[Movie] Ender's Game - Page 23

After I watched the movie, I felt super depressed for a bit because it felt like I just spent two hours watching my childhood get violated before my eyes.

All I knew was that I had a strong, visceral aversion to the adaption, but for a couple of days, I couldn't identify what exactly was so bad about the film. I mean, the small/not so small deviations bothered me, but certainly not to an extent to mar the movie as much as I felt – they are necessities in adapting a relatively complex story into an easily digestible two-hour movie.

The only change that really bothered me was the arbitrary placement of Bean into Ender’s launch group. As I dwelt on that, though, I began to get a vague idea of what it was that irked me – depressed me, even – so much about the adaption. To properly explain (or at least attempt to), I think I have to lay out exactly what it was about the book that I liked so much. For me, it was a story not necessarily just about Ender’s Game, but about the characters surrounding Ender. The entire point of the Ender character, to me, was about how he interacted with the other characters, and through those interactions, finds himself [or whatever cliché you want to insert here.] Nothing inherently special, but I think what caused me to re-read this book dozens of times was how special each of those interactions were. The book was not about Ender – it was about the entirety of the cast, with Ender merely as a focal point. That, to me, was the crux of the story.

The film, however, overlooked this aspect completely. Every single character was reduced to a mere caricature, and the story became a plot-driven sci-fi action adventure as opposed to a look at the relationships between the characters. By placing Bean into the launch group – itself not a huge issue – and then hinting that he might be significant (as the first person Ender interacts with on the shuttle/in Battle School), they set up the film to retain the essence of the book by establishing a relationship between the two major characters. The rest of the film, however, sees Bean say something around 20 lines, all of them completely inconsequential. Petra is reduced to a plot device of teaching Ender how to shoot and catalyzing his confrontation with Bonzo, and Alai literally did nothing but say “Salaam.” Bernard was randomly elevated into a friend/supporter/final comrade of Ender, despite his initial characterization as a standard bully, and the role was just so awkward on him and every single line that came out of him in support of Ender felt like the most saccharine and artificial thing in the history of film. One can attempt to attribute this to a simple lack of acting chops among most of the cast, but I think that’s an unfair assessment, because the script simply did not give any of these other children even a chance at developing their character into something more than background noise.

The most well-done child aside from Ender was actually Bonzo. I really did enjoy his depiction, and the random Napoleon Complex throw-in actually felt really right and not at all out of place.

Hell, all of this can be simplified to this: I loved Ender’s Game because the relationships between the characters, though exaggerated, had a depth to them that made them vivid and attractive. The movie made them feel exaggerated but also awkward and one-dimensional. I wouldn’t say that all the relationships in the novel were exactly realistic, but they were certainly more enticing than the garbage we saw on screen, which really was just a host of clichés that weren't even executed well.

The film, in short, felt rushed. None of the “supporting” characters (quotation marks because, as I’ve laid out, I don’t think they’re really a true supporting cast, but just as integral to the story as Ender himself) were given any room to develop, and every single line that didn’t come out of Ender was a heavy-handed action to advance the plot. Bonzo might've felt like the most well-depicted character by the mere fact that he was given the most screentime.

Obviously, the directors/writers/producers, and I guess Card himself since he was an executive producer, decided that Ender’s Game should (understandably) be about, well, Ender’s Game. However, I fundamentally disagree. Ideally, I would’ve liked to see the story be expanded to two movies, which would’ve allowed a much more adequate portrayal of Battle School – which was the meat of the actual novel, but barely occupied half of the movie. That is of course unrealistic, but I still can’t help but feel that all the wrong parts were highlighted. We literally saw a grand total of two – TWO – Battle Room battles. Step back and think about that for a moment – the thing that dominated about 70% of the book was reduced to two scenes.

Instead of dedicating time to properly depict Battle School, we get ridiculous scenes like the Peter/Valentine backstory that was crucial to the book but translated very poorly to the screen (Peter was another caricature, and the Valentine scenes felt so clichéd that I wanted to vomit. Not to mention Ender’s absurd, one-dimensional reactions to them that didn’t even come close to the complexity of the character in the book) and the WTF last 20 minutes where Ender runs around with the Hive Queen. Seriously, those are important plot points, but completely pointless to adapt in the capacity that they were. It was a case of them sacrificing a chance to properly depict Battle School in an attempt to cram in as much of the plot as possible, and then failing at even that, which makes you wonder why they did it at all.

Look, I understand Hollywood is different from a book. But I can’t help but feel that something in the book that was very special to me – and I’m sure to many others – was not only overlooked as often occurs in an adaption, but was actively exposed, eviscerated, and eradicated.