Runtime: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Gavin Hood
Quick Impressions:
I’ll confess I’ve been wondering how on earth anyone was going to pull off a successful, mainstream movie adaptation of Ender’s Game ever since I read the book.
Of course, I read the book last week, so this hasn’t preoccupied my thoughts for long. But if I’d read the book back in 1985 when it first came out, I’m sure I would have—been traumatized for life because I was six years old then, I suddenly realize. I’m sure I wouldn’t have worried about the thorniness of adapting the novel for the screen at all because surely I would have been asking instead why kids exactly my age were being psychologically tortured and (in a certain case) “rewarded” for murdering each other.
(Well, I might have given the idea of a movie adaptation some thought. After all, when they had that very special episode of Sesame Street where Big Bird learns that Mr. Hooper has died, I was the preschooler cynically reassuring my mother, “Don’t worry. They just wrote him out of the show. That’s how they do it on TV.” (I was pretty shocked and upset when she told me that no, the actor really had died.) But I still probably wouldn’t have thought about movie adaptations. When I was six, I was thinking things more like, “Now notice when Indiana Jones loses his hat. Doesn’t he look so much like Han Solo?” (Again, my mother blew my mind with her reply.)
My husband has been worried for a while, though, about how Hollywood might potentially mis-market and destroy Orson Scott Card’s classic novel. We’ve been passing the book around my house (electronically), and while he was rereading it, he kept saying, “It worries me that they’ve been showing the previews before children’s movies.” We still remember with shudders of horror what Hollywood did to The Golden Compass.
Just because the protagonist of a story is a child doesn’t mean the story is for children. Despite a theatrical trailer full of virtually every famous teen/tween face in Hollywood, Ender’s Game is definitely not a novel for children. When it was my turn to start reading, I declared in surprise after a couple of chapters, “Um. This isn’t young adult.” (I had heard of the novel, of course, but I had just assumed that it was dark YA sci-fi. But it’s really not. It’s straight up cerebral sci-fi, dark and terrible and bleak like most of the great sci-fi, and it is very much for adults.) (Don’t get me wrong. Teens would probably love it, but back in 1985 certainly stuff that dark and subversive didn’t get published as YA.)
I read the novel as quickly as I could because it was disturbing, depressing, stressful, and monotonous most of the way through. (I read for pleasure before bed mainly to fill my mind with imagery and themes that might drown out my usual tormented nightmares. Ender’s Game is a well written and provocative novel, but it’s not exactly a whimsical kiss goodnight.)
As people who’ve read Ender’s Game know, at the beginning of the novel, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is six. And it’s not like the book suddenly jumps him up to adolescence. He leaves his family at six to go to Battle School, and he stays away for at least six years, experiencing the events of the novel. As I started the book, I found the first couple of chapters a bit disorienting. It’s hard to believe that a six-year-old child possesses such cunning, cold, strategic pragmatism. Ender does not think like a child. And the other children also seem bizarrely sinister, old beyond their years. One minute, conflict starts as a bully growls what he thinks is a menacing insult—like “fart eater,” for instance—and a few pages later, somebody’s dead.
The book is pervasively dark, too. As part of his training, Ender is systematically tortured by all the adults put in charge of his upbringing and education. They psychologically damage him deliberately in order to make him the leader they need. (And all the little kids are always hurling really nasty racial slurs at each other and threatening to kill each other.) It’s dark, dark stuff.
How can you film a movie like that? The thing about six-year-old actors is that off-camera, they’re still only six years old. Child stars have a hard enough time as it is. Imagine handlers whispering to Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen, “Now Michelle is going to kick Uncle Jesse as hard as she can in the crotch so that he can never father children he will love more than her. Then she’s going to say, ‘This is what happens when you make me angry, dude. Now go back to Greece, you *$&*&**! [I’m not sure what you say to insult a Greek person, but I’ll bet Orson Scott Card knows. He seems to be quite well versed in insulting everybody.]’.”
Obviously, you cannot make that movie. Maybe it could work as animation. But then you know people would just take their little kids and complain on message boards, “My two-year-old cried during the genocide parts of that cartoon.”
Maybe now is the time to admit that my four-year-old daughter went with us to see the movie because we all went together to celebrate my mother’s sixty-first birthday. Early on, I tried to explain, “Some parts might be scary, so you can cover your eyes. This is a story about a little boy who has to save the world from aliens.”
