# Ender's Game movie - anyone seen it? (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 31, 2013, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796 "2013-10-31T22:41:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/41 "2013-11-04T17:16:48Z")
> [@mandala](#): > > But Ender’s team’s pirouettes in the zero-gee battle station did little for them in the final video-game-for-real battle. It’s not that they had to swim through space or anything. Not really - the final battle was nearly identical to the one they set up in the Battle Room with the newly-formed Dragon team versus Salamander and the second team. The obstacles were all set up to obscure the view of the defensive field, just like the asteroid field obstructed the view of the final battle scene. They were outmanned in both situations, and both situations were resolved by shielding their main weapon with their own assets, resulting in massive casualties as well as a last-ditch shot at the ultimate objective. Are you sure you weren’t sleeping during the majority of this movie? > [@](#): > > The only actual battle footage that Ender (and we) got to see over and over was the downing of the bug mothership with a single missile fired off a warplane in Earth’s atmosphere. Missile? No, that was a fighter jet on what seemed to be a kamikaze vector. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/42 "2013-11-04T17:19:56Z")
> [@Incubus](#): > > I enjoyed it myself, my wife thought it was so-so (not being a big fan of science fiction, and having a hard time connecting to movies that lack significant female roles). A few things bothered/confused me about the story (both relevant to the film and the book which I read years ago) > > -The book and short story it was based on presented a ‘twist’ to the reader, in which all this ‘training’ in the simulators is actual battles being waged. But I thought the film telegraphed it way too much; the Colonel seeing the looming enemy fleet on the screen, moving them to Command School located on a former Formic outpost, having their ‘Graduation battle’ be right before they get thrown into the meat grinder. My wife knew right away when they were fighting the Formics for real, and I feel the movie didn’t give enough ambiguity to what they were doing leading up to the finale. I agree, the “twist” was weakly handled and lost much of its punch. > [@](#): > > -Harrison Ford’s character spends the whole movie talking about how they need different kinds of commanders, to think in a way to overcome the Formics. But the world Command School is located on is one liberated from the Formics 26 years prior- the movie trailers would have you believe after we barely beat them on Earth we’ve been barely hanging on by a thread until someone like Ender comes along. But the reality is we basically cornered them back to their own homeworld, Ender takes command, and finishes them off. Harrison Ford’s character is, shall we say, a trifle unreliable. Part of the big “twist” - and again, it isn’t handled well in the movie - is that _they_ are not invading _us_ (as the government would have us believe), we are invading _them_. The government keeps the war hysteria up by portraying a second invasion by the Formics as an immediate threat - but it isn’t. The sequence is - Formics invade, do all sorts of damage, get defeated by Rackham; Formics pull pack; Earth launches pre-emptive strike against Formics. The last part is a dead secret - the Earth’s population thinks Earth has a huge defensive fleet just outside the solar system, but in fact, it is launched as an invasion. > [@](#): > > -The nature of the story puts a great emphasis on tactics, primarily these ‘carriers’ and fighter drones. The idea of why the Formics are supposed to be so formidible is before Mazer figured out their ‘weakness’ it was assumed they fought/flew randomly. But aside from the Little Doctor very little emphasis is placed on technology itself, which I find kind of weird since obviously Earth had 50 years to adapt to fighting the Formics. The Earth folks went from having fighter jets to having interstellar spaceships and matter disrupters. > [@](#): > > -I found it a little unnerving the ships they were commanding were actually manned. Its been a long time since I read the book, but I assumed all the ships were remotely controlled drones. If you are using Child Genius Commanders to fight your wars, why even need a guy behind the wheel? Also, it must really suck for those 1,000 crewmembers on the Carriers that ender abandoned :eek: . Plot-wise, that just ups the ante. Not only is Ender & Co. committing genocide on aliens, each one of those computer blips that gets erased is some humans dead. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/43 "2013-11-04T17:54:58Z")
