We’re sure many of you have read Orson Scott Card’s award-winning science fiction novel “Ender’s Game,” but we’re pretty sure that few of you ever imagined an Audi in that fictional universe. Granted, we do occasionally feel that some fiction novels (OK, many fiction novels) could benefit from gratuitous and prolonged appearances of sports cars in the story, but our daydreams are rarely rewarded. That is not going to be the case with the film “Ender’s Game,” which opens in the U.S. on Oct. 31. as Audi has collaborated with Digital Domain, the effects house used by the production company, in creating a futuristic Audi Fleet Shuttle Quattro that will appear in the film and will be driven by Harrison Ford.
Even though Harrison Ford will appear to be driving the car created for the film, he’ll actually be sitting in a contemporary Audi, which will be replaced by a digital model of the futuristic Audi in post production. Now that you have read that, will your suspension of disbelief fall apart as you’re watching the film? Hopefully not, especially given the fact that the story revolves around a race of giant insects referred to as the “Buggers” intent on wiping out Earth. So the appearance of an Audi will hopefully only buttress the film’s plausibility and realism, we feel.
The last time we saw futuristic Audis in a Hollywood production was nearly 10 years ago in the 2004 Will Smith film “I, Robot.” And now that we’ve looked back at the photos of the Audi RSQ that had a cameo in that film, we can’t really say that a great stylistic leap took place from the RSQ seen in “I, Robot” to the car previewed in “Ender’s Game.
We’ll leave it up to you to decide if car design has advanced between 2035, the year that “I, Robot” is set in, and the 2130s when “Ender’s Game” supposedly takes place.