‘Ender’s Game’ Trailers are Here, Looks Gamey!

I have a confession to make: I’ve never read Ender’s Game. I know, a part of me should have my nerd credentials ripped off, torn into pieces, spat upon and then skinned and turned into some kind of floppy ruck sack. The issue was while in middle school and high school I was too busy reading Heinlein and Douglas Adams, and the contrast between those two types of SF left me a bit frazzled and unable to try anything else for a while, until I found Philip K. Dick and boy did that open a whole new can of worms. Enough my waxing poetic about books I’ve read in the past though, and more about Ender’s Game itself. Sadly, all I have to go on now is how it’s supposedly a great story, written by a man who now unfortunately has tainted his own name pretty horribly. There’s been a pretty large, and justified row about Orson Scott Card due to his incredibly awful personal beliefs, and I’m fairly certain that will affect the perception the public at large has of the film. Especially for folks like me, who haven’t read the novel itself, and only know about OSC’s reputation. Regardless of that stigma however, the trailer is certainly interesting enough.

The problem I have with that trailer is it doesn’t really explain what the story is at all, and relies on the fact that you already know the story to be pumped for it. It makes me think what most non-SF loving people must think of the genre as, because all I see are weird swarm/alien bee-ships, and a little kid using an Mega-Xbox-Kinect (Oh I get it, a GAME okay) to control giant laser beams that are blowing up a planet maybe? And somehow that’s a heroic thing, I think? Plus there’s someone in it named Asa Butterfield, which I swear to god I’ve named an old Dungeons & Dragons character of mine before. Along with Jakk Hornsblood and Magnus Graverock, but that’s neither here nor there. Plus did you see Ben Kingsley’s weird face tattoo? If I didn’t inherently love SF and everything about the genre, I would assume this was a bunch of weird nonsense of The Last Airbender proportions. Then again, Avatar was the biggest hit movie of all time, so what do I know? All I have to go off of is the synopsis give to the film from press releases anyway.

Ender's Game
No but seriously. Look at his face. I can barely take that seriously.

via [Bloody-Disgusting]

[quote]

After an alien race called the Formics attacks Earth, the International Fleet prepare for the next invasion by training the best young children to find the future leader to lead the International Military. Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), a shy but strategically brilliant boy, is pulled out of his school to join International Fleet and attend the legendary Battle School. After easily mastering the increasingly difficult war games, distinguishing himself and winning respect among his peers, Ender is soon ordained by Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) as the military’s next great hope, resulting in his promotion to Command School. Once there, he’s trained by Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) himself to lead the military into a war that will determine the future of Earth and the human race.

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There’s also this preview trailer, which I guess is a trailer for a trailer, which is a thing they do now. How incredibly redundant that is I suppose is up to your personal choice, but I find it utterly dumbfounding.

http://www.traileraddict.com/emd/73847

The only thing worth seeing in that preview was hearing how Asa Butterfield pronounces his name, which hilariously sounds like “Butts field”, which is now going to be a town in my next Dungeons & Dragons game. But enough about my Dungeons & Dragon’s games. This is about ENDER’S Game, (Ooooh segue master!), and if you like Ender’s Game and can ignore how much of a douche OSC is, I suppose you’ll be psyched for this. I’m reserving a cautious “Meh”, just in case it ends up being a weird, homophobic, terrible polemic.

2013 Pilot Watch: Fox and The CW

To round out the network portion of our look at upcoming pilots, it’s the “little guys” themselves, Fox and The CW. I don’t suppose they really are the little guys anymore but even though they have highly rated shows and have outperformed some of the “Big 3” in recent years (looking at you NBC), they still have that “sitting at the kid’s table” air about them. Give them another five-ten years and if things keep going down the same path, we’ll laugh at the days we thought The CW was just home to teen angst.

As for their pilots, it’s a little strange. The CW doesn’t have that many at all, and almost every one looks interesting whereas Fox has quite a few and almost none of them appeal to me in the least bit. Could this be the year I become a CW (I think they need to drop the awkward ‘the’) fan beyond one show? Oooh, mystery!

Let’s get on to these pilots shall we?

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Because of Star Trek, Fringe, and Alias, I can forgive Alex Kurtzman for Hawaii Five-0. He will go further in that forgiveness if his project with Phillip Iscove and Roberto Orci proves to be worth anything.

Orlando Jones

Orlando Jones is one of those guys that you see and you can’t quite place him but you know you’ve seen him everywhere. His biggest project was probably MadTV back in the late 90’s and he’s taken a tour around Hollywood since then. Now he’s signed on as a detective in this modern day version of the classic story. Joining him are Dexter actress Katia Winter and as Ichabod Crane, Tom Mison.

As we’ve seen with Grimm and Once Upon a Time, modern day versions of “children’s” stories are doing pretty well so hopefully the Headless Horseman can join the ranks this year on Fox.

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Speaking of Star Trek, Bones (Karl Urban) has himself a new role in another J.J. Abrams project. This time however, it’s a Fox drama/buddy-cop show about members of the LAPD teaming up with androids. The premise seems a little old but if it gets picked up to series, I’ll withhold judgement for at least two or three episodes. It’s one of those things that could be really good, or incredibly lame.

