Ender’s Game (movie)

In a strange twist from the usual, I liked the movie better than the book. First off, the siblings’ desire to rule the Earth was dropped completely. This is Ender’s story and his elder brother’s quest for world dominance is best left out of it. Next, the adults actually interact with the students. In the book, it often seemed like the space station was peopled only with prepubescent kids who battled in zero-g and developed tactics that had never been conceived. That is retained to a large degree but adult supervision and training is evident; these kids are being given a foundation on which to build rather than left to their own devices. Where I thought the novel was ludicrous in relying on a 12 year-old to save humanity, the movie paints it in a more plausible light. The battles come across as extremely advanced video games where youths can adapt quickly rather than relying on old tactics that a veteran would have a hard time discarding. Moreover, the idea of telling them that it is merely a simulation rather than the real thing allows them to take risks that few commanders would dare.

In some ways, the movie made odd choices. The original invasion by the Formics is shown as happening in the modern day with fighter jets battling swarms of alien craft in the atmosphere whereas in the book the battle took place in space. Rackham, the hero of that battle, is shown as just a random pilot rather than a commander of a fleet. In the book, Ender defeated the enemy while in the Solar System, not traveling to the Formic colony where he finds a queen’s egg until years afterward; that would make for a long and clunky epilogue so the change is understandable.

One of the things that the movie completely overlooks is the distances. There is a reason that it has been 50 years since the war and that there is a specific deadline for the counterattack. Humanity sent fleets decades ago but, on account of distance, they aren’t arriving until now. This setup allowed for the military on earth to train commanders for the remote fleets. Also not discussed – though it did get mentioned – is the ansible. The ansible is a physics-defying communications system that allows instant communication between Earth and these distant fleets. Handy.

Asa Butterfield does a good job as Ender. He manages to be calculating and cold-blooded while still remaining a sympathetic character. Perhaps his youth provides that. It is hard to say much on the adult roles since they were almost footnotes in the book. Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) figured most prominently in opening dialogues for each chapter, commenting on how Ender was fairing. The movie provides more interaction between the two than I recall from the novel. As for Rackham (Ben Kingsley), the fact that he is still around 50 years after the battle that made him famous is never explained. In the book, he traveled around at near light speed to make him available for when the fleets would arrive. The movie supposes that he was a young pilot and is now an old veteran.

The movie does repeat some of my problems with the book. For instance, why is it that the Formics only attempt communication with Ender? There are scores of kids at Battle School and one supposes that many of them play the game that allowed Ender to communicate with the aliens. Apparently like the adults of Earth, they too knew that Ender was ‘the one’ and focused their efforts on him. Knowing that humanity is coming to wipe them out, why didn’t the Formics dispatch some ships to establish new colonies to escape extinction rather than depend upon the kindness of their exterminator? I understand the idea of culling through all of humanity for a super genius tactician but is it necessary that all his junior officers are his age? Couldn’t veterans follow orders as well, if not better, than adolescents?

Nitpicks aside, I enjoyed the film and give it a thumbs up.

Ender's Game (book)

Some years ago, a co-worker lent me a copy of Ender's Game.  I read it and wrote a review.  Now that the movie version is coming to a theater near you, it seems an ideal time to post that here.

Ender's Game

Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggin is a genius, just like his older siblings, Peter and Valentine. Ender is an outcast because he is a third child, something that is generally illegal thanks to population controls. Ender lives in a future Earth where humanity is threatened by the Buggers, an alien race of insect-like creatures that might well have wiped out humanity but for Mazer Rackham. Humanity has built the fleet for a counterattack, has the weapons to fight, but lacks a battle commander to direct them against an overwhelming force. Ender will be that commander if only his training can be completed in time. His training begins when he is six and the epic battles come when he is twelve. The epilogue proceeds until he is into his twenties.

The book is quite readable and very engaging. The characters are good and easy to like. The setting is well made. I was surprised to find a book written in 1985 having such things as the internet (the Nets) and tablet computers (simply called desks). I was disappointed by the Buggers. We never actually saw a Bugger, getting only a vague description of them. The idea that a hive mind was some Earth-shaking news was dorky. If Orson Scott Card was the first to write a story with a hive mind, maybe, but the hive mind/insect alien was decades old by the time this book was written. People of the future should be less surprised by this development than a modern day fiction reader (that would be me).

