I really would have liked a second
opportunity to watch Ender's Game
before writing about it. In all honesty, I can't consider this a
review. I'm of mixed mind on a lot of things, which is why even this
took so long to write. That, and the fact that November kept my nose
to the grindstone, as it were.
What
is Ender's Game, then?
Well, for one, it's a film that a lot of people were really
interested in seeing. I imagine many schoolchildren were first
introduced to Science Fiction by Orson Scott Card. Now, years later
for me and decades later for this story, it's on film. Ender's
Game was a very cerebral novel,
largely taking place in Ender's head, gauging his reactions as he
transformed from a boy with potential to a leader with no choice to
do anything but.
Writer/Director Gavin Hood's
biggest project prior to this was X-Men Origins: Wolverine,
a film that, to put it lightly, was not well received. How did this
influence his approach to Ender's Game?
Well, it seems that Hood was inspired to transform Ender's
Game into...a music video.
No,
this isn't a movie in the manner of Moonwalker
or Heavy Metal. It
wears the facade of a regular movie. But it was written like the
skit segments of a music video. It had the same feeling of
compression, the same depth of plot and character, as a music video.
It had the same strange, semi-symbolic-but-mostly-just-surreal
imagery as a music video. And it had just the sort of long,
drawn-out sequences of walking down a corridor as strange things
change for no reason that made me expect David Bowie to step on
screen and start twirling his balls...ball. Whatever.
It
is clear that Gavin Hood understood a lot of the plot elements that
made Ender's Game
work. It is just as clear that he either didn't understand why
they worked, or he didn't understand how to adapt it into a cohesive
movie that still worked. Instead, we get a jumble of plot points
thrown at us like a game of plot-point dodgeball, with all of the
time that made them work skipped over. We get lingering scenes of
the highest paid actor in Hollywood earning his paycheck by talking
about what Ender should be doing, which results in his entire
schooling seeming to take less than a week, rather than the years of
sweat and focus that honed the story in the novel. In Card's
original, everything went by quickly, but it slowed down enough to
make a logical progression. Ender learned by observing. In
Gavin Hood's Ender's Game,
Ender learns by simply being a genius. Every tactic that he uses, he
knows without seeing anything to allow him to learn. This adds to
the fact that he is impetuous, blunt and unable to take a hint.
There
are things, however, that make me wonder how much of this is really
Hood's fault, and how much of it is the result of attempting to make
a story like this in the Hollywood atmosphere of flash and money. I
already mentioned one rather obvious example. Here's another.
In
Ender's Game, there is
one female character of note. I'm not talking about Valentine; she's
not a character. She's almost a character, and I would say that by
the time Speaker for the Dead
comes around, she is one, but here, she largely exists as a motivator
for Ender. No, I am speaking about Petra Arkanian, the girl who
shows Ender the ins and outs of Battle School (that's not meant as a
euphamism, and I'll explain why not in a moment) and, later, becomes
the lieutenant that Ender leans on so much that she is the first to
have a nervous breakdown.
As
for the point that I said I would explain, one point that is
simultaneously brilliant and frustrating about Ender's Game
is the fact that the characters are just young enough to make a
sexual relationship all but impossible. Sure, in the right
environment, romance and physical love can happen between pre-teens,
but when the idea isn't presented, it's not very likely.
Particularly in a distraction-rich environment like Battle School.
This helps to tone down the potentially incestuous undertones of the
story, as well as preventing Petra from growing into a love interest,
as much as readers interested in giving the characters a happy ending
(or even a respite from Battle School) might wish her to. Still,
this allowed Petra to be just “one of the boys”, if one of the
smartest and funniest among them, without her sex being used as a
means to judge her.
All
of which is completely antithetical to the mainstream film-making
mentality. Ten and twelve year olds aren't used for a role of this
complexity. And films like this don't happen without some sort of
love interest. So Petra's role is expanded. She's added in to extra
scenes, and has less of her scenes cut than anybody else in the
story. In fact, she is the only member of Ender's team that makes
sense to share a bond with him in the context of the story; the only
one that we really see share any hardships with him, other than his
sister. She's then given awkward hand-holding scenes and alone time
with him, just enough for the trailers to show a love interest
without explicitly denying everything that she was in the original
story. The latter issue is resolved when, instead of being a trusted
commander that Ender learns too late not to use as a crutch, she
becomes an object to be protected. Rather than controlling large
swaths of the battlefield, the only woman in the main cast becomes
someone who must sit back and let the men protect her until it is
time for her to hit a button.
The
visuals are where the budget of this film was really placed and,
while they don't really fit with the story that needs to be told,
they are impressive. While it's impossible to forget that you are
watching a trailer, or a music video, or both at times, it's still
hard to tear your eyes from the screen. Ender's Game
was made for IMAX screens, most likely a way to justify making a
Sci-Fi film as different from the standard Hero's Journey model as
Ender's Game is.
Ultimately,
I need to watch this movie again when it comes out on Netflix. I
have a lot of complaints, but the end result was still mostly
entertaining to watch. There are a few key scenes that I need to
look for, and some other things that I need to look at, before I can
make a final decision about this movie. As the very least, it is a
fair companion to the book. I could see clips of this movie being
played while summarizing the book, or even an edited version being
used as a visual novel. No matter what the case, though, it's a far
cry from the strength of the original story.
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