> [@DirkGntly](#): > > It is also plain that they’re hoping to build a franchise with this movie, much like “Hunger Games.” That’s sort of a shame, as it’s unlikely the sequel will an adaptation of the (excellent) “Speaker for the Dead.” Teenagers probably won’t flock to watch a man in his thirties grapple with the deeds of his youth, and guilt, and a hideous mutation plague. Well, they might be interested in that last bit. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/44 "2013-11-04T22:35:26Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > That’s sort of a shame, as it’s unlikely the sequel will an adaptation of the (excellent) “Speaker for the Dead.” Teenagers probably won’t flock to watch a man in his thirties grapple with the deeds of his youth, and guilt, and a hideous mutation plague. Well, they might be interested in that last bit. People have called Ender’s Game unfilmable for nearly 30 years and I still think it would be okay if they hadn’t tried. (I haven’t seen the movie; I’m just commenting on the general success of SF book to movie.) Everything else in the original Ender series is actually probably easier to film in terms of not needing a lot of effects except for animating the Pequeninos in Speaker and the Formics in Xenocide/Children, but it gets complicated fast just in terms of locations and characters after Speaker as well as ideas. I suspect that Speaker could make for a very interesting movie but once again you’d have to cut a lot. And even then it’s one hell of a jump in terms of time and space between the two works. And Card has always been clear that Ender’s Game really exists as a book only to set up Speaker. But I think Speaker is less unfilmable than Card seems to think. You’ve basically got two or three mysteries intertwined–the death of the xenologer at the start, the lifecycle of the piggies, and everything to do with Novinha and her choices over the years. A really good screenwriter and director might be able to pull it off. You’ll lose a lot of the philosophy but the skeleton could hold up as a movie. More likely would be something with Bean. Anyway, looking at the tree on the Wikipedia entry for Speaker, I had had a feeling that Card has spent the last 15 years or so coasting on Ender. That may not be fair to his total output, but man that’s a lot of writing since the first four books. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2013, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/45 "2013-11-04T22:55:05Z")
_Speaker for the Dead_ would be easily filmable, but the big problem is that it really wouldn’t be a sequel in any sense Hollywood recognizes. Aside from the existing fans of the books (a very small demographic), there’s almost no overlap between the people who would enjoy the two. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/46 "2013-11-05T01:17:32Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > The movie was alright. As much as Graff & Co. were rushed to get Ender to Command School in the book, the movie was even more rushed to get there. I know that in an era of stretching stories out far beyond what is necessary, it seems this might have been better suited for two films. I felt the same way about how rushed it was. There’s really no reason why they couldn’t have used some common film techniques (can I get a montage!) to show the passage of time. Show how the cycle of constantly fighting every team in the school is taking its toll on Ender, how he’s fed up, how he just wants it to be over and just drives directly for the gate. Then the fight with Bonzo, and he gives up. The command school fight could would have a parallel run-up. Overall, I thought it was good. It was very faithful to the book in most of the ways that mattered. I wish they could have spent a _little_ more time on character development, and part of that would be making it clear that the group was together for a long time. Why even have a whole battle school if the final battle is going to be fought entirely by a group of launchies a few weeks after they meet? ---
**Author:** ![magnusblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/47 "2013-11-05T01:23:34Z")
I would give it a 50%, 2 out of 4, whatever. After seeing the previews, it was about as good as I expected (and not as bad as I worried). They hit the major points of the novel (aside from unsurprisingly cutting out the Locke/Demosthenes stuff), but all of the little details and characterization that make the novel so good are left out. Everything feels rushed and paint by numbers. The biggest crime is that the “twist” is weakly done (and somewhat given away by Graff/Rackham’s lines). ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/48 "2013-11-09T03:58:41Z")
I enjoyed the movie very much, and I think it will be fine for people like me who read the book years ago and don’t remember all the details but still remember the basic characters and plot. I thought the boy, Asa Butterfield, did a fine job. The movie wasn’t spectacular but it held my interest and I’m not a big movie-goer. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus\_alba](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quercus_alba/32/4061_2.png) [@Quercus\_alba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus_alba)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/49 "2013-11-10T03:13:35Z")
Saw it with my son, 12, who read the book a couple of months ago. He rated it 4/5, with numerous specific critiques. (That’s mah boy!) 🆒 One thing he pointed out that I would have missed, having not read the book in a number of years, is that the word “bugger” is never used in the film. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/50 "2013-11-10T05:35:15Z")
