This summer we have two highly anticipated genre films that the fans have been waiting for forever: Star Trek Into Darkness and Iron Man 3.
With the arrival of Into Darkness, we’ll finally see if the long awaited follow up to JJ Abrams’s reinvention of Star Trek will keep the saga going in fine style or not. Iron Man 3 also has a lot to prove because the second one wasn’t very good, and the series could use a good shot of fresh blood.
But one of the most anticipated genre films of the year doesn’t arrive until November, and that’s Enders Game. Based on the beloved novel by Orson Scott Card published in 1985, Ender’s Game has a big core following that should be out in force when the movie’s released this November.
Asa Butterfield, who also starred in Hugo, plays Ender, and io9 was able to score an interview with him where he talked about shooting the film, working with Harrison Ford, and the differences between the movie and the book.
To train for the film, Butterfield recalls that an astronaut talked to the cast about being in zero gravity, “what it’s really like in space so we could give the most believable performance. You have to move really slowly…fluidly and smoothly. When you’re in the harnesses to stop yourself from falling at the waist, which is where they’re connected, you have to be tensed up. So keeping actions smooth while having your whole body completely tensed is surprisingly difficult.”
The book also moved Ender’s age up, because it would be very difficult to get a six year old actor to play a character this deep. “It’s complex and it’s physically demanding,” Butterfield said. “So they changed it from being 6 to 13 or 14.” The timeline of the book also got shortened for the movie as well, and it now takes place in “the space of about a year rather than the 6 or 7 years that take place in the novel.”
Butterfield enjoyed working with Harrison Ford, who plays Colonel Graff, and Ben Kingsley, who plays Mazer Rackham. “They were both really professional and they stayed in character, which really helped us to give our best performance…There’s a conflict between Ender and Graff that we kept, in-between takes.”
While Star Trek and Iron Man are certainly better known franchise titles, we also feel that Enders Game will be a huge movie event when it comes out in Novmeber. The fans of the book will absolutely be there, and with the uninitiated, it should bring in plenty of new fans as well if word of mouth is strong. Look for Ender’s Game on November 1.
