Ender's Game and Sanctuary
Aug. 25th, 2015 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI finally got around to watching Ender's Game last night, and I quite enjoyed it. If I hadn't had any knowledge at all of the book, I would have thought it was a fairly decent film, aimed at an audience considerably younger than me, but with some quite challenging ideas. Some the acting was a bit ropey, and the gender split of most of the roles (compassionate, emotional women and hard-ass ends-justify-the-means men) was rather annoying, but the action sequences were well-done, some of the kids did a really good job, and the themes were interesting.
However, since the book is one of the better ones I've ever read, and contains a huge amount more depth and complexity, there was a level of disappointment in the way the film was made. The book may be about children, but it is in no way a children's book - yet, presumably because most of the characters needed to be children, it was deemed that the film would need to target a younger audience. Thus, it was considerably de-fanged and simplified, and therefore ended up a much lesser entity than its source material.
Tonight, I finally finished watching Sanctuary. I watched the first two seasons when it first aired, but gave up for some reason at that point. I've been revisiting old TV shows of late, and this was another one where I waited for the point where I wanted to stop watching, and it never came. So, I have now seen all four seasons - and the overall conclusion was actually really good. As a whole, the concept is quite a good one, the execution (patchy in places) is mostly decent, and I do like a lot of the characters. Amanda Tapping is very good in a role that allows her to demonstrate both emotional depth and physical bad-assery, and most of the supporting players are very appealing. So, all in all, I'm really glad I revisited this!
However, since the book is one of the better ones I've ever read, and contains a huge amount more depth and complexity, there was a level of disappointment in the way the film was made. The book may be about children, but it is in no way a children's book - yet, presumably because most of the characters needed to be children, it was deemed that the film would need to target a younger audience. Thus, it was considerably de-fanged and simplified, and therefore ended up a much lesser entity than its source material.
Tonight, I finally finished watching Sanctuary. I watched the first two seasons when it first aired, but gave up for some reason at that point. I've been revisiting old TV shows of late, and this was another one where I waited for the point where I wanted to stop watching, and it never came. So, I have now seen all four seasons - and the overall conclusion was actually really good. As a whole, the concept is quite a good one, the execution (patchy in places) is mostly decent, and I do like a lot of the characters. Amanda Tapping is very good in a role that allows her to demonstrate both emotional depth and physical bad-assery, and most of the supporting players are very appealing. So, all in all, I'm really glad I revisited this!