It’s probably understandable that pubescent boys and the term “bugger” don’t appear together in a film. Well, a family film. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus\_alba](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quercus_alba/32/4061_2.png) [@Quercus\_alba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus_alba)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/51 "2013-11-10T15:57:37Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > It’s probably understandable that pubescent boys and the term “bugger” don’t appear together in a film. Well, a family film. Yes, that was understood. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/52 "2013-11-10T21:02:07Z")
> [@Rushgeekgirl](#): > > I enjoyed the movie very much, and I think it will be fine for people like me who read the book years ago and don’t remember all the details but still remember the basic characters and plot. I thought the boy, Asa Butterfield, did a fine job. The movie wasn’t spectacular but it held my interest… I’d agree with all that. Saw it yesterday with my son, 14, who’d read the book more recently than me, and we both liked it. We rolled our eyes a bit, though, at the thought that Ender would find a Formic guarding a queen egg within walking distance of an Earth base on a world captured decades before. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/53 "2013-12-05T15:03:03Z")
I saw the movie over the weekend. I enjoyed it. I am now rereading the book. I read the original novella version and then reread the novel when it came out, but it has been a while. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. I approached it with the idea that a movie adaptation has to be its own vehicle because the formats are different. I was prepared for it to be poorly handled (think Heinlein movies) or miss the point. I think they did a reasonable job with the overall major theme of the book. I think the actors all did a great job. I think the look was what you expect from a major motion picture in terms of quality of graphics and CGI. Actually, rereading the book, I am noting a fair amount of dialogue either directly from or slightly modified but very close. The challenge for the movie was to capture the internal thoughts and fears of what plays out in Ender’s head and convert that to a visual format. I thought they did a pretty good job with that. I understand some of the issues from the adaptation. Making the kids a bit older was probably a necessity to accommodate the gravitas and the filming time required from the children. I don’t think the major theme lost that much from that change. I did notice the time compression and especially the shortchange of seeing Battle School. The Battle School is a critical and large component of the novel for building Ender. It shows a lot of elements of how he is being shaped and molded both as a strategist/tactician and as a leader. They gave some play out for that in the movie, with some changes to the plot to accommodate character compression. Essentially, they had to reduce the headcount of people to make it filmable and followable. Where the movie had issues, IMO, were a few points already mentioned but I will highlight. First off, the scope of Battle School and how long Ender spends there. In the book, Ender is 6 years old when he has the fight with Stilson, the bully at his old school when he has his monitor removed. SIX! He is then moved up to Battle School, and he is still 6 when he is promoted to his first army assignment. He is 8 years old when he’s officially promoted to Commander of Dragon Army. That’s about 2 years to go from newbie to commander, where he had to go from small, underage, untrained newbie in an army to a leader that inspired his followers and changed the game _dramatically_. And that is where the movie misses a bit, IMO. The movie shortchanges just how dramatically Ender effects the way the battles are done, how above the competition as far as a strategist he is. They did convey his immediate intuitive grasp of what the others struggled to comprehend - the orientation in space and moving comfortably. They tried to convey his creativity of using his teammates as shields, which foreshadows the ending. They showed a bit of him being smarter than Bonzo, and why Bonzo gets a personal grudge against him. The Battle School competition had a lot we didn’t see - formation flying, understanding use of floor layout. We did get one glorious scene of Ender floating and faking being out of commission, then going into a spin and peforming the sneak attack to defeat the enemy. That comes from the book, though it compresses a bit of what happened. We didn’t see so much why the other kids became such loyal followers of his. They hinted at the changing of the rules and stacking the deck against Ender with the one Dragon battle scene, but there was more that could have been done. One of the things they adapted was how Ender was able to win over his Launchie group, even Bernard. In the book, Ender uses one of the other kids, Alai, as a connection between himself and the outcasts to Bernard and the bullies. He and Alai come together in their Battle Room orientation as the two most