Ender’s Game

Was gonna go this weekend… but I had to go to the early Thursday 8pm showing of Ender’s Game. Had to. Ender’s Game, the book, is perhaps my favorite novel – read it the first time at 16 or so, again in my early 20s, and I just reread it last year and it still has (almost) the same emotional impact. Quick synopsis (that will sound ultra-nerdy): Earth was attacked by an alien race and beaten back… now the military is seeking to train the next generation of soldiers to fight the next war. Ender Wiggin is recruited to Battle School to train and eventually face a fight for the extinction or survival of the species. But it’s deeper than the synopsis.

The movie worried me from the trailers – it looks like it was missing some of the points of the book or telling the story wrong… in such a way as to ruin the better, more emotionally and intellectually strong, parts (no spoilers) of the story.

Well, I’m relieved and even happy to say that the movie only suffers in comparison to the emotional heft of the book… but largely succeeds without ruining the story. And is still tries very hard to have the emotional – and ethical – beats. And make no mistakes, this is a sci-fi flick that’s all about ethics… of what’s right, what’s wrong, and how best to achieve necessary goals. Yes, they presented certain things in a radically different way than I would have (the initial alien invasion being an air battle instead of a space battle makes no sense but that’s probably a meaningless distinction to a newcomer to the story… as would much of my nitpickery nerdrage might be if I let it run rampant).

The movie is good enough – I wish it had spent more time with the wrenching, bone-weary exhaustion of the characters… which is oddly one of my only real complaints of the Hunger Games adaptation. It must be either very hard to show on screen or directors, editors, writers, or producers of movies think that would take too long to show on screen.

Anyhow, I really can recommend this movie – even to people who really aren’t that into sci-fi films. Because, while this is about space ships and aliens and whatnot, it’s really about a single character – a boy – and his struggle to achieve… and the ethics of turning that boy into a warrior. I’m uncertain, ultimately, how well it achieves its goals as I’m too close to the story but I’d like to think newcomers would enjoy it more.

As an aside, Harrison Ford is MUCH better in the movie than he looks in the trailers (which is to say, deeply bored). He’s not playing a particularly good person and in many ways this is a very courageous role for a guy who usually only plays the hero. The kid playing Ender is good if a little stilted at times… Hailey Steinfeld (last seen in True Grit and the recent Romeo and Juliet) is quite good but the only other character who really seems to have any heft (until maybe late in the movie). Most of the characters are thin portraits and that’s unfortunate but probably best they could do given the time.

Also, the movie Gravity becomes a weird prep for this movie’s zero g training sequences… and fans of the book will be happy to know they do an… adequate job of portraying the Battle Room. Not great but mainly only because they don’t spend enough time on it. The depiction is very good and given they can’t stop every minute to explain the strategies, do as good as they probably could. This paragraph means nothing to most… 

Score: 86