The Novel Ender's Game: The Film: The Review

If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me to read Ender’s Game because they think I would enjoy it, I’d probably have enough to buy a snowcone or maybe a bucket of popcorn to the new Ender’s Game movie that just opened last week. Then again, given today’s economy, I probably wouldn’t be able to even afford a stick of gum that’s already been chewed and spat onto a plate for me. But I guess that’s what I’d get for having such strange tastes.

Anyway, Ender’s Game is a film based off a book by a guy named Orson Scott Card. For those who don’t know, he’s apparently anti-homosexual to the point of embarrassment where he’s even shown up in TV ads for traditional marriage groups and the like. For some critics and even some consumers, this has been reason enough to look at this movie with more ire or just not want to bother with it in general. For me, on the other hand, I don’t care. He’s entitled to his opinions, however archaic and outdated they might be as I am mine. And, from what I gathered from the plot and characters of the film, that homophobic attitude didn’t leak into that fictional world. Maybe it was more noticeable in the book, but I didn’t read it, so who cares. This is a review from someone who has no prior understanding of the book so I can go in with a clear mind and total objectivity. You know, like when I forgot to actual read Eragon before watching the movie or when I was too young to really read Jurassic Park and saw the movie, though I might have been too young for that too.

So Ender’s Game is a film based off a book by a guy who is very homophobic and also very vocal about that same homophobia. The actual premise, on the other hand, is about a kid named Ender. He goes to school to learn to be a commander and lead an army to fight bug monsters. These schools teach the kids there how to lead armies into battle through the use of simulations that they call “games.” Oh, very clever, Mr. Card. I see what you did there.

During the course of the film, a convenient turn of events allows Ender to accelerate quickly through the ranks of classes almost as if they wanted to keep this film at a manageable length. Reminds me of Harry Potter and how they cut out many of the different classes that Harry takes in which we get some character building moments or just fun little side stories to help build the world up to feel bigger and more real. Granted, they do mention that they’re jumped forward in time during points of the movie, but I feel this could have been expanded upon more to give us a sense of some of the side characters. We only get to really know the girl/potential-love-interest but only because every movie has to build up one female character on their token character checklist. We also have a black kid, a Hispanic kid who grew up on the street, and an Islamic boy. Wouldn’t Captain Planet be proud?

That said we don’t really get a feel for any of them beyond basic side-character tropes. And those are just the kids that Ender is forced to team up with or battle against in the simulations. There are also the adults who run this shady operation. I won’t spoil anything, but they get a lot more screen time than they probably should since all their conversations and actions indicate there’s something bigger going on we aren’t being told. But since they put out all the money for Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley, they might as well get what they can for it. Though I would have preferred if Ben Kingsley returned as Iron Man 3’s The Mandarin for some much needed laughs.

But, as I was saying, all the adults are characterized as being in on something. It gives the sense that they’re all hiding something (which they are). And that makes it really hard to understand what their characters actually are other than a bunch of two-faced puppet masters who are merely playing Ender like a sociopathic fiddle. Because that’s the characterization I get from Ender, though that may be due to some rather flat acting on his part. Not that it was bad if he was trying to be sociopathic, but it comes off as such for the longest time not only because of the acting, but also because of how his brother and his personality affects Ender’s personality.

That’s  all part of some ongoing bullshit about how his older siblings tried to do what Ender does, but failed for one reason or another. His brother failed because he turned out to be Jason Voorhees while his sister was just “too compassionate” to use Ender’s words. It gets brought up multiple times throughout the movie like it’s incredibly important, but it really isn’t because you only see both those characters one time that really matters and they don’t do anything all too terribly important either beyond live up to their already described character trait.

But, as for the general premise, we’re going to war with aliens and that’s what this school is designed to teach the students to do. Lead a battle against these aliens. The problem I kept having was that it was never explained why we had to fight the aliens. Yes, the aliens attacked us something like 50 years ago. But did we ever find out why? Did we ever have any kind of contact with them to figure out what was up? I know they said the aliens couldn’t talk, but did anyone ever stop to think of an alternate way of communication? From where I was sitting, we were going to war and attacking a bunch of bug people for no reason other than because “they started it”. I want to imagine most governments, military leaders, and scientists would actually take a more diplomatic approach to this situation. But that’s me being idealistic and the film/book is actually probably right as to how this would actually go down. Though I would imagine that we’d probably lose the final encounter with the aliens because we aren’t that tech-savvy nor are we that intelligent or skilled to beat aliens who managed to make space travel that much sooner than we did. Humans kind of suck in general when it comes to that.

I won’t go into it too much more, but the ending actually did answer some of those questions, though not exactly what I was hoping for. And there are some bits that felt rather cliché and token to the genre. For example (spoiler) they explain the reason that the legendary fighter pilot won was because he took out a single ship, a mothership, and the other aliens fell. I immediately thought of the Chitari from Avengers and I didn’t like how that worked there either. Kill the head ship and the army just dies because that’s how it works. While I know the book existed and did it before Avengers, I still want to call bullshit because either they invented the trope or it existed prior to the book and it just continued to spread that trope like the venereal disease it is to good story telling.

Beyond that, visuals were good and sound was fine. Nothing really important to discuss there, though I know someone will knock me if I don’t mention them at all.

But that’s kind of my general approximation for Ender’s Game. Not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, but not necessarily great either. Very middle of the road at best. Tune in next time when I talk about Thor: The Dark World, a movie I am actually excited to watch. :D