adapted, and Ender intentionally pulls in Bernard and the other bullied kid to raid the other members of the team. That makes Alai end up looking like the leader, but it takes away much of Bernard’s support and control and ends up bringing the team together. The movie uses two scenes to replicate the results and try to convey Ender’s ability to understand personnel and motivations. First is the classroom scene where he defers to Alai to explain what they are discussing, showing that he is not a self-centered or egotistical person. The other is when he _selects_ Bernard to be part of Dragon Army, and Bernard comments “You don’t even like me”, and Ender replies back something like “I believe you have a lot to contribute. You do, don’t you?” That is one of the compressions they use, making his team essentially his Launchie buddies. The book spreads the people he ultimately has for the final battle team across a couple of Launchie buddies, Petra from Salamander army, and some other boys acquired in different places. Oh, and his Dragon Army does _not_ include any of his Launchie buddies or anyone he had been training up to that point. That is when Bean enters the picture in the book, as an even younger Ender-in-training. And all of his team is\* assigned\* to him. He’s not allowed to pick anyone or trade anyone. One of the ways the adults use to keep him in check - otherwise all the best students would be vying for a spot on his team. The adults want them to be Ender’s opponents. Anyway, we did see some elements of Ender’s intuitive grasp and better strategy and leadership, but it feels like it happens quickly and with very little interaction, rather than being spread across two years and carrying many challenges to win over older kids. The second issue that bothered me was the actor cast for Bonzo. I think he did a good job with the\* character\* of Bonzo, with his arrogance and intimidation and self-entitlement. The problem was the _physical_ presence. Part of the issue when Ender gets moved from Launchy to Salamander Army is his youth, he’s promoted way early and is extra small compared to everyone. Yet somehow the leader of the Salamanders is actually _shorter_ than Ender. :smack: This is especially unfortunate because one of the major plot points is the physical confrontation they have later, when Bonzo comes after him in the showers with intent to really harm him. That would have been more convincing coming from a kid 3 or 4 years older and bigger, to convey the threat level better. The third thing that bothered me was how they conveyed the original battles with the Formics. We are shown several times the key battle where Mazor Rackham wins the defense of the invasion. Now I get they had a challenge. They wished to quickly and visually convey Mazor Rackham’s strategic creativity and insight and how it allowed him to capitalize on the enemy’s weakness and defeat them. In the book, these are a series of space battles and Mazor is leading a fleet, or part of a fleet, versus what we get in the movie. Instead of one creative commander, we get a guy who has one brief insight. Okay, I will accept he was able to see the pattern and deduce that the mother ship was key. But then what I struggle with was that he was able to take his one fighter plane and (a) penetrate all the way to the mother ship without interception, and (b) that driving his plane into that vessel would be that catastrophic, and © that the vessel didn’t have defenses for that. That is what makes me :dubious: . I haven’t gotten to the end of the book to refresh myself, but I also don’t remember the bit about finding a live queen and the egg. That was a bit puzzling. Also, I kinda see the issue with the big impact of Ender’s final strategy. IIRC part of the horror of the book was that Ender takes the big gambit of destroying the Formic’s homeworld as an act of protest against his adults, but in fact that is exactly what they wanted. They wanted someone who would take the genocidal action but they were too afraid to do it themselves. They instruct him at some point not to do it, but then are relieved when he does. I haven’t reread that part, so I will see how my impressions are reading it now vs when I originally read it. Anyway, I did enjoy it and did feel it was a reasonable adaptation. There were just a few things that I think could have been handled a bit better. But I think it was a successful adaptation and it worked. I don’t know how they can go do a Twighlight saga out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/54 "2013-12-05T15:55:53Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Did they: > > Maintain the extended ending where Ender learns the Buggers were not evil and that they had retreated once they learned humans were sentient. To me, this was the best part of the book and I hope they kept it in…instead of ending with his victory over the Buggers. Yes. > [@DirkGntly](#): > > 1. > > Due to time constraints, it’s not made plain that Ender understood that the Buggers (“Formics” in the movie) regretted the invasion and withdrew once they determined humanity was sentient. Rather, they paint it more as if Ender develops an empathy for the Buggers with a “they don’t deserve total