Gavin Hood Talks Battle Room with Yahoo! Movies

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Battle-Room

In a phone interview with Yahoo! Movies, director Gavin Hood talked about the size of the Battle Room.

“This is the high school football field, only it’s in three dimensions. It’s the size of a football field in all directions: up, down, left, right. And the idea is teams jump out from opposite ends of this amazing space and play this amazing game of 3D paintball, almost.”

Ever since we saw on set how they planned to show the Battle Room, I’ve been dying for other fans to see their vision, which makes my own imagination’s gray room and cubic stars seem so lame in comparison. So how did they arrive at the design?

One deviation from the book is that in the original text the Battle Room is described as being a giant hollow cube. But Hood felt that to really convey the size and dimensionality of the space, it should be spherical. Hood said he then proposed, “What if we could see through? What if we could see out of the space, and we’re moving around the Earth and turning at the same time?” He said he felt that would create “a really strange, disorienting experience,” that would better capture the notion in the book that in space there really is no up or down.

Strange and disorienting is right! I’d probably be downright terrified the first time I saw the Battle Room. With Earth visible right outside I can imagine the feeling that you’re floating in space takes some getting used to. Or do you think that young children would have an easier time adjusting to such an intense arena?

Read the full article at Yahoo! Movies.

Comments

7 responses to “Gavin Hood Talks Battle Room with Yahoo! Movies”

March 25, 2013

Thomas Scott

I think it’s a change that is exactly in tune with what the IF would have done with the Battle Room. Providing even more emotional pressure for students to excel, as they can “see” what they’re fighting for.

I’m really curious to see how this works out with “sliding the walls”.

Reply
1. March 25, 2013
  
  EnderWiggin.net
  
  Oooh, great point about showing them what they’re fighting for! I hadn’t thought about it in that way.
  
  Reply
March 25, 2013

disqus_2KObh3ztTm

@#$% so you can see out into space and you can see “through” the stars well there goes the battle room…..Its not about the visual cues, its about the strategy that was created in the 3 dimensional space!

Reply
1. March 26, 2013
  
  EnderWiggin.net
  
  We don’t know at this point though, it’s possible they just invented new strategies for their design.
  
  I don’t think you can see through the stars though? Where are you seeing that?
  
  Reply
March 26, 2013

Jason

You know…. I’ve read A LOT of books (mostly sci-fi). An author has to set the stage and coordinate events. The reader can fill in most of the details. Almost everyone I have talked to have different visions of the battleroom. At the same time, everyone is demanding that the movie should be exactly like the book. So, whose vision is the right one when depicting the battleroom? I like the creative license taken by Gavid Hood thus far. It is not exactly what I imagined, but in many ways it is better. Everyone is looking at just the differences in the poster with the books description of the battleroom. I’m looking instead at all of the things that are recognizable: “Dragon Army”, Dragon army orange, ‘Null G beyond this point’, light guns, stars, the hand holds along the entrance, opposing enemy gates, etc.

The one thing I cannot see in the poster image is if anyone is ‘frozen’ or not. I wonder what team dragon army is playing against here? Is it Asp (blue, dk blue)?

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1. March 26, 2013
  
  EnderWiggin.net
  
  If you ask me, it looks like Salamander and Rat, which is kind of confusing so I’m probably wrong.
  
  As for the Battle Room, I know it’s WAY better than what I ever imagined, which was a cubic gray room. That might have been nice in the 80s, but something like that would just not wow audiences today. You can’t have a movie exactly like OSC wrote it because it just wasn’t “flashy” enough for today. It worked so well in the book, but the movie is all about visuals and I think they’re going in a great direction so far.
  
  Reply
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