Here’s another interview Asa Butterfield did while in Vegas for CinemaCon done by PopSugarTV.
Asa mentioned again what an honor it was to be cast as Ender, mentioning the dedicated fanbase the story has built up over the years. “The story’s become such a cult almost, it’s got such a big following. It’s like a family and for me and the cast to become a part of that, it’s special.”
Since Asa’s last film before Ender’s Game was the CGI-heavy film Hugo, he was asked if that made it any easier doing a movie that involved so much green screen.
“Working against green screens, it’s still different than working against a live person. You just have to have a really strong imagination and Gavin and all the effects people showed us what you call “pre-vis”. So we had and idea of what it was going to look like so that let us play against where everything was in the space.”
The fans’ number one concern is of course how true to the book the movie will be and while we’re all anticipating a lot of changes in the film adaptation, Asa insists that the message will remain intact, “After watching the film you’ll still get the same message as you would from reading the book.”
So… in other words, I’ll be all teary eyed and have an aching heart at the end? 😉
Geek Legacy, who put out a request for questions for actor Brandon Soo Hoo back in February, got to interview him and recently published the transcript. The entire interview focused on his involvement with Ender’s Game and fans eager to hear any news about the film get to hear a few interesting tidbits.
A fan of the book for the last five years since an old friend lent him her copy, Soo Hoo says that one of favorite parts of the book include the mind game. He insisted that director Gavin Hood took a lot of care to keep accurate to the book, “Though, due to the PG-13 rating, some of the more graphic content was toned down.”
He also mentions Ender’s dreams during their rigorous schedule on Eros.
GL: What scene(s) from the movie are you most excited for us all to see? B: The dream sequence scenes and battle room scenes are both highly anticipated. Both are going to be filled with dazzling special effects, so I’m looking forward to see how those came out.
When asked what he’s looking forward to the most in the coming months, he admits that while he really wants to go to Comic Con, he’s really just excited to finally see the film.
As fellow book fans, I’m sure we can all relate to that!
To read the full interview, head over to Geek Legacy.
Actor Ben Kingsley is doing a lot of press for the release of Iron Man 3 and spoke briefly to the Coventry Telegraph about his role as Mazer Rackham. Possible spoilers here for those who haven’t read the book!
Ender’s Game is coming out later this year. How did that work out?
Lovely, but quite different from the challenge of the Mandarin. With Mandarin I was very rarely involved in green screen. In Gandhi we had none. We actually had 4,000 people on screen for the funeral.
In Ender’s Game we had a lot of green screen. The kids in the film were obviously challenged by being told ‘It is all going to be CGI-d later but you have to react’ . Gavin (Hood) looked after them so well and they did form a wonderful relationship with him. So that he would, where possible, talk them through what they were seeing while they were reacting to it.
He really knocked himself out pumping energy into those kids who couldn’t see anything. I think it is going to be a wonderful film.
Tell us about your role.
Mazar Rackham. He is a combination of historically ancient warrior in that he is descended from Maori and has Maori tattooed on his face. And at the same time he is teaching children how to operate drones. So he is very advanced and also rooted in an ancient warrior tradition.
Asa Butterfield did several press interviews while at CinemaCon 2013 and the latest to come out is one from io9. They focused their talk mainly on the Battle Room, but also touched a bit upon Ender and Valentine. As an added bonus, Asa casually drops a mention about the mind game!
The cast was trained by an astronaut, who came to teach them about how one really moves in zero gravity.
“You have to move really slowly… fluidly and smoothly. When you’re in the harnesses to stop yourself from falling at the waist, which is where they’re connected, you have to be tensed up. So keeping actions smooth whilst having your whole body completely tensed is surprisingly difficult.”
Asa also talks about Ender’s age, which had previously been speculated to be anywhere from 10 to 15. In the interview he mentions that the cast had to be aged up to 13 to 14.
“You can’t find — at least as not that I’m aware — a six-year-old actor that can play that sort of a character, it’s complex and it’s physically demanding. That was the first issue, so they changed it from being six to 13 or 14.”
When asked what he thought was Ender’s hardest form of psychological torture, he mentioned Ender’s separation from Valentine.
“Probably one of the hardest scenes for Ender was leaving his sister, back on Earth. I think that’s one of the things that really damaged him. As you can see in the mind game, as well.”
I’ve read that there were lake scenes in the trailer, so that’s possibly the goodbye people mentioned rather than their initial goodbye. There’s a lot more to the interview, so be sure to check it out at io9.
In a recent interview with Asa Butterfield, IGN got the answer to a question that has been floating around for months: Will the movie combine the storylines of Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow?
No, there’s nothing from Ender’s Shadow. It’s all from Ender’s Game.
They also asked what he thought about Ender’s Game possibly becoming another Star Wars.
Well I hope so. I think it’s got a very good possibility to be. I think it’s unlike any other science fiction thing I’ve seen. It’s amazing. A lot of science fiction films today are just about sort of lasers and explosions, but the best are the ones that have a lot more about character and theme; and that’s one of the key parts of Ender’s Game – the story. There’s ideas behind it, about what makes human beings tick and that sort of thing.
