Unlike many of my peers, I’ve never read Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi classic Ender’s Game. But everyone I know who has read it (and that’s a lot of people) really, really cherish it. Most of them are cautiously optimistic about Gavin Hood’s big screen adaptation of the book. Hood can do great stuff (TSOTSI) but he can also do bad (X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE).
His adaptation is off to a good start though. Variety reports that HUGO star Asa Butterfield has landed the titular lead role. And while Butterfield is a great choice for the part, rumor has it that the producers are seeking a film legend for another meaty role.
Apparently Harrison Ford is one of the actors being sought for the part of Colonel Hyrum Graff, the Commander of Training for the International Fleet, the military school that young Ender attends. Hyrum is something of a father figure for the main character, a teacher that sees promise in the boy. Variety reports that producers had sought Viggo Mortensen for the part but talks didn’t work out. It goes without saying that Ford would be a solid choice for the role.
ENDER’S GAME is due in theaters March 15, 2013. Here’s a lengthy plot synopsis of the book for the other unlearned heathens who didn’t read it:
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut–young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers, Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If the world survives, that is.
