Ender’s Game Comic-Con Panel Gives A Glimpse Into The Future

San Diego Comic-Con has begun and that means … recaps! So many recaps! First up, the Ender’s Game panel, which premiered an exclusive trailer that included a few new scenes and some additional glimpses of characters from the feature film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel.

For those that need an Ender’s Game refresher (like me), here you go: Earth in the very near future has been attacked by an alien race called the Formics. The heroics of International Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) save the day, but not for long. Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) begins training the most capable and elite children in an effort to find the next Rackham. Eventually, he comes across Ender (Asa Butterfield), who might very well be the boy to save all humanity.

Based on reports coming out of Comic Con, the Ender’s Game trailer (which hasn’t appeared online yet) only gave fans a bit of new footage. Apparently it showed off some space battles, snippets of conversation between Colonel Graff  and Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham discussing the progress of Ender and a few brief glimpses of Abigail Breslin and Viola Davis.

The elephant in the room on this one is Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card himself. After coming out strongly against gay marriage, Card has become persona non grata for Lionsgate, prompting protests against Ender’s Game from LGBT groups. Predictably, this has not been good for the public perception of the film. Lionsgate is now encouraging people to talk about the film and not the author who penned the source novel, but we’ll see how well that works out.

The panelists occupied the rest of their time answering questions and discussing the film. Ford mentioned the remarkable nature of Ender’s Game that had predicted drone warfare 25 years before it became a fact and co-producer Robert Orci fielded questions about Orson Scott Card and remarked that they wanted to use the controversy to back up LGBT rights. 

At the end of the day, the Ender’s Game panel has given a mere glimpse into the future, but it sounds like a pretty tantalizing one at that.