‘Ender’s Game’ director Gavin Hood on the Orson Scott Card issue

After years in development, the long-awaited film adaptation of the sci-fi classic “Ender’s Game” finally hits theatres this weekend. Based on the award-winning 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game" is set in the wake of an alien invasion that nearly annihilates humanity and follows a brilliant child (Asa Butterfield) who is drafted into the military and trained to become Earth's last hope against another invasion. The film features an impressive supporting cast that includes Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin, Viola Davis, and Ben Kingsley.

Of course, in any discussion about "Ender's Game," Orson Scott Card's name is bound to come up. When asked about the raft of controversial statements made by original “Ender’s Game” author in recent months (comments that have led some fans to boycott the film), Hood was unequivocal in his condemnation of those views.

“Would I rather not be dealing with this? Of course,” Hood told Yahoo! Movies Canada, admitting that he began having doubts about the project when Card started making his comments. “I thought, ‘I’m not going to have a gentleman who wrote something 30 years ago that really meant something to me, who is expressing views that I find deeply distasteful -- I’m not going have him ruin my experience of that book.’”

Hood stressed that the original novel and his “Ender’s Game” movie stand very much apart from Card’s views.

“There are plenty of examples in art where works of art are greater than their creators or where creators of art are flawed,” he said. “We’ve seen it with the music of Richard Wagner. We’ve seen it with the controversy with Elia Kazan and the way he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, and yet no one can deny that ‘On the Waterfront’ or ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ are great films.”

Rather than getting caught up in Card’s unfortunate web of bigotry and paranoia, the director said he hopes that viewers have a conversation about the important themes found in the film.

“It’s a pity that a conversation which has nothing to do with ['Ender’s Game'] is being talked about when there are great themes in the movie about compassion, about drone warfare, and about the consequences of violence on the young psyche.”

Finding the right young actor to play Ender on screen was a bit of a challenge for Hood.

“I started auditioning people from age eight all the way through to 14,” he revealed. “There were some incredibly talented eight-year-olds and nine-year-olds and we were trying to find someone as young as in the book. [But] it’s one thing to read that the kid says all these brilliant things, but when an eight-year-old is shouting at Harrison Ford it just seemed silly!”

Toward the end of the exhaustive search, Hood came across an audition tape Butterfield had sent from London and immediately knew he’d found his Ender.

“I was thrilled when we found Asa. I thought, OK, we’ve got a movie,” the filmmaker said. “You really need to represent a kid who’s truly smart with a really smart actor. Asa is extremely bright but also incredibly humble and kind and generous. He’s also quite internal, which is perfect for Ender,”

Hood said that Butterfield, who was 12 when he was cast as Ender, grew both physically and as an actor during the shoot.

“I shot the film in sequence as far as I possibly could -- which helped because [Asa] grew two inches during shooting -- but it also helped because when he first arrived he was quite intimidated by Harrison Ford. By the time the movie was done, though, he was ready to stand up to Harrison Ford. That parallel between young actor and acting icon really helped with young Ender and the iconic Colonel Graff.”

For Hood, part of building the relationship between Ender and Graff was keeping the two actors at arm's length, mirroring the dynamic between a soldier and his commanding officer. The director revealed that Ford and Kingsley were the ones who really pushed that idea.

“Harrison and Sir Ben -- I call him Sir Ben -- raised that issue,” Hood said, recalling a dinner he had with the two veteran actors the night before rehearsals were to start. "They say, ‘So Gavin, we’re not going to do the table read tomorrow.’ This is like my first meeting with them and I thought, my god, what are you talking about? 'No. We don’t want to know these kids. We’ve got to keep them at arm’s length. They’ve got to be scared of us.' I was like, ‘Guys, look, I love this theory of keeping them at arm’s length, but we need to rehearse!’ Anyways, good laugh and they say ‘No, of course we’re coming to the table read, but we do want to talk to you about how much we get to know the kids.'”

Hood says that one conversation with Ford and Kingsley informed the entire "Ender's Game" shoot.

“Let’s come to the table read, do the read, and then keep thee actors separated so that initially there’s this intimidation factor, " Hood said. "Not in a mean way at all. The actors, let’s call them the more senior actors, were incredibly generous with the kids. But they were generous not in a 'let’s have fun and goof around' way, they never did that. They were generous in the sense of really being there for them as actors, bringing that focused, slightly intimidating presence to the scenes.”

“Ender’s Game” hits theatres on November 1.