Ender's Shadow

Stardate 05-01-2007

Whenever I was assigned to write a book report on the book of my choice from grades 5-12 I did that report on Ender's Game. The funny thing is is that it wasn't until my 6th or 7th go at the book that I actually finished it. In fact, it may be possible that I have attempted to start Ender's Game, but never finished it, more times than I have done so with The Book of Mormon. Now, the last thing I want to do is turn my literally thousands of readers off of Ender's Game. Since high school I have both read it and listened to it on CD from start to finish and it is by far one of my favorite sci-fi novels.

Years later, Orson Scott Card decided to look at possibly expanding upon the "Enderverse," and looked at the option of letting other authors write the stories of Ender's friends from Battle School. After lots of thought and contemplation, Card decided that he didn't want to let others write about the characters, but that he wanted to do so himself. He decided to try out an interesting experiment and write the same novel, but from a second characters perspective. Those who have read Ender's Game know that Bean becomes Ender's right hand man and only confidant. Card decided that Bean would be the logical person to write about and so he wrote Ender's Shadow.

Though I did like Ender's Game more, Ender's Shadow was also excellent. Card does an excellent job of expanding upon the original story and even the parts that overlap are not dull and seem entertaining and original. Just like in Ender's Game, this story progresses and is mostly told through the inner dialogue of the main character. There are of course some differences with the largest being that Ender is always thinking about the buggers and Bean is more focused on politics. This of course translates into the rest of the books in the "Shadow" series where we find Bean back on Earth where he is now in Ender's older brother Peter's shadow. I have not read these books but look forward to doing so.

Another item of interest to note is that at the end of the Ender's Shadow, there is an original afterward from Orson Scott Card where he talks about Ender's Game the movie. Here are the highlights from what he said.

He has run into numerous problems trying to get this movie made. At first, the most common problem was that they wanted to make Ender 16 years old, rather then 6 years old. This means that they would most likely cast a 24 year old who looks young to play a 16 year old. They also wanted to give Ender a love interest. This infuriated Card so much that he stalled production. The production company then lost the rights to the movie and Card took control of them. For the next few years he ran into the same problem, but has finally found a production company that will work with young children.

This creates another problem. Children are only allowed to work half days which translates into a longer shooting time and more money. Another problem is that for the most part, children are bad actors and he is very worried about finding someone to play Ender, let alone the rest of his friends from Battle School. Card mentions that after seeing Finding Neverland he feels more confident that he will be able to find children who can actually act.

The largest problem has been the fact that the story of Ender's Game is driven by Ender's inner voice. It has been extremely difficult for Card to come up with a screen play that progresses the story at a good pace, but that does not use Ender's inner voice let the audience know what is going on. After years or toying with different solutions, Card's production team came up with the idea of molding both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow into one story. The interaction between Ender and Bean will drive the story rather than relying on inner dialuge.

At the time that this afterward was written, Card mentioned that he had chosen Wolfgang Peterson as his director. He did not give any reasons why except for that he has enjoyed his work. I checked IMDB and Wolfgang is still slated to direct. Some of his past movies have been Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, Das Boot, Air Force One, Troy and Poseidon. I enjoyed Outbreak and In the Line of Fire, but some of his other movies seem like cheesy action films. I hope he does a good job with Ender.