ENDER’S GAME is one of the best film adaptations from a novel to ever grace the silver screen, and it makes for one of the all-time great science fiction movies in its own right.

Harrison Ford’s performance is legend, as he gives the book’s pages living breath as the calculating, gruff, and gambling, Colonel Graff.

The entire cast is exceptionally selected to represent the very different personalities they are playing. Asa Butterfield (Ender), Harrison Ford (Graf), Hailee Steinfeld (Petra), Abigail Breslin (Valentine Wiggin), Ben Kingsley (Mazer Rackham), Viola Davis (Major Gwen Anderson), Moises Arias (Bonzo), Jimmy 'Jax' Pinchak (Peter Wiggin), Suraj Parthasarathy (Alai), Conor Carroll, and Aramis Knight (Bean) are all fantastic.

As usual, Ben Kingsley is at the top of his game, and he brings a fierce intensity to his role as mankind’s savior in the first alien war that is unparalleled.

You cannot deny the brilliance of Orson Scott Card’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, ENDER’S GAME, based on the young life of Andrew “Ender” Wiggin as he is groomed to be humankind’s last hope at defeating a mysterious alien colonizing force that could be poised to bring about our extinction in the very near future.

The look and feel of the makeup, the world, and the alien environments are utterly real and impressive, carrying a unique style with them that emanates the book accurately.

The aerial battles are extremely suspenseful – nail-bitingly so – and very apt to the story’s descriptions. The aliens that make it onto the screen are innovative and awe-inspiring, as is Ender’s reaction to them.

The themes come across wonderfully: the feeling of empathy mingled vs. the defensive rage brought on by survival instincts; the them-or-us military strategy vs. the attempt to understand and make peace with an “enemy” that is understood; and the morals of manipulation being okay if it is done for the greater good vs. honesty should reign over our actions. These thematic ripples shape the scenes and events and are complex, at times, as they get the attention that is warranted for such an intelligent, impactful, and entertaining tale.

And in terms of cool sci-fi fun, the battle school anti-gravity battles are truly amazing and choreographed with a tremendous attention to detail.

Read the rest of the R.J. Huneke review on Examiner.com HERE

by R.J. Huneke

J.J. Abrams has brought true genius in the form of his second film in the Star Trek saga, and Star Trek: Into Darkness leaves the audience reeling with an entertaining and powerfully emotional experience.

The original Star Trek movie series had to follow in the steps of an innovative and boundary pushing 1960’s TV show that had become a cult classic and legend, and when that first flick hit theaters there was a lot of disappointment from a fan base that expected more than a reintroduction and reestablishing of the characters and what has been dubbed a cool looking and fun “sightseeing tour” of a movie. It was a success but did not offer much of the groundbreaking that went on time and again in the Star Trek TV series.

Then came Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the obscure and wonderfully ruthless, strong, and cruel Khan was the perfect foil for Captain Kirk and company. The gritty movie showed suspense, terror, and a maniac as an edgy villain that propelled its box office breakthroughs into the stratosphere. The characters had flaws, depth, and growth, and they were tested repeatedly in an all too dangerous bout.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE ON RUNE WORKS HERE

I know it has been a while, readers, but I am back! And what is more, I am going to keep my promise to speak more often to you all, here, on my personal soapbox, because many exciting things are in the works and 2013 is going to be a revolutionary year!

For starters, I have this fancy new domain name - RJHuneke.com - so as to shorten the typing load of, well, everyone, and my production company Rune Works has its own brand spankin' new web site - at RuneWorks.net.

My finished manuscript is currently being shopped around to agents - it's a whopper of a dystopian thriller with one of my all time tenacious female protagonists - and a graphic novel version, as well as a screenplay of it has already been undertaken by yours truly.

While that might not be new news, I can tell you that the polished ms and the art will be seen in 2013 in the not too distant future and these pieces will be impactful!

As head of Rune Works, I can tell you that the production company's second published novel will be released in 2013, and we are proud to announce that it will be a first-of-its-kind Poetry Journey Through Graphic Comic Art - Cassandra DeMario's finely tuned words will meet R.J. Huneke's intriguing artwork in a way that takes the reader on a visual journey through a story that is told by poetry and visual art.

More works from other writers are in the works too!

And we have not forgotten about the dream either...full feature-length film will be coming to Rune Works!

As you can see, the behind-the-scenes aspects of numerous projects have been worked on furiously over the past year, and they will see fruition very soon, folks!

Stay Tuned!

~RJ

Fantasy-Matters Impulsive Review of The Hobbit *Spoiler

By R.J. Huneke

Understand that the scrutiny with which the live-action film The Hobbit is described here comes from more than just a fan but a Tolkien-ologist that has coveted and studied the book for over twenty years with love.

