If you missed it, the Ender’s Game trailer hit yesterday:
Last week, I made some predictions (and laid some odds) revolving around certain “Trailer Tropes.” Let’s see how I did:
SIGHTS
- Bullet time (3:2 against) – PUSH
- We’ll call this one a push. There’s definitely some slo-mo in the Battle Room sequences, but it’s hard to tell if any of it is the slo-fast-slo that I was predicting.
- Shiny space ships doing battle (2:1 in favor) – YES
- All sorts of shiny space ships in this one, suggesting a much heavier emphasis on the space battles that make up the back quarter of the book than the Battle Room that takes up the middle half.
- One surprise was the NON space ships doing battle at the beginning – looks like we’re going to get a little bit of First/Second invasion, at least in prologue form
SHINY
- Space ship crumbling (5:1 against) – YES
- There’s definitely a big space ship (station?) exploding at 1:30, though it’s not the Battle School station (which makes sense), so it’s presumably part of the later battles
- Character jumping (2:1 against) – YES
- Lots of Battle Room jumping here
- BONUS PAYOUT TO USER ERIGION for the “Three Point Landing” prediction
- Explosions (2:1 in favor) – Oh god, YES
- Lots of explosions here, from the planes at the beginning, moving right on through a space station and a…planet? Yikes. Trailers nowadays really need to come with a blanket spoiler alert.
SOUNDS
- Wub-wub-wub (5:1 against) – THANK YOU, NO
- The Gods of trailers did not dissapoint me and add dubstep to what is ultimately a thematically serious movie
- Braaaaahmmm (3:2 in favor) – YES, YES AND YES
- The trailer had more Inception-style braaaaaaaahms than you can shake a stick at. I suppose the odds here should have been ever higher.
- Beeeeoooou (dropping bass note)(10:1 in favor) – YES, but not how I expected
- I expected this to accompany some sort of slo-mo action, but it was really used as a generic “space-laser powering up” noise
VOICEOVER
- Harrison Ford in a walk. There’s a little Ben Kingsley and Viola Davis in there, but that’s all dialogue. The “Voiceover” is definitely Han Graff-o himself.
- “In a world” (20:1 against) – NO
- Not really. This shows the difference between 80s/90s (awesome) trailers that would have just said “In a world attacked by aliens, child soldiers blah blah blah”. Now they have to try and make it seem natural.
- “Only you can do it Ender” (5:1 in favor) – PUSH
- This one is close. There is the line “You will be the last” which implies that he’s some sort of chosen one, but it’s less implicated that only Ender CAN do it than it is that Ender WILL BE THE ONE to do it.
- “Is this all just some sort of GAME to you?”
- NOPE. Though it’s surprising how little the trailer focused on the “Game” aspect of Ender’s Game and how much it focused on the “real battle” stuff. This brings up questions.
OBSERVATIONS
- No Bean, lots of Petra. This makes sense, given the high-profile of Hallie Stanfield. It looks like she might even have some interactions with Ender when they get to (what I’m assuming) is Command School, so it could be that they’ve decided to beef up that relationship. Orson Scott Card has talked about before that the most difficult part of adapting the book is portraying what’s going on in Ender’s head, and the best way to do that is to have him discuss things with a friend.
- A few glimpses of the Buggers. These look like pretty standard-issue alien ships and stuff, so I’m not expecting a whole lot
- Only one glimpse of Val, and it’s of her hugging Ender. I’m assuming this will be the meeting they have at the Lake, so odds are we’re cutting the Val/Peter plot entirely – which is probably to the good. The “Bloggers take over the world” part is neat and was extremely foreward-looking when it was written in the 80s, but will come off as a bit unbelievable now, and doesn’t really do much to advance the main plot line.
- If you bet $1 on each of the 14 predictions coming true, congratulations – you made $1. (Total payouts would equal approximately $14, there were 13 bets in total) Unfortunately, the OverthinkingIt House Rake is $2, but thanks for playing, and come back real soon! PayPal links are available on the front page.
All in all, I remain cautiously optimistic. The casting seems spot-on, and it looks like they are taking the movie seriously. Even though it’s a movie ABOUT children, doesn’t mean it has to be FOR children. The trailer is pretty spoiler-y, but I’m not sure it gives away that much unless you already know what you’re looking for.
What did you think of the trailer? Sound off in the comments!