extermination” mindset after he wipes out their planet. Unfortunately, not enough time is spent in the movie explaining how he has learned about the Buggers, as he did in the book. It weakens the movie compared to the book, but not disastrously so. While I agree it is somewhat rushed, I think they did make the point. He even says to Graff at one point “They weren’t invading us, they were waiting on their planet to defend it”. It is in the ending where Ender understands that the Mind Game scenes after the giant with the castle and seeing Valentine was actual communication from the Formics. They were showing him the room with the egg, and playing on his sentimentality for his sister. The Queen lady is a giant bug that morphs into Valentine who then leads him into the collapsed castle. Yes, the book does it better. Books often do a lot of in depth material better. But it was in the movie, if perhaps could have been highlighted a bit more. > [@obfusciatrist](#): > > They apparently have fast but non-relativistic interstellar spaceships that still require some kind of suspended animation. I can figure out no practical film reason for them to have moved Battle School from the in-system asteroid once occupied by buggers to a different solar system ones occupied by formics. So the command center will be close to the Bugger homeworld so they can command the fleet without those pesky light speed delays? > [@Shalmanese](#): > > - The film never made me feel like Ender was ever in any real danger. The fights with Stinson and Bonzo had Ender as being clearly superior and in control of the situation at all times. I remember quite clearly in the book, Ender kicked Stinson in the balls to end the fight. Even at that young age, I understood what a transgressive act that was. The movie sanitizes the scene into a few stomach kicks and completely erases any suggestion that Stinson died. First off, Stilson doesn’t die. He does end up in the hospital with busted ribs and a busted nose. But he’s not dead. Second, I did feel Ender was in physical danger in both cases. That scene, in fact, played out fairly close to the book. Several bigger boys confront him and drag him into a room, he plays the mindgame card about Stilson needing his buddies, so it becomes a one-on-one fight. Stilson moves to hit him, he kicks Stilson off him and surprisingly drops Stilson to the floor, which he didn’t expect to happen. And then he realizes that he has to not just win, but win big, to prevent future bullying, so he starts “kicking a man while he’s down” and stomps him pretty hard. I suppose the book highlighted better the groin kick after the fact, and busting his nose and getting blood on Ender’s shoe. But I thought it was fairly accurate. > [@](#): > > - The movie significantly mutes the sense of adolescent rage at authority that is present in the books. Yes, that is true. > [@mandala](#): > > - The most brilliant military strategist is a young boy - no reason is ever offered - maybe the boy is a super genius that is smarter than the smartest (remaining) military strategist? (So we have scene after scene of “military drills” involving 8 year olds, complete with fights in the quarters. :smack: Just like them marines.) > > What exactly would have been taken away from the story if all the kids had been replaced with adults? Atleast the stomping around in the barracks would have been a little less hilarious. Did you actually read the book? In the book, Mazer Rackham’s battles were actually over 100 years in the past. They claim they are training their next wave of battle commanders, but searching for the once-in-a-generation brightest strategist who just _might_ be smart enough to defeat the Formics in the next invasion. > [@](#): > > - For some reason the “battle school” operates in zero-gee, when an actual fight with the bugs would happen in either earth gravity or the gravity of the bug planet. Maybe an excuse to throw in the slick FX that is the only redeeming feature of the movie. You are correct that the one battle scene from the first war we see uses jet fighters in Earth’s atmosphere. However, it is understood that the future battles will be in space. That is what Battle School is simulating - not individual combat or infantry techniques, but rather space fleet battles. Ender is to be the admiral directing the space fleet engagement, he and all the commanders need to _intuitively_ grasp the dynamics of the three dimensional and non-orienational aspects of space battle. It requires keeping track of orientation with no sense of gravity to tell you where up is. All of the Battle Room conflicts are meant to train the commanders how to think, how to be comfortable with the geometries and rapid orientation changes, how to read the enemy and the enemy’s intentions, how to use the natural environment. That’s why the room barricades are called “stars” - large objects you cannot see through and must go around. And that’s one reason they are training children. Children are more adaptable and can learn the intuitive grasp of how it works more easily. Even if they weren’t going to send them into actual battle while still children, it would make sense to begin training them young and using play as the way to make it