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.