Though enjoyable, the book is preposterous. Humanity is resting all its hopes on a 12 year-old boy; there is no contingency plan if this should fail. It is explained to the reader that should Ender fail, humanity will probably be wiped out (as it turns out, that was an incorrect conclusion on the part of the generally incompetent adults). As the enemy is light years away, the ships launched to attack them decades ago and only now are they arriving at the Bugger worlds. Thanks to a physics-ignoring radio (instant communication regardless of distance) those ships can receive commands from Earth in real time. So, with decades to prepare, humanity cuts it down to the wire and pins its fate on Ender and his classmates. Sounds reasonable.

Why did the fight become genocide? Sure, destroying the Bugger home world was a serious blow but if all the colony worlds had queens too, shouldn’t the Buggers still exist? Ender didn’t destroy any of those worlds so, unless the queens were on the destroyed ships (which would be stupid), those worlds should have intact populations though no fleet to protect them. When Ender arrives on one, it hasn’t been bombed – buildings still standing for human settlers. The Buggers saw the end coming and, rather than send a fleet with a queen to inhabit some new world and hide from humanity, they built a replica of Ender’s game world and left the seed of their rebirth in the hopes that their destroyer might plant it. Uh huh. Yeah, that’s how I would deal with imminent extinction.

No one understood tactics and strategy until Ender arrived at battle school. It has been 80 years since Mazer Rackham defeated the Bugger invasion fleet (therefore zero-G combat has been around at least that long) and yet Ender develops a combat style that is unprecedented and no other student is capable of emulating it so that Ender doesn’t completely destroy them in battles. Never does Ender learn something in a lecture (if there are lectures at this school) and then apply it in the ‘Game.’ No, everything is new and from the mind of Ender. Napoleon was lucky he never had to face this prodigy on the battlefields of Europe. As described, Ender probably would have wiped out Napoleon’s Grand Army while only suffering 5 casualties.

Okay, one supra ultra mega genius kid is maybe okay. However, it turns out that his brother and sister are just as smart though they were rejected the post of Savior of Humanity on account of their emotional attributes. While Ender is busy learning – no, developing how – to defeat the Buggers, his brother and sister are busy influencing world opinion through internet commentary. How did such dull-witted parents produce this trio of incomparable brilliance? There was no talk of genetic manipulation or selective breeding. No, they are just supremely smart for no apparent reason.

For 120 pages, the story is told entirely from Ender’s perspective, except for a very brief dialogue at the beginning of each chapter where the adults in charge of his training comment on his progress or difficulties. Then, quite unexpectedly, we switch to his siblings. Peter has decided he wants to rule the world and convinces Val to join him in the endeavor by writing opinions. These two are SO brilliant that they quickly rise to rock star status (and not just some random rock star, we’re talking an Elvis) as commentators and being invited to join think tanks and presidential panels. And they achieve this level of success while remaining anonymous. See, no one else thought to say these things. As a constant reader of opinion columns, I can tell you that it’s an echo chamber out there with dozens of writers saying more or less the same thing though with this twist or that nuance. The idea of someone being SO unique as to coalesce a movement through anonymous writing is beyond belief. I suspect he was modeling this on the Federalist Papers written by Publius (who was by turns Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison). However, that was in an era where the written word was the only form of news. Even today, most people get news from radio or TV.

This is a book for tweens and teens. In many ways, it felt like I was reading a Charlie Brown comic since adults are virtual non-entities. We quickly learn that Ender’s parents are dim bulbs compared to their children. At one point, Val (age 11) is telling Peter (age 13) that they were just kids and can’t change the world but Peter showed her otherwise by launching himself on the world scene to become Hegemon of Earth. The moral is that young people can make a difference, maybe save humanity, maybe rule the world.

Again, I liked the book but by the end it was just too preposterous. Card tells his tale well but it is along the lines of Flight of the Navigator, ET, Goonies, or The Last Starfighter, only more so and by a factor of 1000. This is a book that Steven Spielberg might have turned into a movie in the 1980s: Children save the day and adults are generally clueless.

We'll have to see how the movie compares.  Doubtless a review will appear here at some point.