Only
ten minutes in, a young girl, followed by her mother, ran out of the screening
room. “I’m too scared!” She declared. Perhaps she was a bit too young for the
vague 12A rating, but it certainly suggested the tone of the book had been
captured. Unfortunately this suggestion was quickly shattered.
The novel, Ender’s Game, was released in 1985 and provided author Orson Scott
Card with both the Nebula and Hugo awards, prestigious awards given to the best
science fiction novels of the year. A strong following later, and we have
around fourteen stories in the “Ender Saga”. While Ender’s Game is often cited
in many a top ten of sci-fi reading lists, it has always seemed one of the more
easily filmable novels when compared to the likes of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C.
Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and Philip K. Dick; authors like this have
only had successful film adaptions from masters like Stanley Kubrick and Ridley
Scott. Ender’s Game has a fairly simple story-telling method, inspired by
the invisibility of Asimov, that dwells mainly inside the protagonist, Ender’s,
head. Along with this heavily subjective point of view, it even has a
beginning, middle and end that clearly screams cinema.
The indication that this film,
sort-of-thirty-years in the making, is a sloppy and lazy adaption came early on:
as the young space cadets first experience lack of gravity, one child vomits
and you can imagine the rest. The novel handles this with thorough militaristic
briefing, ‘no eating a day prior to take-off’. While this particular scene
isn’t an offensive error, it signposted what was to follow – a gross
abandonment of the book’s themes. The idea of military manipulation, dictation
and exploitation that parades through the novel is abandoned in every sense.
The training battle sequences are way too short and thus the film never
portrays Ender as the child genius he’s meant to be. Instead we have Harrison
Ford as Colonel Gruff, I mean Graff, occasionally appearing to remind us of the
child’s importance, and Graff’s authorial disregard of his state of mind. Ford does well to bring in the
panache this film sorely needs but doesn’t save this sorry state.
The film paces through these
training battles that are so important in the book. A battle-cum-game far more
interesting and considered than Quidditch
serves as an insight into Ender’s understanding of the world around him, yet
here they’re unexplained and passed by to dwell on scenes that really don’t
need it. A long time is spent dwelling on Ender’s brief return visit to Earth
to see his sister, which is completely redundant since his sisters importance
to Ender made so stark in the book is completely unattended in the film. Generally,
the drama in this film is swept aside to make way for a focus on xbox-style
visuals. This pace couples with its hasty editing and gives no one except
Harrison Ford room to breathe, so with that in mind maybe Asa Butterfield, who plays Ender, gives a good performance but it’s
hard to know until the end. Only in the final moments of the film does Butterfield’s
character become real. Oddly, it’s as if the director had made one last
Braveheart stride for success. The (now ironic) theme of tolerance that exists
in the book is hammered on at the end of the film, but fortunately it resonates
when Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield finally get to square off in a powerful
sequence. This sequence would’ve been even more powerful if the cinematography
hadn’t completely saturated the use of the close-up throughout the two hours.
Fans of the book and saga will no
doubt wish a more visionary writer-director had commanded the adaptation, but
as a film it isn’t without merit. One can only imagine, but if one is
unfamiliar with the novel perhaps they will enjoy the film – a lot! In fact, if
I had children I would much rather take them to see this than watch the frankly
tedious and empty Pacific Rim (summer robots-vs-aliens blockbuster by Guillermo Del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth fame – Pacific Rim, a film
that replaces Toro’s mesmerising, complex multilevel fairy-tale storytelling
ability for Power Rangers). Or even
Ender’s Game over Hunger Games. Over Star Wars (any of them). Over most of
Dreamworks Animation’s recent offerings. But ultimately, I’d encourage my child
to read the 1985 novel.
JAMES A. GEORGE IS THE EYEWEAR FILM CRITIC.
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