Ender's Game
So I went to see Ender’s Game. Short version: go read the book.
As it was...okay. I love the book, have since I was 14, and this just wasn’t as good. One could argue it was never going to live up to all that, that some of the compromises made to make it a film were inevitable, that it wouldn’t translate well. And all of that’s largely true, but still it could have been better.
I do get why they couldn’t start the movie with Ender as a six year old, especially not and have it track him over years, but I feel like a lot of what was lost in the first 2/3 of the movie was down to the age and time problem. The Battle School portion of the movie had me side-eying it a lot for the choices made to make it work, but it still mostly held together. It was a Cliff Notes version of the story, though ignoring the B-plot with Valentine and Peter entirely, and pretty much all the weight of the story sucked out; but I was willing to go with it as a superficial telling of the story. (Though this isn’t exactly ASOIAF, EG is only about 300 pages long, it could have gone a little deeper.)
The last third of the movie on the other hand, was just a mess. The plot changes really bug because there’s no reason for most of them and definitely no real thought given to them. And the vacancy of emotional weight is sucking the story down a lot. The reason Ender and Valentine’s meeting has the weight it does in the book is that it’s been *years* since they had any contact, Ender’s been stripped down and rebuilt and is having an existential crisis struggling with his soul and identity. I couldn’t tell you the difference between Ender’s commanders and there’s not even half as many as there were in the book. You just don’t feel who Ender is when the ending reveal comes out, so it’s hard to get a lot of feeling for what he goes through once he does.
And oh man, the ending...I think I did know that the last couple chapters of EG weren’t very good movie material. They’re weird enough in the book, but necessary to Ender’s story of becoming something more than a soldier and killer; giving him a chance to build something, restore something, and then speak for the dead. But since we don’t really see him lose so much of himself to that role in the main story, it’s just kind of a random ending here. And that’s kind of a breakdown of the problem of the movie as an adaptation; the book was about thing, there’s just stuff that happens in the movie. Ender was a flawed and imperfect character in the books he’s just blank and borderline Gary Stu in the movie.
I’m pretty sure the writer(s?) knew the end had to be there to give the story some hope for the future (after all, they evidently only included the mind game at all so the end would still even sort of work), but I hope they did it for only the hope of Ender’s future, not thinking of franchising this. Since apparently travel at relativistic speeds isn’t a factor in the movie-verse since they travelled from Earth to near Bugger space in like no time at all (I guess Mazor was in cryo-sleep or something), the...skipping across the surface of time that Ender does as he travels around trying to atone for his action wouldn’t seem to be in play. And since none of the other characters got jack in the way of characterization there’s nothing to pick up to try and carry on the Shadow series.
Look, as a movie on its own I suspect it’s okay. My dad’s only read the book once and he thought the movie was fine; not great, but not too bad. But even he agreed it was a very Cliff Notes summery of events in the novel. My mom, who was the one who got me to read it all those years ago, so has read it more than I have, was a little less...angry at it than I am, or at least she got over it quicker. I will admit to the fact that my main problem is that by the end it got so wrong in my opinion at the end that I walked out angry. Averaged out it wasn’t as bad as it seemed when I started complaining about it, but once I got started complaining I’d gotten so angry at it that I kind of hated it.
I kind of felt like there was a level of extra-PC-ness to this adaptation too. While I could say this was just because the filmmakers just wanted it to be more PC, I kind of suspect it was done to counteract some of the Card related backlash the film is liable to get. And don’t get me wrong, Card’s an asshole, but I’m not sure all the changes work. Unfortunately I think making Anderson a woman caused them to change the character so far that it’s really not Anderson any more. Book-Anderson is just as culpable as Graff in breaking Ender down, not there to play good cop (maybe marginally more good cop than Graff in the book, but not by much); and by making him/her a woman and softer turned her into a nice mother figure against Graff’s force of personality; which aside from the representation really isn’t a terribly progressive development.
There’s a couple things I will give them marginal credit on. Condensing a few other characters’ plots into movie-Bernard is not the worst choice ever; book-Bernard is really just Ender’s warm up for Bonzo and never really changes so making that (still very minor) arc something that could play out more or less worked. And I was worried the end would reveal that all the people in the background during the battle-campaign were piloting the ships out fighting, that the movie would take away the idea that Ender was really ordering people to their deaths in those battles, but they did confirm (kind of in passing, but I was alert for it) that they didn’t pull punches on that.
But I’d tell everyone, whether they enjoyed the movie or not, to go and read the book. There’s just so much the movie misses the mark on that makes the book so excellent. Yes Card’s an asshole a lot of people don’t want to support, but damn it this book is too good not to recommend because the author is kind of disgusting. So find a friend/relative/library/used book store where you can get the book. The movie, watch if you want; but read the book.