all sink in. > [@](#): > > - If they had a planet-busting weapon, why the hell did they need Ender at all? They just had to get the weapon up close and open fire and it’s game over. Couldn’t one of the adults have done it and spared Ender all the trouble? Yes, that part of the movie wasn’t as well done. The challenge was to get the weapon close enough, past all the defenses and prior fleet engagements. > [@](#): > > - A planet busting weapon? In the hands of a bunch of kids? Oh I forget, these are battle-hardened, trained kids. :rolleyes: Who are being lied to about the nature of their actions. They are told it is all simulations, when it is really actual battles. At least in the book all of those “simulations” are real. It’s not quite clear in the movie that it’s not only the final battle. > [@](#): > > Some books are not meant to be made into movies. The original book by OSC was a meandering inanity that I couldn’t get myself to complete. Well there you go. > [@Incubus](#): > > -Ender asks if we’ve ever tried to communicate with the Formics, and its suggested we have no way of communicating with them. It seems weird that in fifty years of fighting an alien species we (and them apparently) are completely in the dark about each others’ motivations. In fifty years they only attempt to contact Ender telepathically? Not, you know, Mazer, the guy who probably got their attention that we were an intelligent, sentient race? Their method for contact involves using the Game interaction, where they manipulate his thoughts via the game that is intuitive and collaborative with his mind. They don’t have that kind of access to anyone else but the kids in the game. Ender is the only one who gets far enough in the game to get drawn in to the communication. All the stuff with Peter in the mirror and the rug snake and Valentine is the Formics trying to adjust Ender’s thoughts. He defeats the rug snake, not by killing it (like everything else in the game), but by _kissing_ it. Love, not hate. Care, not violence. That’s how he gets past Peter and wins Valentine. > [@](#): > > -The nature of the story puts a great emphasis on tactics, primarily these ‘carriers’ and fighter drones. The idea of why the Formics are supposed to be so formidible is before Mazer figured out their ‘weakness’ it was assumed they fought/flew randomly. But aside from the Little Doctor very little emphasis is placed on technology itself, which I find kind of weird since obviously Earth had 50 years to adapt to fighting the Formics. Yes, we see the original battle using fighter planes in the atmosphere, and now Ender and company are being trained for space combat strategy and tactics, but _we_ don’t see much of the technology that they will be using. Chalk this up to Orson Scott Card. He isn’t an engineer or techie. If this were written by David Webber, then the technology used would play a prominent role in why the tactics chosen work or don’t work. But this is Card, so he doesn’t know enough about that, so he just projects a basic concept of a space vehicle with big laser-type weapons. And then the one supergun. To Card, the technology doesn’t interact or affect the tactics for using them. The Battle Room game has their bodies as space ships, their gun operates like the gun on their vessel. That’s as close as the tech comes to affecting the way they do combat. > [@](#): > > -I found it a little unnerving the ships they were commanding were actually manned. Its been a long time since I read the book, but I assumed all the ships were remotely controlled drones. If you are using Child Genius Commanders to fight your wars, why even need a guy behind the wheel? Also, it must really suck for those 1,000 crewmembers on the Carriers that ender abandoned :eek: . That part was a bit odd in the book, and again I have to chalk that up to Card not being a techie. It was important for him for the kids to be in control for the main plot and major themes, but it ups the ante to put real humans in the battles being sacrificed to Ender’s tactics when he doesn’t realize it. So yes, it totally sucks to be one of the soldiers in the actual ships, because one thing the Battle Room simulations did not teach was the full consequences of sacrifice play. Yes, you can win the battle by sacrificing a team member, but then you get that team member back for the next battle. Rather than your fleet being decimated and then you don’t get reinforcements. Not that Ender had a problem realizing what sacrifice meant in human terms, he just wasn’t informed that the battles he conducted were real. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/55 "2013-12-05T17:16:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Irishman** : > > First off, Stilson doesn’t die. He does end up in the hospital with busted ribs and a busted nose. But he’s not dead. That’s all were told at the time of Stilson’s scene. Later in the book, though, after the fight in the shower at Battle School, when the authorities are reviewing the case, we find that Stilson did die from his injuries. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/56 "2013-12-05T17:26:20Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > First off, Stilson doesn’t die. He does end up in the hospital with busted ribs and a busted nose. But he’s not dead. [Stilson dies in the book.](http://ansible.wikia.com/wiki/Stilson) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/57 "2013-12-05T18:42:17Z")