Suffice to say, the Peter Jackson movie adaptation was extremely entertaining and funny, but utterly devoid of the spirit, realisticness, and meticulous attention to written Tolkien details that made The Lord of the Rings film trilogy such a masterful blend of on-screen magic and incredible story-telling as professor Tolkien might have wanted it viewed.

Peter Jackson and company’s loosely based version of The Hobbit was fun as a return to Middle Earth but continually disappointing as the novel’s story was repeatedly ignored or trumped by blatant disregard for reality or seriousness and replaced by overtly cartoony CGI and terrible Hollywood writing throughout the entire three-plus hours of film.

This movie was made to be visual eye-candy and comedic relief, utterly dumbing down, chopping up, and replacing the background, the history, and the legendary story with a mishmash of disjointed Hollywood ideas used purposefully to stretch one story that would have filled one three-hour-plus movie beautifully to three greedy shells of the written Tolkien material that they are supposed to be based off of.

What comes to mind, and causes great pain, is that this new Hobbit edition trilogy reminds one of the Star Wars prequel saga in both its harsh lines, complete disregard for the original films’ non-green screen special effects where actual physical sets and locations made the wonder real to the eye. Now the Episodes I, II, III from George Lucas are enjoyable and entertaining and give hungry Star Wars fans more time to spend in the amazing mythic universe that they long for; but the original trilogy is pure art and myth done to near perfection, and the newer versions overly relied on new technology as an easier way to film expensively (without all the brick and mortar building and carpenters) and the eye-candy, marketing to really young kids with cartoon-like characters and laughs dumb down the entire series.

So it is now with The Hobbit trilogy. What was once a cornerstone of Jackson’s career – his amazing makeup and effects team – gave way to a cheaper and easier method of CGI as is seen most clearly in the cartoon character of the White Orc Azog, who Tolkien wrote died in the battle that Azog now miraculously survives from so that we, the moviegoers, have the visual 3-D stimulation of seeing a sled pulled by rabbits and the poorest imagination of Radagast the Brown ever (let’s make him an idiot that lives with bird crap on his face) running in circles to have Azog’s mindless minions follow them around and forget the dwarves they are hunting (all of which never happens in a Tolkien book).

The book’s story was stripped and overwritten with Tolkien allusions so that three movies could be made to gain more profit by the studio than one film. The screenwriting that Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson so arduously went through to use Tolkien lines in almost every instance of dialogue in The Lord of the Rings is totally forgotten; Guillermo del Toro (who I love, as Pan’s Labyrinth is not just great but amazing) and Jackson and the other writers here went for the quickest and easiest way to achieve the goal of bastardizing the great story for three lesser ones to appease the powers that make money in the film company.

The lines are often so awful that the whole scene seems to stop and become ruined by them, like when the Great Goblin (that also looks awful in its carton CGI) gets cut by Bilbo and says, “That did it” as he falls to his death.

Lastly, Bilbo’s great character arc from the book is trampled, quite like Peter Parker’s in Spiderman 3, as he is Thorin’s doormat only until he earns the dwarf’s respect when he saves his life . . . yet this never happens in the book! Bilbo instead slowly finds more of courage and gets the dwarves out of more jams (with the barrels I assume will be ignored in the next film) and his growth and reception are natural progressions that eventually pit his wit and fear against the wicked and cunning dragon Smaug.

To sum up, not only does the look, feel, and writing fall far short of anything pertaining to Jackson’s first trilogy, but the protagonist is ruined as well, so that the stellar acting – and it was stellar with Martin Freeman and Sir Ian Mckellan and the rest – becomes wasted amidst this flurry of outside story plots, twisted Tolkien ideas, and an overall 2-D, IMAX, 3-D, 3-D 480FPS film experience made specifically for five-year-olds and extremely stoned human beings that will sit with short attention spans and soak up the computerized eye candy and way too overt and unnatural jokes that Jackson made out of all of Middle Earth in The Hobbit.

Impulsive Review Grade: B-

I've done it!

The story has been written, and the first draft of my newest dystopian thriller novel is complete!

It has been quite a ride, and my arduous research and many months of writing have yielded an incredible tale that shakes the notions of societal norms and controls.

Looking back on the process...

Read the rest on the RUNE WORKS page.

Thanks for all of the support!

^R.J.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 Dark Shadows: A Tim Burton Masterpiece

The film Dark Shadows encompasses a rarely met joining of horror, gloomy fantasy, and dark humor, which is often created by the overwhelming sexual tension that oozes across the screen in numerous scenes.

Read the Entire Article on Fantasy-Matters.com here!