However, one good reason to check it out if it does make it to series? Lili Taylor.

Lili Taylor

I really enjoyed her performance in Hemlock Grove and look forward to her returning to my TV full time since Six Feet Under.

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I think we all know there was no way I was going to leave out Andy Samberg’s comedy pilot for Fox. So far it’s just known as “Untitled Mike Schur/Dan Goor Project” but with the name power that Samberg would bring in, one has to imagine this will easily make it to series and get a proper title along the way.

It isn’t just Samberg that makes this pilot look interesting. For me, the most intriguing name would be Chelsea Peretti. A comedian who has been a part of some of my favorite shows (Parks and Rec, Louie, Portlandia…) as well as a hugely popular podcast, it really was only a matter of time until Peretti showed up a bit more full time.

Add in Terry Crews, Joe Lo Truglio, and Andre Braugher as the Captain of the group of NYPD detectives and this sitcom looks to be rather appealing.

[/tab][tab title = “The Tomorrow People”]

Robbie Amell“So there was this British series back in the 70’s and it was about this group of kids who had different superpowers and they fight evil.”
“Oh so like X-Men?”

I can’t imagine the people behind the The Tomorrow People pilot for CW haven’t had that exact conversation. That being said, I’d still watch it. Executive Producers on this one are all from shows that I have watched and really enjoyed including Greg Berlanti from Arrow and Phil Klemmer from Chuck.

Oh and speaking of Arrow, if you thought that dashing young man to the left there looked familiar, it’s because he bears a striking resemblance to his cousin, Arrow star, Stephen Amell. Robbie Amell is the lead role in The Tomorrow People and as usual with CW, is surrounded by plenty of other young and pretty people.

Forget young and pretty though, I’m looking most forward to Mark Pellegrino. Yes, that Mark Pellegrino.

[/tab][tab title = “Oxygen”]

[quote]About an epic romance between a human girl and an alien boy when he and eight others of his kind are integrated into a suburban high school 10 years after they landed on Earth and were consigned to an internment camp.[/quote]

That’s the logline. No, really, that’s it. How anyone could read that and immediately not want to see how on Earth that ends up, well I don’t know that anyone could. Seems a bit Kyle XY with a little historical injustice mixed in for good measure. That’s just enough weird for me to be intrigued. Plus it’s got Matt Lanter, voice of Anakin Skywalker in The Clone Wars as well as Harry Osborne on Ultimate Spider-Man and that’s a good thing.

Matt Lanter

[/tab][tab title = “The Selection”]

Anthony Head

It’s Anthony Head! Giles! Anthony Head!

Need I say more?

Oh, well in that case… Anthony Head is set to play King Clarkson, a man who is just trying to find his son a queen by holding a lottery. Because we all know – true love is found most often when your number is called.

Okay so it isn’t the greatest sounding premise if you aren’t a girl of the teenage variety, but come on, it’s Anthony Head! As a king just like in Merlin. You best believe, I will watch this.

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So there you have it, the pilots from Fox and The CW that I think look promising and you should keep an eye out for! Now that we’ve finished up the networks, next up we’ll take a tour around cable and see what’s in store.

Did you miss the rest of the networks? Well catch up right here – NBC Comedy, NBC Drama, CBS, ABC

Sony Pleads for ‘Community’ Viewers: Watch it Live People…

Here we go again! After ABC sent out the call for people to “save” Happy Endings, Sony Pictures is following suit by releasing a video of their own asking the same thing.

Except it’s not the same. ABC was saying “save Happy Endings from us” whereas this time it’s the production studio begging the audience to save the show from NBC. Even though it seems quite a bit more genuine coming from Sony, the problem remains the same – unless people with Nielson boxes see this plea and tune in on Thursday nights, it will sadly make no difference.

Community

When will this ratings insanity end?!? I know there are more pressing issues in the world, but is it too much to ask that network executives rethink how they calculate ratings? The audience of shows like Happy Endings and Community aren’t watching the show when it airs, rather they are watching it off a DVR or online outlets like Hulu so even if the average joe watching live effected ratings, they just aren’t doing it.

Community
Credit to: geek-ramblings

Of course the internet has jumped on this, much to the delight of people like myself. Not only is there an online petition started, which you should go and sign right here… go, I’ll wait… but also plenty of people out there creating great art like this.

Community
Blogger JenKeiko has been sounding the alarm since 2011

You’d think this was streets ahead, but sadly this is leftover from the last time Community sat on the chopping block, or perhaps even the time before that, or maybe the time before that, or it could be from – you get the point. Community has had a rocky road, that is for sure, but the fans of the show are determined to make their voice heard, join us will you?

As with everything in today’s world, there are naysayers. People who kick their feet and scream about how great the show used to be and honestly, I don’t disagree. The writing was better in seasons past and this season has been a little weak, but I’d rather NBC give it another year to let it find it’s footing and go out on a good note. That’s not too much to ask is it? After all, the only thing we’ve always wanted is six seasons and a movie.

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