In A World

[cyrano]

I'm perhaps confused. Yesterday when I went to see Gravity, they said 'o hey see a trailer about another movie in space'. And this Ender's Game trailer contained the phrases 'a new kind of threat' and 'a new kind of hero'. And I was confused.
The threat of an alien invasion of Earth doesn't seem particularly new--V, War of the Worlds... there's a few. And even 'kid being the only person who can be trained to fight aliens' goes out in Last Starfighter and Phantom Menace (wahoo!).
And I don't think they can really say 'well we meant thirty years ago when the book came out'. Am I missing some crucial part of the plot? Or is this another case where I'm listening to the words that the advertisers are saying?

Comments

[missroserose]

There's a lot of argy-bargy out there about how advertisers love to sell to teens because they're an affluent market (living, as they do, on their parents' dime) and they haven't developed brand loyalties yet (other than "not what my parents use"), but I strongly suspect there's a third reason - it's because teenagers are gullible enough to believe the lines they feed them, and don't yet have the body of experience to say "wait, isn't this just like you were saying about X a few years ago...?" And given that they're marketing the movie strongly to teenagers, it's not hard to imagine the ad developers figuring they could get away with that because hey, who's actually seen The Last Starfighter? Or even (for the current crop of teenagers) Phantom Menace?

God I feel old.

[cyrano]

...okay, that makes sense. "A new kind of threat. As far as *you* know."