She interrupted dismissively, “I know what it’s about from the previews! I’ve been waiting to see this. I’m really excited.” Five minutes into the movie, she whispered, “This is sure slow getting started.” Then about ten minutes after that, she sighed woefully in disappointment, finally understanding, “Ohhhh. I thought we were going to see Thor: The Dark World.”
I felt so sorry for her. (Fortunately, though, she’s all set to see that this weekend. “Can you believe it??!!! Loki is actually going to help them this time??! I did not expect that! I can’t wait!”) Fortunately, too, the movie is nowhere near as dark and intense as the novel.
But I still wouldn’t take children. I mean, yes, I did take my child, but she didn’t like it (except for the parts in zero gravity and some scenes on alien planets). Actually, my mother (who picked the movie) didn’t like it, either. She said, “I thought it was kind of boring and slow. The same thing kept happening over and over again.”
I said, “Yeah, the book is very monotonous and oppressive like that, too.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “that’s why I stopped reading the book and decided to watch the movie first.”
My guess is that if you hated the novel Ender’s Game, you will also hate the movie. If you liked the novel, you’ll probably like the movie. If you loved the novel, you may be disappointed in the movie. If you are now incensed by the mere mention of the name Orson Scott Card, then (like a lot of other people) you probably won’t see the movie.
I definitely understand why some people are boycotting, but my personal take is that if you steer clear of a work of literature because its author tends to be kind of nuts, you’re not going to be able to read very much. You’d have to skip Ezra Pound entirely, and then how will you understand the dedication to “The Wasteland”?
I’m the crazy person who watched Farenheit 911 and The Passion of the Christ the same month because I figured that balanced out somehow, so I’m not likely to ignore someone’s ideas because of controversy (particularly when it’s more about the author’s statements outside the work). And besides, it was my mother’s birthday.
The Good:
The movie improves on the book by fleshing out the character of Major Anderson and giving her more of a voice and a backbone than the character in the novel.
The movie benefits from the well-drawn dialogues between Harrison Ford (rather perfectly cast as General Graff) and Viola Davis (a surprising but excellent choice for Anderson). Since this is a movie, it’s nice for the audience to receive the central questions of the story in very digestible form. Graff believes in total war, that the ends justify the means, not because he believes what he’s doing is right, but because he believes right and wrong cease to matter in the face of necessity. Graff wants to save the entire human race.
Anderson, on the other hand, has a more Star Trek take on space fighting. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? Is it worth it to save the human race if by doing so we lose our very humanity? Can it ever be right to use and damage children?
Graff is one of my favorite characters in the book because I understand his motivations and find him frustratingly sympathetic. (I’m sure I horrified fellow patrons in the restaurant afterwards by saying passionately over and over again, “If you’re going to go to war, then total war is the only thing that makes sense. It’s especially true if you’re fighting to save your species, fighting against an enemy that threatens to destroy you. If you leave anyone alive—even the children—they will come back to avenge the fallen. I don’t care if you pardon the children and let them inherit their disgraced father’s lands and titles. It doesn’t matter how close you keep them to the crown and how many favors you bestow on them. If you have shown mercy on any of them and brutally harmed others, they will remember, and they will come back, and they will kill you! You have to dash the brains of the infants on their fathers’ shields…”
Okay, I didn’t actually say that last thing. (I hope!) But I was reminded of a similar argument I made for total war during a class discussion on The Iliad my freshman year of college. Finally my professor asked, “Do you really think that we should kill children?” I answered immediately, “Oh no, of course I don’t think so. I’m just saying that if you have decided to go to war, then total war is the only kind that makes sense.” (A friend of mine in the professor’s other section told me that someone made the same argument in that class but unlike me, refused to back down. I wasn’t defending my own belief, just explaining what I saw as another viewpoint.)
Personally, I’m essentially a pacifist, but fortunately, I have the luxury of my morality. Think of people like Harry Truman, people who have to make tough choices with limited information. Graff isn’t a sadist. He’s a pragmatist. He wants to save lives. He wants to save humanity—by any means necessary.
He’s a very well written and troubling character in the novel, and Ford seems perfect to play him. (Harrison Ford is having a good year, by the way. Maybe Oscar voters will remember him as Branch Rickey, and he’ll actually get a Supporting nomination for 42. It’s not his fault Orson Scott Card can’t stop talking about all his exciting opinions.)
Anderson, on the other hand, is not such a great character in the book. My husband said that a friend of his complained that Anderson lacked backbone, and I agree. In the novel, Anderson is the coward who has some vague convictions but lacks the courage of them and defers to Graff simply because he lacks the character to stand up to him.
