Orson Scott Card thinks Serenity is the best science fiction film ever made. And, he would like the movie version of Ender's Game to be as good, or he'd just rather not do it.
This is the kind of movie that I have always intended Ender's Game to be (though the plots are not at all similar).
And this is as good a movie as I always hoped Ender's Game would be.
And I'll tell you this right now: If Ender's Game can't be this kind of movie, and this good a movie, then I want it never to be made.
I'd rather just watch Serenity again.
Maybe he could get Joss to do Ender's Game, ya think? Who knows, but Mr Card has more praise for Serenity.
Now, a lot of people called Firefly a western masquerading as science fiction, and I can see why -- they rode horses sometimes, and they rode into town, shot things up, and then rode back out of town, and the only difference between them and the Lone Ranger was that the "horse" was a clunky old spaceship named Serenity.
But that's not really all that was ever going on. There was nothing "lone" about these rangers. On that ship we had an interlocking community with a history, rather like what has been a-building with Lost and what was developed over the years with Friends (but what never existed in Seinfeld because the main writer, Larry David, doesn't seem to believe in anything, and you can't build a powerful community on a sneer).
The key to this kind of movie is that you create a community that the audience wishes they belonged to, with a leader that even audience members who don't follow anybody would willingly follow. That will be the key to Ender's Game if the movie is ever successfully made; and it is the key to Serenity....
Well, not only is Serenity about something, it's also extremely well written. Joss Whedon has invented a kind of weird future slang that is still perfectly intelligible but is different, with snatches of foreign languages and obsolete English words that make it clear that it's not ordinary English they're speaking.
The effect of this -- at least in Whedon's deft hands -- is to allow himself something of the kind of heroic language that was possible for Shakespeare -- and for Tolkien. It allows him to be eloquent.
And then he turns around and deliberately clanks with some humorously abrupt language that makes us laugh for the sheer startlement of it. Just as Shakespeare did, when he'd drop from blank verse to the funny coarseness of comic prose.
Will everyone like it? Not a chance. It really is too strong for some people -- there are indeed dead bodies and cruelty and unspeakable violence, and you don't want to deal with the nightmares that young children will have. Plus the storyline is smart enough and mature enough that some people simply won't get it. Can't be helped -- it's all there on the screen, though.
Now that's high praise indeed.
Sci-Fi Author Steven Barnes liked it too.
Probably the best "Space Opera" I've seen in a decade, really, with its own quirky sense of humor, and an off-centered style that kept me guessing.
With any luck, there will be more Firefly movies, or better yet, someone will revive the series.