It’s interesting that he talks about this because I was just having this conversation with my husband the other day. We had gone to see Oblivion and the week before that we were debating what makes good sci-fi and the hopes we had for the great lineup of sci-fi movies this year.
Oblivion, though gorgeous and grand, ultimately failed in the story. It tried very hard, but there were a lot of things about the plot that simply fell apart and the character of Jack Harper just wasn’t what it needed to be to really draw the audience in. That Asa understands this seems to be a great sign that they’ve taken steps to ensure this doesn’t happen with Ender’s Game.
Asa also showed a deep understanding for Ender’s character in relation to his siblings Peter and Valentine, “Ender’s character is very much based on his siblings, Peter and Valentine. Valentine is very kind and open, she’s like the nicest human being, whereas Peter is selfish, arrogant and horrible. Ender is stuck in the middle of them. So the story shows you that everyone has their darker and lighter side and that no matter how hard you try to be a good person you always have that dark place in you.”
Asa also confirms that the film is aiming for a PG-13 rating, something most of us assumed at this point, but it was good to hear it from Ender himself.
When asked to liken the visuals to another sci-fi film out there, Asa didn’t feel as though there was one.
I think the visuals of it are very, very original. Because the battle room is just a glass sphere, and because Battle School is in space, it allows you to see out. You can see stars, you can see Earth, you can see all of the colors from the sun and the sea and the green of the land. And it gives a very original and sort of beautiful look to the film that is unlike anything you’d see in a sci-fi film. And that’s contrasted by the metal and the orderedness of the station. So you have these two contrasting elements: the freedom of the battle room and the ordered look of the dorms and the corridors.
David Trumbore of Collider had a phone interview with Asa Butterfield today and they talked at length about how it was working with director Gavin Hood and what it was like acting with such a large cast of kids.
Gavin is an amazing director. I haven’t worked with a director like him. Whereas other directors are quite passive with how they let their actors work, Gavin – especially because he wrote the screenplay – he already knew exactly how he wanted the characters to be. Of course he let us bring our own ideas to it. He was always very enthusiastic, he was always encouraging us, he was always there on the stage. If we needed motivation he was there shouting at us … not angry, just to get the right emotion. Because there were a lot of child actors on the set, the enthusiasm that he brought really got us into that sort of mindset, so it was really helpful.
Asa also comments about what it was like working with Harrison Ford and Sir Ben Kingsley.
I had far more scenes with Harrison than I did with Sir Ben. Sir Ben’s character’s only in it in the last third of the film, but they’re both amazing.
Of particular interest is his mention of the scene where Ender disobeys orders and we get to hear a bit of detail on how that scene has been adapted for the film.
One scene that I really remember is a scene with me and Hailee (Steinfeld). We’re in the Battle Room. She’s hit her head on one of the floating objects. I’ve jumped out … I’ve disobeyed my orders and jumped out to catch her. When I hit her, we start spinning. Of course, in zero gravity, there’s nothing to slow you down.
Overall it’s a fantastic interview, so be sure to check out the entire thing over at Collider. Hopefully we’ll see more interviews with the cast start to come out after the awards ceremony tonight.
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?
In an exclusive video of an audio interview with Viola Davis (Major Anderson), the site Fangirlish talked with Viola Davis briefly about her thoughts on the Ender’s Game cast.
When asked how she feels about working with young actors, Davis said that she loves working with them. “I was out of touch. That’s why I like working with young people. They keep you in touch, they keep you relevant, almost. Which is what I love.”
She briefly mentions her thoughts on working with Harrison Ford and how much of a fan of his she is. “[…] I thought it was cool cause I was working with Harrison Ford. I love Harrison Ford. And every scene I wanted to tell him, “I love you,” but I couldn’t because I’d look like a geek once again.”
Davis is set to star in two young adult franchises this year with Beautiful Creatures and Ender’s Game.
“I love big franchise movies. The only thing that would be better is being in a movie that was like Avatar or Aliens where I got to beat the crap out of somebody and wear cute outfits.”
According to Fangirlish, she also commented on Asa Butterfield and Aramis Knight, though it’s not on the video.
She remarked how great the kids from Ender’s Game were, and how Aramis Knight and Asa Butterfield were such good boys.
Nonso Anozie was in attendance this past Sunday at the London Film and Comic Con and spoke with RedCarpetNewsTV about ‘Ender’s Game’. He explains his role as drill sergeant Dap, “He’s a real hardass at first to Ender. Really bad guy, but at the end you really start to see there’s a reason why he’s been so hard on them.”
Anozie mentions that he still has to head back to the States to finish up some more work on the film, but mentions how much fun it was. “It’s going to have a lot of things that no one’s seen before. A lot of computer graphics, a lot of visual effects, kind of cutting edge. Stuff that nobody’s seen before.”
Makes the wait that much longer, doesn’t it? Only 478 days to go!
