Asa Butterfield via io9: Welcome to Fairyland

Last week, io9 had the opportunity to sit down with Ender Wiggin actor Asa Butterfield at CinemaCon where he had a lot to say about filming the Zero G Battle Room, the flash guns, and -- we hoped it was coming -- the Mind Game!

As excited as the young actors probably were at Space Camp, they unfortunately didn't get to start working on the exciting Battle Room scenes straight away -- they had to film a lot of the boring scenes using gravity first. But once they were up in the air, it's easy to bet gravity could sometimes look pretty appealing:

"Harnesses aren't the most comfortable things you can wear, and neither are the flash suits. They look incredible, when you're wearing them. [But] you're very hot, to say the least. It was hard work, we had a lot of physical training. And we spent a lot of time practicing getting the movements and pretending to be in zero gravity.

[...] When you're in the harnesses to stop yourself from falling at the waist, which is where they're connected, you have to be tensed up. So keeping actions smooth whilst having your whole body completely tensed is surprisingly difficult. Meanwhile you're saying your lines. They were fun, they were amazing fun to shoot, especially the sort action moments when you're flying across shooting your gun. Those are awesome."

As uncomfortable as it all sounds, the entire cast has assured us over and over how much fun the Battle Room scenes were to shoot. Who wouldn't want to be suspended in midair and flown across a cavernous set, even if it is hard work?

And while the actors were sometimes zooming around in Null G, they also had scenes where they were required to remain perfectly still -- while suspended in the air. In the Ender's Game novel, the soldier's flash suits freeze completely when shot by an enemy's laser gun. To recreate this in the film, Asa explains how it worked: "For the long shots you just had to freeze. You're just frozen. For the close ups occasionally they had these contraptions that just locked your arm in place. And they did use CG to make sure there weren't any tiny wobbles."

The last question might be the most interesting for fans of the book who has been following the movie since it began filming last February:

What was the hardest form of psychological torture for Ender?

Obviously there's the ending, which I'm not going to say. But that's definitely the biggest. But [out] of [the] things I can talk about, probably one of the hardest scenes for Ender was leaving his sister, back on Earth. I think that's one of the things that really damaged him. As you can see in the mind game, as well. Which is a really interesting aspect of the film and the story as a whole.

So now we know: they have at least filmed portions of the Mind Game.  Since it doesn't seem like Asa has seen the final product, we can't be 100% sure what will be left on the editing room floor. But now that we know the psychological test was included in director Gavin Hood's screen play (and that it's Bob Orci's favorite scene from the book), it looks like our chances of seeing The Giant's Drink on screen just increased tremendously!

Here's hoping they included that little bat.