Ender's Game (The Movie): Part I

Has anyone else read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card? It's a sci-fi novel with aliens, spaceships and the whole shabang.

via the Wikipedia page

The story is about a young boy named Ender. He lives on Earth during a time where kids are monitored from a young age to determine if they are fit for battle. If deemed fit, they're sent to Battle School in space to prepare them for potential future war with alien species. Ender is chosen for Battle School and sent to live on a space station. Normally, new recruits spend a certain amount of time in basic training before they're put into the "armies" of Battle School, but Ender is special and he gets put into an army much earlier than everyone else. He's the smallest and the weakest and no one looks at him as a threat. Ender, though, happens to be very smart, especially when it comes to strategy and his actions in the training room begin to get noticed as his name makes it to the top of the rankings. In the spirit of not spoiling the story, I'll just say that the rest of the book follows Ender's journey while he's at Battle School and what happens not long after.

Ender's Game is part of a series, though the following books are about Ender as an adult, whereas this one is childhood and early teenage years. (There's also a spin off that follows some of the characters from Ender's Game, on Earth, right after the end of this book.)


Anyways, the whole point of this is to let everyone know that they (as in those Hollywood people) are making a movie! This is ridiculously exciting for me right now. I've read pretty much the whole series (except Xenocide) as well as the spin-off series and I was kind of disappointed to know that a movie didn't exist. I mean, this book has won multiple awards, is relatively popular/well-known and it's been around for a while. Nowadays, a book comes out, becomes crazy popular and a movie is made withing 5 years. Ender's Game came out in 1985. It is now 2012. That's 27 years and no movie. Not even a tv movie!

Artistic interpretation of Ender Wiggin

I should probably explain at this point why this movie is so exciting for me. I guess there's the obvious, when one of your favorite books gets turned into a movie you are going to experience some level of excitement. It's inevitable. Actually, you'll probably experience some excitement even if its not one of your favorites. But this book is not only one of my favorites but it also happens to hold a very special title in my reading career (if I may call it that).

See, I'm not a big sci-fi fan. I run far away from sci-fi. If it's aliens and other planets kind of sci-fi, I won't even so much as give a second look to the book. Nope. Thanks but no thanks. If it's not such an extreme sci-fi but still has hints of it, like books set in the future but not too far into the future (think Hunger Games and Matched) I am usually pretty hesitant at first and so far the pattern has been that I only read these kind of books when nothing else seems to interest me at the time. Obviously, based on what I've just said, Ender's Game falls into the category of sci-fi to which I don't give a second glance. My dad, on the other hand, is a huge sci-fi fan. I'm pretty sure that 99% of the books he reads are sci-fi. He's been trying for years to convert me and has failed over and over again with every book he's suggested, except... Yeah, you guess it, Ender's Game. So I read the book thinking "Fine, I'll give it a try just for my dad." Little did I know that I would like it as much as I did.

Phew. Deep breath. I didn't realize I was going to have so much to say so I guess I'll save the details about the movie for tomorrow.
Stay Tuned.