Viola Davis (who makes any movie better) makes Ender’s Game better too by giving Major Anderson a spine. As scripted by Hood and played by Davis, Anderson becomes the voice of conscience, someone willing to challenge Graff and vocalize the misgivings the audience is (or at any rate, should be) feeling about what’s being done to Ender and the other children (not to mention the aliens).
I feel kind of sorry for Viola Davis because she keeps appearing in movies that then get linked to high-profile author controversies. She’s such a good actress. As always, she’s marvelous here.
The ongoing dialogue between Anderson and Graff is what the movie does best (better, in fact, than the book).
The other strength of the movie is its visuals. The cinematography is great. In a less visually impressive year, cinematographer Donald McAlpine (who has had a long and fairly impressive career as a director of photography) should get some awards recognition. He still might, but it’s a pretty competitive field this year.
I’m a sucker for well framed close-ups of people’s faces. That’s really the kind of thing I like to watch best. It’s exciting to me to watch the actors interacting, reacting.
I’m not as big on military strategy and tactics, but those scenes are all handled extremely well, too.
My mother remarked, “The only thing I really did like were the early scenes in zero gravity in the Battle School.” Unaware of her comment, my husband said, “I thought the movie really improved once he left Battle School and got to Command School. Those scenes were really well done.”
Honestly, I think the whole movie looks good. All the tactical scenes and the scenes of dialogue were well filmed and presented. And though somewhat truncated, Ender’s computer generated video game/dreams look pretty good, too.
Another thing I love about this movie is how much it has made me appreciate the talents of Asa Butterfield. I mean, he was good in Hugo, but Chloë Grace Moretz gave such a superior performance that she overshadowed him. He’s really fantastic as Ender Wiggin, though. Granted, he isn’t six years old, but how many of us are? I look forward to his future work.
I was also pleased to see Hailee Steinfeld play a less affected character than Mattie in True Grit. She was great in that, but it’s always hard to know if someone young playing a very precocious, unusual character can actually do anything else. Steinfeld is very good (though the movie mishandles her relationship with Ender). Abigail Breslin is good as Valentine, too, but I wish she were in it a bit more.
Aside from Butterfield, my favorite young performance came from Moises Arias. In The Kings of Summer, I liked Arias as Biaggio much better than I liked Biaggio as a character. Arias is clearly talented and he is perfect as Bonzo. I love his intensity. I’m excited to see where his career goes from here.
Best Scene:
Either the aftermath of Ender’s final exam or the last revelation he makes in the story should be the best scene of the movie. Unfortunately these scenes are far from the best. They’re very disappointing.
All of the scenes between Graff and Anderson are riveting, however. Probably my favorite part comes when they argue about the mind game.
I also particularly like the way Harrison Ford delivers his lines in the early scene when he comes to Ender’s house to talk about what happened in the fight at the school. Ford is a good actor, and I knew he was cast in the role when I read the book, so his work here seemed perfect to me.
Best Scene Visually:
All the zero-gravity stuff is well done. I also particularly liked a brief scene just before the final battle when Ender is seen looking out from the center of a hazy, yellow, rectangular window onto an alien landscape.
Best Action Sequence:
One of my favorite scenes in the book (before you get to the part I really like) is the fight in the bathroom, but I thought that was a little understated in the movie, and I didn’t like the way they handled the aftermath.
Probably the most fun scene to watch is the one when Ender’s Dragon Army figures out a way to take on two opponents at once.
The Negatives:
When Ender approached his command center near the end of the film, his team surrounded him in a semi-circle. The lights shone around dramatically, and this lively electronic music played. Suddenly all I could think of was Anne Robinson saying, “Welcome to…The Weakest Link!!!!!”
That kind of took me out of the movie. It’s a minor complaint (not really a complaint at all), but it is the only time I even noticed the score, which might not be a good thing.
Really my biggest complaint is that Hollywood made good on one of my fears and watered down the movie. I’m not sure how they could have gotten around this. Lolita works much better as a book for similar reasons. I understand the need to add about six years to Ender’s age. And I even think lessening his trauma is forgivable. I mean, every new chapter of Ender’s life brings some fresh conflict in the book since he’s never allowed to become complacent or anything resembling happy. In the book, the moment someone shows him the slightest friendship or his life looks up in any way or he succeeds at all, Graff completely upends him again to keep him on his toes, miserable, alienated, and self-reliant. In the book, there’s really no relief or respite for Ender the entire time he’s at Battle School, but the movie allows him to build and maintain meaningful friendships and makes the whole thing seem much more positive. That does make for a more enjoyable movie.