(Also, movie, bullshit that’s Bean.)
As it was...okay. I love the book, have since I was 14, and this just wasn’t as good. One could argue it was never going to live up to all that, that some of the compromises made to make it a film were inevitable, that it wouldn’t translate well. And all of that’s largely true, but still it could have been better.
I do get why they couldn’t start the movie with Ender as a six year old, especially not and have it track him over years, but I feel like a lot of what was lost in the first 2/3 of the movie was down to the age and time problem. The Battle School portion of the movie had me side-eying it a lot for the choices made to make it work, but it still mostly held together. It was a Cliff Notes version of the story, though ignoring the B-plot with Valentine and Peter entirely, and pretty much all the weight of the story sucked out; but I was willing to go with it as a superficial telling of the story. (Though this isn’t exactly ASOIAF, EG is only about 300 pages long, it could have gone a little deeper.)
The last third of the movie on the other hand, was just a mess. The plot changes really bug because there’s no reason for most of them and definitely no real thought given to them. And the vacancy of emotional weight is sucking the story down a lot. The reason Ender and Valentine’s meeting has the weight it does in the book is that it’s been *years* since they had any contact, Ender’s been stripped down and rebuilt and is having an existential crisis struggling with his soul and identity. I couldn’t tell you the difference between Ender’s commanders and there’s not even half as many as there were in the book. You just don’t feel who Ender is when the ending reveal comes out, so it’s hard to get a lot of feeling for what he goes through once he does.
And oh man, the ending...I think I did know that the last couple chapters of EG weren’t very good movie material. They’re weird enough in the book, but necessary to Ender’s story of becoming something more than a soldier and killer; giving him a chance to build something, restore something, and then speak for the dead. But since we don’t really see him lose so much of himself to that role in the main story, it’s just kind of a random ending here. And that’s kind of a breakdown of the problem of the movie as an adaptation; the book was about thing, there’s just stuff that happens in the movie. Ender was a flawed and imperfect character in the books he’s just blank and borderline Gary Stu in the movie.
I’m pretty sure the writer(s?) knew the end had to be there to give the story some hope for the future (after all, they evidently only included the mind game at all so the end would still even sort of work), but I hope they did it for only the hope of Ender’s future, not thinking of franchising this. Since apparently travel at relativistic speeds isn’t a factor in the movie-verse since they travelled from Earth to near Bugger space in like no time at all (I guess Mazor was in cryo-sleep or something), the...skipping across the surface of time that Ender does as he travels around trying to atone for his action wouldn’t seem to be in play. And since none of the other characters got jack in the way of characterization there’s nothing to pick up to try and carry on the Shadow series.
Look, as a movie on its own I suspect it’s okay. My dad’s only read the book once and he thought the movie was fine; not great, but not too bad. But even he agreed it was a very Cliff Notes summery of events in the novel. My mom, who was the one who got me to read it all those years ago, so has read it more than I have, was a little less...angry at it than I am, or at least she got over it quicker. I will admit to the fact that my main problem is that by the end it got so wrong in my opinion at the end that I walked out angry. Averaged out it wasn’t as bad as it seemed when I started complaining about it, but once I got started complaining I’d gotten so angry at it that I kind of hated it.
I kind of felt like there was a level of extra-PC-ness to this adaptation too. While I could say this was just because the filmmakers just wanted it to be more PC, I kind of suspect it was done to counteract some of the Card related backlash the film is liable to get. And don’t get me wrong, Card’s an asshole, but I’m not sure all the changes work. Unfortunately I think making Anderson a woman caused them to change the character so far that it’s really not Anderson any more. Book-Anderson is just as culpable as Graff in breaking Ender down, not there to play good cop (maybe marginally more good cop than Graff in the book, but not by much); and by making him/her a woman and softer turned her into a nice mother figure against Graff’s force of personality; which aside from the representation really isn’t a terribly progressive development.
There’s a couple things I will give them marginal credit on. Condensing a few other characters’ plots into movie-Bernard is not the worst choice ever; book-Bernard is really just Ender’s warm up for Bonzo and never really changes so making that (still very minor) arc something that could play out more or less worked. And I was worried the end would reveal that all the people in the background during the battle-campaign were piloting the ships out fighting, that the movie would take away the idea that Ender was really ordering people to their deaths in those battles, but they did confirm (kind of in passing, but I was alert for it) that they didn’t pull punches on that.
But I’d tell everyone, whether they enjoyed the movie or not, to go and read the book. There’s just so much the movie misses the mark on that makes the book so excellent. Yes Card’s an asshole a lot of people don’t want to support, but damn it this book is too good not to recommend because the author is kind of disgusting. So find a friend/relative/library/used book store where you can get the book. The movie, watch if you want; but read the book.
(Also, movie, bullshit that’s Bean.)