> > Sure. Which is why "Robocop 3" got made but
>>OSC's "Ender's Game" has been in development
>>hell for years.
>
> I don't understand this argument at all. The
>first two "Robocop" movies made money, and it
>was a profitable franchise with merchandise and
>stuff to milk. Yeah, they sucked (especially
>2), but they were profitable.

Robocop 1 was profitable. Was the second one? I was pretty sure it flopped. You know, since it was ass. I could be wrong. It still sucks, though.

>"Ender's Game" is a whole different bag of
>worms, as its an adaptation of a novel written
>by a raving madman

You spelled "mormon" wrong...

>(who may very well be a great writer) which just
>creates a ton of problems.

What problems does it create? He's already written the script like three times. Originally he wrote it to de-emphasize the roll of the children, because he thought there was no way they could find a child actor to carry the part of Ender as it is written in the book. Then he met Jake Lloyd (and I admit, this part makes me wonder about his sanity) decided that he'd be perfect for the Ender part and that he could carry it properly and rewrote the script to re-emphasize the Ender character and make it more like the book. Since then I assume Lloyd has hit puberty and become too old to play the pre-teen Ender, so they have to go back to the drawing board. Meanwhile Hollywood tells Card that he can't have the children of the battle school be non-white. The battle school is supposed to be a cross-section of the entire planet, so realistically only like 15% to 20% of the children should be white. Hollywood told him that white America won't go see a movie about people of color, and said that he could basically have a token black and a token hispanic type, but all the other kids would be white. If he's getting bent out of shape about things, with crap like that going on I can at least understand why.

Besides, _Ender's Game_ is (quite rightly, I think) regarded as one of the best SF books of the modern era. If done right, every geek in the universe would go see it, and judging by the turn-out for Star Wars and LotR, there's a lot of geeks to go around.


> I think he recently wrote a book decrying the
>fact that he *can't* get work anymore, and
>despite his claims of a conspiracy against him I
>think it's because he sucks.

While this does gladden my heart to know, I still hate him.

> I remember liking it as a kid when I saw it in
>the theater, but I was watching it the other day
>and it's stupid as hell. The parts with the
>dragon are cool, but all the junk with the
>prince is so over-the-top and ridiculous they
>make me cringe. He's like every bad fantasy
>cliche rolled into one, and the actual story of
>the rebellion and stuff is lame and boring. I
>don't hate the movie, but it could have been so
>much better.

Eh. Whatever. It's not like I actually remember anything about the movie. I'm sure Sam has an opinion on this, though, since he gave the movie three and a half stars and specifically said the dragon does not hold up the entire movie.

Of course, Sam also liked Bean.

-- Dave