Seems to me once you have a weapon that can trash a planet, the need for actual tactics wanes somewhat. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/58 "2013-12-05T20:39:56Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > Yes. > > That part was a bit odd in the book, and again I have to chalk that up to Card not being a techie. It was important for him for the kids to be in control for the main plot and major themes, but it ups the ante to put real humans in the battles being sacrificed to Ender’s tactics when he doesn’t realize it. So yes, it totally sucks to be one of the soldiers in the actual ships, because one thing the Battle Room simulations did not teach was the full consequences of sacrifice play. Yes, you can win the battle by sacrificing a team member, but then you get that team member back for the next battle. Rather than your fleet being decimated and then you don’t get reinforcements. > > Not that Ender had a problem realizing what sacrifice meant in human terms, he just wasn’t informed that the battles he conducted were real. Part of the reason why they lie to the kids is that hesitation to sacrifice, due to totally understandable lack of desire to have people under your authority killed, or to simple nervousness about having the fate of humanity riding on your decisions, can lead to losing the battle and the war - which would certainly lead to even worse consequences (assuming of course the Formics really intended to continue with the war). A successful general should of course look after the welfare of his troops and save them if he or she can - but he or she can’t hesitate for even a second to order some of them to certain death, if the needs of battle absolutely require that. In the book, they show Ender being taken to task by Rackham over this point, but for a different ostensible reason - that the “game” only provided limited forces and the ones destroyed are not available for further battles (no ‘three lives for a quarter’). Ender, unsurprisingly, replies to Rackham that if doesn’t take risks and make sacrifices, he can’t win - which Rackham concedes to be true. The subtext of course is that Rackham himself is suffering guilt and fear because, unlike Ender, Rackham knows Ender’s decisions are leading to the deaths of real people. Really, part of what they wanted Ender and the kids for is just this - a competely ruthless and unsentimental focus on winning at all costs, without those hesitations that even the best adult generals, fully informed with the facts, would naturally have. If Ender saves his troops, or orders them to their deaths, his keepers want that to be only for reasons of strict military necessity. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2013, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/59 "2013-12-06T00:00:17Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Seems to me once you have a weapon that can trash a planet, the need for actual tactics wanes somewhat. They did need to maneuver close enough to the planet to destroy it, hence the need for the “drone shield” tactic Ender uses. > [@Malthus](#): > > Really, part of what they wanted Ender and the kids for is just this - a competely ruthless and unsentimental focus on winning at all costs, without those hesitations that even the best adult generals, fully informed with the facts, would naturally have. If Ender saves his troops, or orders them to their deaths, his keepers want that to be only for reasons of strict military necessity. The main reason for selecting Ender is that he not only displays Machiavellian-style brutality when threatened by enemies (the whole “win all future battles at once” thing) but he also has very strong empathy towards his enemies, including the [del]buggers[/del] Formics. The generals counted on this extra empathy to give a leg up in the final invasion – someone who could be ruthless like his brother Peter, but also sensitive like his sister Valentine. (And technically, even that doesn’t work – in the book, at least, Ender intentionally blows his “final exam” by destroying the Formic home planet, believing the generals will never accept someone who would do something like that. Which, of course, is precisely what they wanted him to think!) ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2013, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796/60 "2013-12-06T22:02:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That’s all were told at the time of Stilson’s scene. Later in the book, though, after the fight in the shower at Battle School, when the authorities are reviewing the case, we find that Stilson did die from his injuries. Ah, I haven’t gotten that far in the reread. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Seems to me once you have a weapon that can trash a planet, the need for actual tactics wanes somewhat. You do have to get that weapon to the planet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enders-game-movie-anyone-seen-it-open-spoilers/672796.md?page=4)