A goodly few find science fiction to be silly, indulgent and puerile. There's certainly plenty that's just nonsense and fluff, but the same is true of any genre. Its worth is in how it can wrestle with big ideas by changing their form so that we come at them from a new perspective. Ender's Game (the film, rather than the book) is nine-tenths fluff, one-tenth big idea. That it is, for the most part, fluff isn't entirely director Gavin Hood's fault - it's just mostly his fault.
Condensing the set-up of Orson Scott Card's novel into a paragraph is probably futile, but here goes: Ender (Asa Butterfield) is being trained to become a master tactician because of an attempted invasion by an alien race 50 years before his birth. He's sent to battle school, which is on a space station in Earth's orbit. (Half of you will have already started to tune out, but stick with it.) The literal and figurative centre of the school is the Battle Room, a zero gravity chamber where the cadets fight. There's no up or down, no east or west; tactically it's brand new territory. Which is why Ender is so important. He's young enough to set aside his preconceptions and fight in a way his elders could never imagine. This is all just lead-in. What's at the heart of the story is the quote during the opening credits: "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him." Ender is being turned into a weapon, but to become the perfect weapon guarantees he'll be a weapon that'll never fire, because how can he destroy what he loves? That's an interesting idea right there, and it's what Hood is supposed to be exploring. What he's actually done is produced a CliffsNotes version of the novel: it hits all the major story beats, but is ultimately lifeless. There's no tension to any of it. No risk. Instead Hood spends the first two-thirds of the film shouting about how the aliens WILL come back because, um, because they WILL! Which isn't a particularly good stand-in for actual tension.
Frustratingly Hood manages to get the hardest things right (the casting of Ender and the immaculate design of the Battle Room) but drops the ball when it comes to basic storytelling. He sprints through the story to suggest narrative momentum where there is none, and in his rush forgets to explain things that would help us connect with the impossible things we're seeing (the most notable thing to go unexplained is how battles are won or lost (or even fought) in the Battle Room, which is a rather crucial bit of info - if we don't understand that then we don't understand why Ender's as good as he is).
Hood is a workmanlike director, usually better suited to grounded dramas (Tsotsi) than anything sci-fi inflected (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Here he simplifies Card's award winning book to such a degree that it'd be indecipherable to any who hasn't read it. It's only in the last few scenes that the film seems to escape its first act, finally telling the story it had been hiding in plain sight. But then it ends, and the credits roll.
Overall: 4.5/10
Minor spoilers! (highlight to read)
In a flashback/stock footage of the alien invasion we do battle against the invaders with fighter jets. Not futurist-type ones, but the ones we presently use. Jump forward 50-years and our tech, particularly that of our spaceships, is so powerful it would give Lord Vader and his Death Star pause. How did that happen exactly? And how did we build them and send them many many lightyears into the aliens home system by the time the story starts? From what I remember of the book this isn't an issue as we do battle with tech of a comparable level. Not sure why Hood changed that. It just adds to the film's many problems.
When you say that Hood has dropped the ball by not explaining how the battles in zero gravity are won or lost, I think you've missed the point. For one thing, the film does explain it, albeit briefly. More importantly, the battles are not the point of the film at all, which really aims to focus on the tension created by Ender's isolation--he struggles to understand his enemy, he struggles to form friendships and maintain his bonds with his family in a world where at every turn he is put in a position to dominate or die. The questions asked by the film at its heart are more existential than you would think : "Who is the enemy?" "At what cost do we defeat them?" "Is war the answer?" When you say there is no tension in the story, you fail to count the cost of Ender's training--and the cost of the solution he arrives at inadvertently, via what he believes to be a simulation. And when the ending arrives--the ending you say lacks any impact--you are forced to question whether or not the solution was a crime. Ender himself offers a sort of answer here, feeling burdened as he does by guilt for the lives he threw away in a battle he did not know what real, and by the genocide of a people that had shown no recent threats of invasion and with whom an understanding may have been reached if there had been any attempt at true communication. That's the real value of this film : a quality of storytelling that provokes a reflection on self and other, a consideration of what it means to understand and empathize. As to how it compares to the source material, I cannot speak to that, for I have not read the book. But as a viewer, I was taken in from the very beginning by the struggles of the characters, and left with a sense of much to think about. In sum, for me it was a well-paced blend of entertaining sci-fi and universally human questions of meaning--a rare combination of flick and meaningful storytelling, with great special effects and a well-balanced cast. I enjoyed, and I believe I would enjoy it again!
ReplyDeleteIt's really interesting to read what you took away from the film, as it matches very closely (extremely closely in fact) what I felt reading the book. You clearly responded exactly how the filmmakers hoped, but I'm afraid I couldn't go with it - for the reasons I described. The ideas and themes you mention resonated far more in the book. I don't really want to get into a full-on, book versus film debate, but with the film I didn't find the same points as effective; they felt glossed over, at least by comparison.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting you thoughts.
Perhaps I benefited from not having first read the book when I watched this movie--I had no prior experience of the story to compare it to. Coming at it as a blank slate, I had no trouble feeling it--the themes are transparent, but you don't feel like the director is sermonizing. Which is about what I like in a film or book. I want the story to speak for itself, not to be overrun by its own message. That said, I did have the sense that it was perhaps rather simplified--movies usually are, if for no other reason than that you have more room to develop a broader scope in a novel than you do in a feature length film. I'm more of a fantasy reader than sci-fi, but I might just have to put Ender's Game on my shortlist--if for no other reason than to see your point. ☺
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