To address G's concern of the trailer giving shit away.
I've not watched the it, but I'm assuming it somehow gives away the fact that his final sim wasn't really a sim. Is this correct?
Ender's Game *SPOILER THREAD* - movie/book spoilers
Soon as he decided he was going to tank the final intentionally, I kind of figured the IF pricks would pull something, especially given the tactics Ender normally uses to conduct battle.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
He sacrifices the vast majority of his ships as distractions to engage the numerically superior Formic fleet. With that smokescreen in place, he uses the MDD to blast both their homeworld and their ships. I think there's even innuendo in the book which hints that it's not the first time IF had him run a sim that wasn't a sim. He drops off the egg at the end on some planet that reminds him of a previous training sim.
Edited By Malcolm on 1368050774
Edited By Malcolm on 1368050774
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
I'm also kind of annoyed they're going to be using teenagers instead of elementary school students. Going to get all kinds of Dawson's Creek angst shit shoehorned in.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
More than innuendo, after it was over they admitted to him that he'd been fighting for real for months.Malcolm wrote:I think there's even innuendo in the book which hints that it's not the first time IF had him run a sim that wasn't a sim.
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They admitted it? Eh, like I said, it's been a long, long, long time since I read it. Even then, my brain was not in the best of states to absorb information long-term.TPRJones wrote:More than innuendo, after it was over they admitted to him that he'd been fighting for real for months.Malcolm wrote:I think there's even innuendo in the book which hints that it's not the first time IF had him run a sim that wasn't a sim.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Yeah, I don't remember there being a mystery that he'd been fighting real battles for weeks, after the fact. There was a time when the battles stopped coming at the usual times, and suddenly were all times of day and night. Those were the real ones.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
I just remember thinking Ender was a dumb-ass for not guessing something was up. I also remember thinking pretty much everyone in that book was an asshole. I believe Ender's sister, what's her name, was the only one I thought was a non-asshole.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
You are correct in the asshole assessment, but that doesn't mean assholes weren't sometimes necessary.
They started sleep depriving Ender at the end. I can tell you as a parent that once you start losing sleep, you start losing the ability to analyze shit.
They started sleep depriving Ender at the end. I can tell you as a parent that once you start losing sleep, you start losing the ability to analyze shit.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
You are correct in the asshole assessment, but that doesn't mean assholes weren't sometimes necessary.
It's the assholes who believe they can only accomplish their tasks by lying and dishonesty that tend to irk me. Misdirection more often creates work than eliminates it.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
I fail to see the parallel between that and straight up lying to a dude you're directly depending on.
Placed in a similar scenario, I would have torched every IF facility I could locate, just because they'd seem like bigger dicks than the bugs by then.
Edited By Malcolm on 1368111166
Placed in a similar scenario, I would have torched every IF facility I could locate, just because they'd seem like bigger dicks than the bugs by then.
Edited By Malcolm on 1368111166
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
The kid was like 9. He was being trained, and the course of action they chose was to make him truly believe that the adults would never come to his rescue, that he had to do it all himself. If he believed that he would be saved from being a child, he would never have developed his abilities in time to fight the war.
This had 2 outcomes.
1. He killed a couple bullies under the age of 10 with his bare hands in order to decisively win a fight, and every other fight they would start in the future. (This is actually the reason I haven't read this book to my 7-year-old, yet.... while I believe in preemptive, decisive strikes, I know limits... my kid may not)
2. He burned out, completely.
Sometimes you can't say, "It is really important that you just do this nearly impossible thing. Like, so important that all humanity will be exterminated if you don't do it right." They led him to it so he could figure it out himself because they believed he had it in him.
Edited By GORDON on 1368113285
This had 2 outcomes.
1. He killed a couple bullies under the age of 10 with his bare hands in order to decisively win a fight, and every other fight they would start in the future. (This is actually the reason I haven't read this book to my 7-year-old, yet.... while I believe in preemptive, decisive strikes, I know limits... my kid may not)
2. He burned out, completely.
Sometimes you can't say, "It is really important that you just do this nearly impossible thing. Like, so important that all humanity will be exterminated if you don't do it right." They led him to it so he could figure it out himself because they believed he had it in him.
Edited By GORDON on 1368113285
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
They didn't tell him the two dudes he pummeled died until after he explodes the homeworld, although the reader gets tipped off before that. Ender's version of "doing it all himself" frequently involved turning a significant portion of his troops into fodder. He couldn't do shit without human shields.
In that book, both individually and collectively, pretty much human knowingly and willfully acted like a deceitful prick. By the end, I was of the opinion they deserved extinction, and I was pulling for the Formics.
"It is really important that you just do this nearly impossible thing. Like, so important that all humanity will be exterminated if you don't do it right."
In that book, both individually and collectively, pretty much human knowingly and willfully acted like a deceitful prick. By the end, I was of the opinion they deserved extinction, and I was pulling for the Formics.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."