorite books of all time. But the author is a jerk. But I don't research the politics of other authors or script writers. Should I? Do you?

 
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fred rosenberger wrote:I am truly torn. This is one of my favorite books of all time. But the author is a jerk. But I don't research the politics of other authors or script writers. Should I? Do you?


Regardless of whether Card gets direct money or not, it's a philosophical thing for me. I cannot in good conscience go see the movie and contribute to its box office.

And no -- I do not research every author or script. But Card has been such a loud, obnoxious, in-your-face, staunch opponent of marriage equality, that's it'd have been impossible for me to miss.
 
Jelle Klap
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Bear Bibeault wrote:

fred rosenberger wrote:I am truly torn. This is one of my favorite books of all time. But the author is a jerk. But I don't research the politics of other authors or script writers. Should I? Do you?


Regardless of whether Card gets direct money or not, it's a philosophical thing for me. I cannot in good conscience go see the movie and contribute to its box office.

And no -- I do not research every author or script. But Card has been such a loud, obnoxious, in-your-face, staunch opponent of marriage equality, that's it'd have been impossible for me to miss.


Basically that. Plus the movie doesn't really appeal to me regardless.
 
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Bear Bibeault wrote:
Regardless of whether Card gets direct money or not, it's a philosophical thing for me. I cannot in good conscience go see the movie and contribute to its box office.


I see that. I also get that if this movie does well, it could lead to more of his novels being adapted, thus contributing to his income.

but by not seeing it, you are in a way hurting the many pro-LGBT folks who worked on the movie.

Life was so much easier when I was a kid and everything was black and white.

My wife REALLY wants to see it, and has said she would consider seeing it without me. I really want to see it too, but have hard time with OCS's position on SO many things...but I don't know that my seeing it or not really has any impact.
 
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fred rosenberger wrote:but by not seeing it, you are in a way hurting the many pro-LGBT folks who worked on the movie.


Realistically, I know that my own decision to see or not to see it has no real impact on anything. Except my own conscience. So I gotta go with that.
 
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Interesting thread. I was not aware of this side of OSC. He writes a column for a local paper, The Rhinocerous Times, but they have always been reviews of movies, books or plays, and the occasional history lesson which I always enjoyed. This thread made me do a little searching and I found this article.

I have to say I'm a bit shocked. This side of him never came through in the columns I read. I have a long list of artists and entertainers that I refuse to support because of their political activism and ideology. Orson Scott Card just made the list.

It's too bad. I've never read the book, but the movie previews look good. Now I'll never know.
 
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J. Kevin Robbins wrote:It's too bad. I've never read the book, but the movie previews look good. Now I'll never know.


You can still read the book. If you get it from the library, you aren't contributing to his income.

fred rosenberger wrote:I am truly torn. This is one of my favorite books of all time. But the author is a jerk. But I don't research the politics of other authors or script writers. Should I? Do you?


It's one of my favorite books as well. I learned about OSC's views way after reading it (July 2013 when it was in the New York Times). That doesn't change the fact that I like the story and the characters. (or his writing in general). I've never bought any of his books - just library books. And the library owned them anyway. So it'd have to be the argument that by borrowing the book, I make the library more likely to order future titles. I feel like it is quite a stretch to get from there to financially supporting his views.
 
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Reviews are not that positive. I expect its a hard movie to make, as Ender in the book is not a very attractive character.

That OSC is an intolerant bozo is more reasons to not see it at the theater.
 
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Going back to the movie (separated from OSC). Reviews were mixed because it heavily depended on how much you remember from the book. I went to see it today with two friends. I've read the book many times along with the rest of the series. I liked the movie by far the best of the three of us. If you hadn't read the book, I think the story would have been quite scattered.

Most of the major moments were there from the "Ender's Game" story. They changed a few things. The big ones were having the kids all together in Command School (the final battle) and having Command School be on the Formic colony.

The only moment I wanted to see but wasn't in there was the moment where Bean says something to the soldiers recognizing their sacrifice. To be fair though, that was in "Ender's Shadow" and not "Ender's Game."
 
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I didn't know about OSC's stance on LGBT people. My SO and I had seen the movie trailers and she was going to order the book from Amazon when I told her about the discussion here. She will go to the library for it now.

Thanks to J. Kevin Robbins for posting the link to the article by Rachel Edidin.


 
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You can also get the original 1977 short story for free, here. Admittedly that's the evil one's own website. But he seemed much more compassionate in his youth. Anyway, the short story has some differences, but packs much of the punch of the novel. He mostly fleshed out the short story into a novel so he could write the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. Also highly recommended, if your library has it. I lost interest in the sequels, well before I learned of his political positions.
 
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Thanks for the short story link. I'll check it out.
 
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I would definitely recommend to read through to the sequels. Ender's game has the cool story. It's about a kid who is being trained to fight with an alien race. However, the sequels has the kid growing up to be an adult and having to live with what he's done. The sequels are very philosophy heavy. If you are the kind of person who likes to look at the same thing from differrent POVs, read the sequels.
 
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I differentiate between the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, which is awesome, and the later ones Xenocide and Children of the Mind, which are... not. I have no opinion on the Shadow books and other side-stories written later.
 
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. . . the kid growing up to be an adult and having to live with what he's done



If I like the first one I will look for the sequel/s. It does sound interesting.

I differentiate between the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, which is awesome, and the later ones Xenocide and Children of the Mind, which are... not.


Noted.

If you hadn't read the book, I think the story would have been quite scattered.



That is true for many good books made into films. I went to see the first "Harry Potter" with my SO who had not read the book and after the movie I had to explain the backstory to her. I figure with the Harry Potter series the film makers must have counted on most of the audience being readers. With "Hunger Games" our friends who had not read the book first had a hard time following the movie. We encouraged them to read it. Several of them bought the book and then watched the movie again when it came out in video. I have the "Hunger Games" set and I will re-read the books before each movie comes out so the details are fresh for me. I highly recommend the series.
 
Jayesh A Lalwani
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Mike Simmons wrote:I differentiate between the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, which is awesome, and the later ones Xenocide and Children of the Mind, which are... not. I have no opinion on the Shadow books and other side-stories written later.



Yes, Speaker of the dead is better than the books after it. However, parts of those books are not too bad either.

Changing text color to avoid spoiler

The idea of a artificial sentient achieving instantaneous space travel by holding the details of the ship in her head and then imagining it somewhere else is awesome. It makes a good analogy when people ask me what do software architects do. Jane is a super architect of sorts. Architects take a concept, imagine it in their head, and then transport it to programmers who make it real. Jane does the same thing, except she does it with real objects
 
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See, one of the things I liked about the first two books is that they at least paid lip service to relativity, telling a good interstellar story within the confines of a no-FTL universe. (Well, other than the ansible.) Then when that became inconvenient to his plot in book 3, he threw that out the window and replaced it with magic. Grrr...
 
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