SHADOW PUPPETS

   This is probably going to be the most problematic to adapt to screen. It's got some of the best action in the series, romance, and a lot of tough decisions regarding which plot lines to place focus on. Since they more or less all come to a head in the next one, easier said than done. Aside from that, the film is liable to attract a great deal of controversy based on subject matter alone, which we'll delve into below.

THE GOOD:

1. It more or less opens on Peter springing Achilles from Chinese captivity. If that's not an awesome promise for the rest of the film, I don't know what is.
2. John and Theresa decoding the bizarre spam email they both received and realizing Achilles's plot.
3. Storming the compound, and Bean shooting Achilles in the eye! Awesome!
4. The Wiggins going back up into space, to what was once the Battle School. That's bittersweet, an awesome visitation of the first movie, and top that with all the intrigue that goes on there.
5. Virlomi inspiring the Great Wall of India, the new flag of India.

THE BAD:

1. There's a lot of military and political maneuvering. A book can take all the time it wants to explain these, but in a movie it flies right past you. Unless they want to make the movie longer or something, but there's already a lot going on.
2. Having Vlad meet Petra and Bean in the park where Chopin is playing. It's a lovely scene, and wants to be turned into a movie, but it's going to be one of the first things to go.

THE UGLY:

1. The Caliphate stuff, where Alai is Caliph, probably won't be all that controversial. But you never know, and the fact that you never know could also get controversial. This controversy may break the move. Hopefully not.
2. Anton could either be a great or terrible character in this one, depending on how he's played. He was an awesome part of Ender's Shadow, a Hannibal Lecter figure where he had to speak in riddles out of necessity. Now he still does that out of habit, but now he, a geneticist, says he wants to have children even though he is not attracted to women. I had always seen that as an admission of asexuality, but others have seen this as OSC somehow making a dig against gay people. See how that could be controversial? Speaking of...
3. This inspires Petra gets all chickified, wanting desperately to have babies with Bean. This is kind of important to the plot, and it pulls us through the entire thing, but it wouldn't be very good onscreen.
4. And then, because Bean's got genes that would have his children lead miserable existences as genus freaks with life-threatening cases of the giantisms, there's some abortion! Granted, the destruction of the zygotes are faked by Achilles, who wants those genetically gifted children for himself, but still, you had us going...