With another holiday season fast approaching and the “golden” age of movie adaptations/remakes still going strong, Hollywood’s contempt for original content continues with the release of Ender’s Game. In an attempt to replicate the enormous success that the first Hunger Games film enjoyed (with 400 million dollars box office in the US alone), the studios are scrambling to pick up anything remotely young-adult themed in the hopes that it can become the next billion dollar pop culture phenomenon. Case in point: the upcoming Divergent film is being heavily marketed and promoted before its March 2014 release, where it will most likely do some good business (although probably not as much business as Lionsgate is hoping for). But for every Hunger Games and every Divergent series hitting multiplexes, you will also find countless Ender’s Games floundering in their wake.
Some time in a future where Earth has been invaded by an alien species of insect-like creatures called Formics, the surviving humans who successfully managed to repel the onslaught have turned to their most gifted children as the key to their survival. Observed and monitored from a very young age, select children with exceptional intelligence and capabilities are chosen to attend a special battle school in space and trained to eventually lead Earth's fleets into battle. And the most exceptional of these children might just be Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Butterfield), a young boy who Colonel Hyram Graff (Ford) believes may be the “one” he’s searched for his entire life: a child capable of preventing humanity’s complete annihilation. Taken away from his home and his beloved sister, Ender is intentionally placed at Graff’s insistence in an isolated environment where he finds himself at odds with all the other gifted children at the battle school. Struggling to cope, Ender must overcome every obstacle thrown in his path if he is to succeed.
Arriving a little over three weeks before the general release of the Hunger Games sequel, the idea may have been to fill a gap in the market and attract what would basically be the same target audience with a similar-themed film. The plan sounds good enough if it weren't for a couple of things it has working against it. First of all, while Hunger Games is universally known and has a large and young fan base already in place, Ender's Game is a 28 year old novel that, while not completely unheard of, definitely has nowhere near the same name recognition. Keeping that issue aside, the main problem is this: the plot/story of Ender’s Game doesn't work for the kind of movie that the filmmakers decided to make. While the storyline of a group of kids fighting to the death in a massive arena is tailor-made for conversion to film, the same cannot be said about Ender's Game's storyline. A more cerebral and character driven novel, the unwieldy results of its forced conversion are there for all to see. Film-makers always have to toe a careful line on how much to draw from the source material and how much should be taken in a new direction and writer-director Gavin Hood somehow manages to go too far in both directions. In Ender’s Game, the film-makers follow the step by step progression of the book’s storyline but very little of its interesting themes or social commentary survive the transition. There are many parallels with the current war on terror and the lengths people are willing to go to preserve their way of life in this story but they rarely crop up in a meaningful way in the film. Another problem: there isn’t much action in the novel and yet the film-makers still conceived it as an action movie. But those expecting thrilling scenes and epic adventure will undoubtedly be disappointed. Action sequences are brief and few and far between and generally take place in a simulated training environment where the risks are minimal and the thrills are poorly delivered.
Regardless of the source, a movie should be held up on its own merit but Ender’s Game is too faithful to the book while also paradoxically betraying its spirit (see the recent adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary for a perfect example of this). The plodding execution here leaves something to be desired as we persevere through flimsy attempts at sampling themes and ideas from the book while terms from the novel such as "ansible" and "hegemon" are mentioned but never explained. Putting it simply, “Ender’s Game: The Movie” comes off as the typical bad book to film adaptation. You can always tell if a movie adaptation is bad within the first 5 or so minutes because they typically have no clue how to start the story or how to introduce its elements in anything resembling a clear or cohesive manner. Instead, we are treated to awkwardly rushed scenes and clunky exposition while the intricacies of the characters’ world are barely touched upon and rarely brought up again. And even though it reportedly had a budget north of 100 million dollars, the movie surprisingly comes off as very small scale. We never truly become immersed in Ender’s world because we only get to see a small fraction of it (a flaw found in a few other recent big budget sci-fi films). In the elaborate battle school space station for example, the audience isn’t allowed to witness much; Ender's progression through the ranks feels too easy and straightforward and we never capture a sense of how arduous his coming of age story should have been.
But the problems don’t end there: Ender’s Game just doesn’t give its audience enough credit and is far too simplistic in its presentation. Relationships are superficial and mechanical; the characters are all only there to cynically serve the film’s purpose and progress the plot from point A to point B. You won’t find anything more complex in the characters’ relationships with each other beyond something along the lines of “Oh she’s nice so I like her” or “Oh he’s mean so I hate him”. And while we’re talking about the characters, another drawback for this film would definitely be the handling of the child actors involved. Asa Butterfield clearly has some talent as evidenced by his performances in Hugo and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but much of that is wasted here. As Ender, a young genius saddled with incredible ability and placed under immense pressure, his performance is stilted, wooden and unconvincing. Ender’s character lacks a clear arc and we never experience the changes he supposedly goes through; everything can’t just be explained with background narration but this movie clearly disagrees. While the novel’s Ender is a complicated child wrestling with the fear of his own formidable capacity for destruction, the film fails to channel this effectively and Ender is portrayed in a much more safe and positive light. He’s basically the same character throughout and things just sort of get brushed over quickly as the movie goes through the checklist of what happens to him next. The rest of the child cast fare no better as they regurgitate memorized lines and fill their specifically designated roles. We have designated main nemesis, designated friend one, designated friend two, designated “girl” friend, and of course, you have to have one or two “designated enemies who eventually become friends because of how nice and good the main character is”.
Verdict: With such great source material, Ender’s Game should be considered a wasted opportunity. As is often the case with big films designed to make as much money as possible, morally ambivalent themes and layered and complex characters are condensed and streamlined. It's a boring approach that doesn't challenge or provoke its audience and makes for what is an instantly disposable product ready to be consumed and forgotten before the next film of the week arrives and another 12 dollars is spent (not forgetting 15 dollars for a popcorn and large drink of course).
C
Trailer:
Movie info:
Runtime: 114 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin
Director: Gavin Hood
Screenplay: Gavin Hood
Cinematography: Donald McApline
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