Title: Ender’s Game (2013)
Directed by: Gavin Hood
Screenplay by: Gavin Hood
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kingsley, Abigail Breslin
Run time: 114 minutes
Summary from IMDB: The International Military seek out a leader who can save the human race from an alien attack. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a brilliant young mind, is recruited and trained to lead his fellow soldiers into a battle that will determine the future of Earth.
The book vs the movie
I realize that there is a lot of controversy over this movie, mostly to do with Orson Scott Card’s insistence on sharing his personal views with the world. I try to ignore author wank, but some of the things he’s done in recent years have really offended me. Still, I am of the belief that a book and its author should be judged separately, and as a piece of art, Ender’s Game is a great story.
That said, I saw this movie in the theater, and while I enjoyed it, I was a tad disappointed. If I hadn’t read the books it would have been different, but there was a lot cut out of the story, things that I think were intrinsic to the overall plot and the psychological development of Ender and the other kids at Battle School.
Nearly everything to do with Valentine and Peter was cut out of the script, relegating Peter to a single scene and Valentine to about ten minutes of screen time. The ending was changed from the book and there was a lot that was breezed past, namely that Ender was a young child at the beginning of the book and spent years at Battle School. In the movie, things moved quickly, compacting years worth of happenings to a year or less. This took away from some of the story’s impact (the idea of a seven year old boy being that decisively ruthless and being crafted to be the weapon Ender became was what made the story so strong). The movie was a good watch, but I can’t help feeling that it could have been better.
It just seems like I could have saved money buying it on Blu-Ray or digital versus spending close to $60 going to the theater (I took my dad and my brother to the matinee). Movie and concession prices have been going up, leaving me to watch fewer movies in the theater. If my dad hadn’t wanted to see it so much, I’d have waited until I could pay $30 and buy a copy, because I was always going to add Ender’s Game to my library; $30 is a lot cheaper than $90.
I think it would have been better if the characters other than Ender were given more to work with. Valentine and Peter were such looming figures in book-Ender’s life: the abuses he suffered at the hands of Peter were what shaped his need to “end” his enemies; Valentine was the sister-mother figure that treated him with the compassion he needed and taught him how to survive; together they made him into Ender Wiggin, versus him growing up as some genius kid named Andrew with absentee parents and a bad habit of attracting bullies.
About the movie: The story opens with Ender being recruited for Battle School as humanity’s weapon against the bug-like Formic. There’s a brief scene with Peter and Valentine, then he’s introduced to the main characters and there’s a few brief Battle School sequences, then the main story, and the end.
The space battles are beautiful to watch, with flaring explosions and swirling galaxy shots. The scenes where he was playing the game could have used some work, mostly because the games we have now have such amazing graphics and I would imagine video games of the future will be truly spectacular.
Petra was used to take over a lot of the emotional impact of Valentine on Ender’s psyche. She was a strong female character and I appreciated that.
All that said, Asa Butterfield is a wonderful actor. He was strong enough to carry this movie on his own and was the perfect choice to play Ender.
Rating: 3-1/5
*Other than some of the game sequences, this was an aesthetically pleasing movie. The story needed to be fleshed out more; otherwise it seems a bit abrupt.
*Hopefully there will be a Director’s Cut or Special Edition that is expanded. (Can they film some extra scenes now and splice them in for the commercial release? They could even do a limited theatrical release like they do with all the Disney movies and Star Wars.)
BTW, the idea of Han Solo + the Death Star did pop into my head while I was watching the movie. It gave me a bit of a chuckle.
