Review / Movie Prediction: Ender's Game

Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card

This is my 8th time reading Ender's Game, right? I've lost count. I've grown up with this book and once wrote a 13 page paper on it. With the movie on the horizon (November) I opted to read it again and realized (again) just how brilliant it is.

On the surface it is an easy to read a story about a boy genius, Ender, being trained to be a commander against an impending alien invasion. The story deals with his struggles, both physical and psychological, as the powers above him try to mold him into what they want or need him to be. It is a story about how he grapples with the isolation and scars of his past. The plot moves at a quick pace and the ending is surprising, yet fitting, and leaves us with the sense that we have read something profound even if we don't fully understand it.

Because the profound is there within this book. It is full of symbols and layers of meaning if the reader chooses to find them. The characters, especially Ender, are complex and the ideas presented within challenged modern thought at the time it was released (1977) and even so today. Indeed, it puts forth many uncomfortable ideas as truths. This fact has caused some readers to hate the book with a passion even as others adore it. It seems to me that the greatest works tend to divide their audience and this book is no different. Card even gives examples of both kinds of readers in the introduction which he later added.

I agree with many of those truths and I identify on many levels with the main character Ender and thus I love this book and hold it dear to my heart. It should be obvious that I recommend it (and perhaps I have already recommended it to you in person), but I do so knowing that your appreciation of the novel will only be as deep as the effort you put into it.

It is here that I would turn my thoughts to the upcoming movie. It's been a long time coming and surprising that it hasn't been produced earlier. Done correctly, it could be an excellent movie. But I have my reservations, not based on the trailers, but based on the modern audience and the current movie trends.

A modern audience seems to be largely looking for crowd pleasers: Action, Romance, Excitement. Not that a crowd pleaser can't be deep or at least well put together (it is rare), but the book, Ender's Game, is not a crowd pleaser when all is said and done. It is brutal in its portrayal of children and what they are capable of, the which, if shown on screen as written, will not be what people are expecting from the movie. The politics of the book, while interesting on the page, may well be boring to the modern audience. In addition, the scriptwriter and director, Gavin Hood, has had his hits and misses with films. Beyond these points there are some specific things that will be hard for the movie because cinema just doesn't do these well:

1. Thoughts and Reasonings

Most of Ender's game is not just what is done by Ender or the other characters, but why they do them, the intelligent thought processes behind their actions and the way that they make sense out of the world around them. The book is filled with Ender's judgement of a situation. The words that are said are not nearly as important as what is thought. If all we hear in the film are the words of the characters, we will not truly understand the characters or the movement of the plot.

2. Philosophic Banter

The kids within the book are meant to be geniuses and, while they still do and say many immature things, they also have complex philosophic debates and internal struggles. The modern audience won't be looking for that in a film that showcases explosions in its trailers and, frankly, most movies these days don't bother. In a book, those who don't want to hear it skip ahead; in the cinema, people get irritated or even walk out.

3. Extreme Violence to Children.

No spoilers, but a book can get away with more violence than a movie. The reader can decide how graphic they want it to be; a movie too often spells it out. This movie is sure to be PG-13, so there are already a myriad of important events that won't happen as they do in the book.

4. Time-skips

Time-skips are relatively simple in books - they require a logical transition with the important details filled in. A movie has to hire additional actors and often a time-skip throws off the pacing. Ender's Game has multiple time skips. I can see them getting around some without hassle, but not all. The main action of the book takes place over 7 years, with an additional 10 years at the end. Which leads me to the final point:

5. Denouement

Denouement means the way the story unravels after the climax. Much can go wrong to make a movie fail between the climax and the end, and if the ending isn't satisfying, the whole movie sours. A book can, effectively, cover a lot of time quickly to achieve the denouement. The ending of Ender's Game is, while unexpected, satisfying, after thinking about it, but it is so by covering many years and brushing over many events that would be difficult for a movie to cover. It leaves you with hope. Obviously, I can only say so much while not giving spoilers, but the movie, if it desires to stay true to the book, will struggle mightily to find a good ending place.

In the end, I'll watch the movie, but not with high hopes of seeing Card's Ender's Game, but a loose interpretation of it. The visual effects will be stunning and the action scenes will be amazing I am sure. Some careful pausing of the trailers makes me think that there may even be a chance that they capture some of the key points. But in the end, the book is famous and still being printed 36 years after its publication. It won two major awards and is constantly high up if not first on many Top 100 Sci-Fi Book lists. And I reread it for a reason. I doubt if the movie will receive such accolades.