Last updated on September 14, 2014
A necessary disclaimer for any and all who want to read this review: I did not read the novels, nor know much of the source material at all. But there will be SPOILERS
Ender’s Game clearly feels like a well-constructed novel jammed into a just-under two hours film. In effect, it tells the entire story of Ender’s Game the novel, as far as I know, but since there’s so many details and plot points to cover, it progresses at an alarming rate without much time for contemplation or meandering. On the one hand, the arbitrary deadline that the invasion imposes means the screenwriters can frame the story as a frantic chase for a new recruit to defend Earth. On the other hand, it just progresses too fast to have anything but a detached intellectual fixture on what’s happening on screen.
Does that make it a great film? No, not at all – but it does make it a thought-provoking one. I was honestly happy just to see something new and original in the tired, ABSOLUTELY tired, science fiction / action movie genre, and Ender’s Game certainly succeeds in that. Orson Scott Card sounds like a man who think about ideas, actions, and their implications, all of which come through beautifully even through the possible muddle of $125 million dollar visuals. Ender’s journey through military training strikes me as completely understated, with the visuals as a complement rather than the primary setpiece. We really want to know how a teenager will defend earth, and we certainly get that answer.
Because of that slavish adherence to a more contemplative, novel-like feel, that means the screenwriters needed to interpret the emotional reactions of characters – a problematic enterprise. Furthermore, Ender’s thoughts (as far as I’ve read) make up a large chunk of the novel, and a film cannot just exist in some guy’s mind with narrative voice over. Film presents visuals via which it can communicate messages, and that technique just does not engage an audience in quite the visceral way that a novel can provide. So how, exactly, did they translate this to the screen?
Also, could Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, and Ben Kingsley alike be more under-utilized in a venture like this? Anybody could play these roles, and that’s a little bit sad. That’s not to mention the rest of the cast failing to inspire any sort of devotion in me, but I digress.
About as well as you could imagine. Ender seems a little too superhuman at times with his ability to perform incredibly risky, yet successful, tactical decisions. The film explains this with a handwave akin to “children are just good at this without a moral compass I guess?”, but I’m willing to accept he’s is a prodigy of some kind. He does a lot of awesome things, explaining why people think he’s so awesome at things, and then he does bad things for the right reasons. I guess that’s why a lot of people don’t like the ethic of Ender’s Game, mostly because it judges the intent behind the actions rather than the actions in themselves, but I suppose that lends more to the intellectual undercurrent here.
What I really want to talk about is THE TWIST, which I had somehow scoped out far before it even happened. Ok, quick question: do you think you want to place children in real-life military strategy situations? No, I imagine not. The reality of the circumstances would force them to play it safe, act differently, and mostly do a whole lot of nothing. Framed as a game, on the other hand, means that a kid will take big risks, knowing they can try again if necessary. Failing a test means simply trying again, and although there’s a short-term punishment for failure (namely, trying again), that doesn’t make it all that bad. You know, this sounds strangely similar to video games, right? Since Ender Wiggin likes to take risks and win at all costs, the actual battle against the alien threat is played as a game, and thus they take an immense risk which happens to pay off. Humanity wins, and bug-creatures that are ugly lose, but Ender isn’t too happy about this at all.
I’ve got no complaint about this, due to that central twist setting the stage for many sequels and a scene of shock plus emotional catharsis. However, the film doesn’t linger on this moment; instead, it just wastes the impact by throwing in a few lines of angry dialogue and leaving it at that. Ender’s only emotional reaction consists of anger, and then he’s still angry I guess? The brevity of this moment seems like a huge waste to me, in every sense; what else were we working towards than how Ender would feel about this? Instead, we’re whisked away to Setting Up For Ender‘s Game sequel land, and Ender just meets up with bugs and picks up an egg. This might constitute good novel construction, given that we can linger and think about what happened and its implications, but the movie chugs along to its rather demure conclusion.
Maybe I’m just conditioned via other science fiction properties to expect some sort of climactic conclusion, emotional or otherwise, but this just doesn’t really excite you at all. The twist remains matter of fact and stodgy, rather than the central pillar of Ender’s Game as a whole. The perfunctory nature of its end just baffles me a little, given how good of a story Ender’s Game will provide even the ignorant, non-Orson Scott Card reader like me. Maybe it just needed a little more oomph.
None of this means Ender’s Game won’t delight you in some way or another; rather, it basically turns into a causality of the “book turned into a film” problem that’s existed for many years. At the very least, this film (which will probably NOT get a sequel, if the box office says anything) will whet my appetite to read the books. Those seem like a much more filling meal than the film’s meager offering.
