The beloved science fiction novel, Ender’s Game, finally gets the movie treatment after being in development for more than a decade and being considered “unfilmable.” Personally I was a fan of the book and was excited to see how it would be translated for the screen. Unfortunately, Ender’s Game is below average fare that suffers from the main downfall of book-to-movie adaptations – cramming too much of the book into the shortened time of the movie. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Ender’s Game is the story of a just entering teenaged boy, Andrew “Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), who is trained to be the savior commander of Earth’s intergalactic fleet against an alien race of “buggers,” who had attacked Earth 50 years prior. Ender is pushed to his limits by Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) to become the best commander he can be for the quickly approaching assault against the buggers. Along the way Ender makes friends with Petra Arkanian (Hailee Steinfeld) and receives further training from Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley). And just for good measure Major Anderson (Viola Davis) has a handful of scenes in which she disagrees with Graff’s methods.
There’s already a huge problem, too much star power and not enough screen time. While all of these characters, amongst some yet named such as his siblings Violet and Peter and some of his other school friends, are pivotal to the book they create too much distraction for a movie under two hours. Ender’s Game is meant to show Ender reconciling his compassionate side with his skill and desire to dominate his opponents. But when there is so much star power in one movie, especially in the hands of inconsequential writer/director Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine…enough said), the line becomes so fine in order to juggle the actors with the story that needs to be told.
And if the juggling wasn’t hard enough, Hood decided to take the approach of trying to put every major plot point – at least in Ender’s main plot – into the movie. Instead of having fully fleshed out scenes the movie falls into the netherworld between actual scenes and a montage often resulting in scenes where only a few lines are exchanged before quickly cutting to something completely different. It is the timelineification of the book as the movie careens between plot points. Clearly there are multiple downfalls from this type of storytelling, chief among them being that the movie is more concerned with telling and not showing the audience Ender’s growth. In what takes years the book years it seems the movie takes no more than a month or two. And while this makes sense in terms of the format of a movie it feels completely ridiculous while watching. Don't expect to find any nuance here.
What makes Ender’s short journey seem even more foolish is that he seems more stuck up than genius. In the movie Ender never actually seems as smart as he is meant to be. The movie shows Ender receiving help more often than allowing him to figure things out on his own, which is why he is supposed to be so promising. In fact Ender’s growth is shown more through Graff’s reactions to what the audience is being told Ender is doing instead of being shown on screen. When Ender does discover something organically it almost happens instantaneously, which cheapens the discovery and his intellect. When he does actually speak up it is always contesting his superiors making him seem like he’s just a jerk as opposed to being smarter.
Having so many characters and so much plot cramming also renders Ender as the only somewhat formed character. The rest feel more like props for the narrative to continue than actually feeling like real people. Petra is only there to teach Ender how to shoot and give him a friend. Violet’s job is to allow Ender to narrate his personal thoughts through letters he’s sent her and to have a minute long conversation that is supposed to change Ender’s mind about quitting battle school. And all of this only begs the question: why is such a talented cast needed if no one is actually allowed to act?
Perhaps everything mentioned so far would be excusable had the movie gotten any of the plot twists and character realizations right. SPOILER ALERT it didn’t. Hood doesn’t seem to be able to make a decision on what to do with the various twists, leaving what should be shocking moments in this nebulous world of confusion. Ender is meant to believe everything he is doing is under the guise of training and preparing for another invasion of Earth. Instead, Hood decides to let the audience know fairly early that it is actually Earth going to attack the buggers. And then there’s the major twist at the end that seems to have surprised none of the characters, or audience members, but Ender, who gets to have an adolescent outburst for a minute before being sedated.
Ender’s Game also has a feeling of a movie too worried about its budget. It does feature some very nice and necessary visuals but they are few and far between. The main story revolves heavily around the battle room in the school, which is beautifully rendered in the movie, but there is so little time spent in the room that instead of carrying the importance it does in the book it has a very tacked on feeling. Likewise, Ender plays a game on his futuristic iPad that is supposed to give the audience a unique window into Ender’s psyche. Again, the game actually does look very good but so little time in the movie is spent on this aspect of the story that it loses all significance and feels only included for the purposes of eye candy or some stupid video game tie-in. In a movie that is less than two hours why does a recycled image of a spaceship blasting off need to be shown twice?
Perhaps the movie is a tad more enjoyable and surprising if the viewer is unfamiliar with the source material before viewing. Even if that was the case, the movie is still nothing more than a checklist of plot points that never allows the audience to empathize with, or even fully understand, what is going on in the movie.