But while it’s okay to make Battle School easier for little Ender, minimalizing the trauma (and the runtime) of his work at Command School is not okay. His final exam is so amazing in the book because of all that has come before and because we’re privy to Ender’s own thoughts. The scene is less effective (and disappointingly predictable) in the movie.
Here’s what really bothers me, though. The movie focuses far too much on Ender’s blossoming tactical skills and leaves out other important (though less central) details of the plot. Now maybe I’m not with the majority here, but all of Ender’s repeated training exercises bored and depressed me in the book. I think it’s all very monotonous and grim. But I get that those scenes are the meat of the story, so I understand that they pull focus in the movie.
But personally, I only began to enjoy the book when Peter and Valentine started all their Locke and Demosthenes stuff. That’s left out of the movie completely. I understand that they’re thinking of runtime and concision. But the book is so cerebral, and Ender’s tormented self-comparisons to Peter are a big part of what makes it so interesting. Peter’s ultimate fate isn’t just ironic or uncanny, it’s really quite significant. Both Peter and Valentine are crucial characters because they are foils for Ender (even Ender himself thinks so). Dropping both of them gives us less insight into Ender. It also removes a very important element from the story. Ender spends his entire life in Graff’s world, preparing for war. But that is only one worldview, and the book insightfully examines the tensions and precariousness of peace, as well. The novel looks at the active life, the political life, and the contemplative life, but the movie is just about fighting a war in space.
The idea of drone warfare is certainly very topical and timely, but so are the tricks of Locke and Demosthenes, and I think the movie does viewers a disservice by leaving out this part of the story.
More problematic and damaging is the way the movie addresses (or does not address) the concept of the ansible. I heard them mention the word once and never explain it. Why did they lessen the scope of the story? (I mean scope in terms of space, size of playing field.) By failing to explain the ansible, Hood is forced to give us an ending that is rushed, melodramatic, and basically makes no sense. The reason the ending made sense was because of the ansible and the distance to the target. In my view, the book really improves dramatically at the moment of Ender’s final exam, and the very last part of the story is actually what makes the book worth reading (unless you’re into torturing creepily strategic little kids).
But the movie gives us a rushed ending. (It has to.) It frustrates me because what it by far the best part of the book is by (equally) far the weakest part of the movie. Maybe they should have left more in and made the movie in two parts.
I honestly think there would have been a way to work in what Peter and Valentine were up to, and also to end the story properly. Since they had no intention of showing Ender before he was Asa Butterfield’s age anyway, maybe they could have skipped over more of Battle School than they did, begun the story at a later point, and given us crucial flashbacks instead.
The movie is a lot less intellectually sophisticated than the book, and I think that’s a bad thing since it’s clearly not a big, crowd-pleasing, shoot-em-up space adventure either.
I also didn’t get the impression that Ben Kingsley’s character in the book was so deeply and visibly invested in his Maori heritage. But his face tattoo is cool, and it does provide nice reinforcement of a major theme. (I haven’t read Speaker for the Dead. Do we learn about the tattoo in that maybe? I don’t know.)
Overall:
Just to be one-hundred percent clear about this, despite my ravings earlier, I do not like war and certainly do not condone genocide. (Personally, I prefer the simple eloquence of Chief Joseph’s, “I will fight no more forever.”) (For Pete’s sake, I still cry when I watch them tell Big Bird that Mr. Hooper won’t be coming back.) But I do like Harrison Ford’s performance as Graff, and I do find his character (disturbingly) easy to understand. What this movie does best is show us the tension between Graff’s sense of pragmatism and Anderson’s sense of morality. Harrison Ford and Viola Davis are both superb in their parts, and I was also quite impressed with Asa Butterfield in the lead role.
This movie gets a lot wrong, but to be fair, so does Orson Scott Card. If you like his book, you should probably watch the movie. You may not find it completely satisfying, but parts of the story are dramatized quite well, the acting is good across the board, and the visuals are outstanding.
Make no mistake, though. This movie may be about young people, but it is not really for children. Parts of it are very scary for little ones (and the rest is very boring for their grandmothers, apparently), so you should definitely take your kids to see Thor: The Dark World instead, because, let’s face it, that’s what they’re all really dying to see, anyway.