Giant Freakin Robot

While not one of 2013’s most offensive busts, Gavin Hood’s adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game was far from a success, only earning back only $88 million of its $110 million budget, which doesn’t even include the cost of Lionsgate and Summit’s fairly widespread marketing campaign. At this point, a sequel is anything but a certainty, but that never stops conjecture from rearing its head. Fans have wondered which of Card’s novels they might go with for another film, but producer Roberto Orci has thrown a potential wrench into those conversations by saying any sequels that get made may not be based on any of Card’s works, but rather might be new original stories.

Oh, Hollywood, it seem you only know how to become “original” when you’re already dealing with characters that have tons of stories written about them. (See: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.) Of course, Orci also said they may just flip the order of the novels around, or possibly cut and paste sections of different novels to a wall and throw darts at them to dictate the sequence of the next film’s events.

What does every studio do when they release a moderately successful movie? That’s right, they try to turn that sucker into a franchise, popping out endless sequels until they’ve squeezed every last cent out of the property. And this is what it appears Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate are going to try with Ender’s Game. Author Orson Scott Card, who wrote the celebrated novel the film is based on, is even hard at work pumping out a new sequel.

Card’s Enderverse is already a sprawling affair, encompassing more than a dozen short stories and novels. These new works, however, sound like they’ll be more traditional sequels, following shortly after conclusion of Ender’s Game. The extant works in the family aren’t always as straightforward. There are prequels, asides, and even the most direct follow up doesn’t take place until after a significant amount of time has passed. One book even chronicles the action of Ender’s Game, only from the perspective of another character, Bean. The 1985 original is a classic, and well loved, but reviews on the rest are mixed at best. According to Card, the new additions will be “about what happens to Battle School after the International Fleet loses its purpose of war.”

I don’t envy Summit Entertainment or the makers of the Ender’s Game movie. I’m sure they all want to make the very best version of Orson Scott Card’s acclaimed novel that they can, but the project has been continuously overshadowed by Card’s outspoken anti-gay opinions and advocacy. Naturally, this means the film has been surrounded by controversy, with campaigns leveraging social media to try and encourage the public to boycott the movie so as to ensure Card doesn’t profit from it. But what if Card isn’t going to make a penny off it regardless? Should the movie still be boycotted?

It might not be just a hypothetical. The folks over at The Wrap claim that “multiple sources from both inside and outside” Summit Entertainment and other companies involved with the production say the Ender’s Game movie was made under a “decade-old deal” that doesn’t grant Card any back-end profits from the film. In other words, he’s already been paid what he’s going to get paid, and whether Ender’s Game makes $200 billion or a handful of loose change, none of that money will go to Card. If that’s true — and obviously you either have to take The Wrap and their sources at their word or not — then should that change the minds of potential boycotters?

I’ll give them this, the people behind Lionsgate’s upcoming adaptation of Ender’s Game aren’t shying away from the controversy inherent in basing their movie on the work of an author with a well-known anti-gay stance. Then again, they don’t really have much of a choice. No one is going to let this one drop, and now director Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) addresses these issues in a new interview.

Talking to lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered centric magazine The Advocate, Hood calls Card’s oft-stated, rather hateful stand on gay rights, especially gay marriage, “dreadfully ironic.” This is in regards to the themes and subject matter of Orson Scott Card’s novel. He says, “Orson wrote a book about compassion, and empathy, and yet he himself is struggling to see that his position in real life is really at odds with his art.”

Harrison Ford and Comic-Con are not the old friends that some might suspect. In fact, when he appeared yesterday in San Diego, ostensibly to answer questions about Ender’s Game — which predictably turned into a bunch of Star Wars and Indiana Jones questions — it was only his second appearance. (First was Cowboys and Aliens. ’nuff said.) During the talk, Ford said that Han Solo wouldn’t have been a good fit for Colonel Graff’s army, and shared what brought him to the role in the first place.

One Brazilian man shared his dreams of becoming Indiana Jones since he was a kid, then asked Ford what he thought about Solo joining Graff. “You know, you and I have a lot in common,” Ford
joked. “I used to dream about being Indiana Jones when I was younger. Not so much anymore. I don’t think Han Solo would be good as a soldier in anybody’s army. I think he’s what we call now an independent contractor.” I think the world of Star Wars and Léon: The Professional should come together, where Solo somehow saves Natalie Portman’s Padmé Amidala from her dysfunctional family. Might have a few time travel issues, but otherwise, it’s gold!

I vividly remember finding out that Orson Scott Card was a bigot. It was a dark, dark day. It happened while reading an article in Salon, in which the author, Donna Minkowitz, who “worshiped” Card, got to interview him. Her article begins, “It was the most unpleasant interview I’ve ever done.” Why? Because she happens to be a lesbian. And while she knew about Card’s zealous Mormonism, she “somehow failed to ascertain that Card was a disgustingly outspoken homophobe.” Simply reading an interview in which a sci-fi fan meets her literary hero, and then he tells her, “Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted,” makes me physically cringe. Minkowitz tries gamely to press on, saying she’s willing to live with the contradiction, but you can feel her deflate as you read.

In that interview, Card said, “I’d really hate it if your piece wound up focusing on the old charge that I’m a homophobe… It’s been circulating on the Internet for a long time. It’s really just one of those annoying things that happens. It’s really ugly!” Well, dude, if you weren’t a rampant homophobe, maybe people would stop talking about it. It’s pretty simple, really.