Ender's Game (2013) (1 Viewer)

[Simon Massey]

FYI, whilst it may well be derived from word "buggery", the work "bugger" is used in two ways in the UK - often to describe annoying children (there is an educational book called Getting the Little Buggers to Learn) and as a swear word in the same way as Damn or Bloody Hell etc)

 

[Brandon Conway]

Right, but it was the homosexual slur usage that they wanted to avoid given Card's political leanings.Sent from my VS920 4G using Tapatalk

 

[DaveF]

I found that a very distracting change to the movie. It would be like not using "Muggle" in Harry Potter. It damaged essential dialog.

 

[DaveF]

I think between Enders Game and Hobbit, I may be broken of my interest in children's book adaptations. I'm tired of mediocre versions of excellent books. Enders Game isn't a bad movie, but it's just so mediocre, and inferior to the book. It's not dangerous enough. And the Battle Room was just wrong. In the book, IIRC, it was featureless white cube. It had no distinguishing features, making it even more disorienting. It was that need for a reference frame in 0g, with no other visual revenue, that makes "the enemy's gate is down". The movie battle room is cluttered, with the Earth a prominent feature in all battles.Additionally, the kids are completely isolated from home and Earth in the battle school. But here, they are given a constant view and reminder of home in the battle school.Similarly, the Buggers outpost. In the book, the halls were too short and uncomfortable. It reinforced the idea that the buggers were Alien. In the movie, everything was large and comfortable. (It did have lots of "design", but to no purpose). It would be more forgivable if there was a sequence of movies yet to come, and like HP, they could mature into the characters, design, and move away from literal translation to screen. Maybe in a year, with more distance, I'll rematch and come to a more mellow view. But currently, Like Man of Steel and Star Trek, this movie continues to degrade in hindsight.

 

[Edwin-S]

I saw this film a few weeks ago. I thought it was ok: nothing really outstanding, but nothing really bad either. The mind game part of the film was one of the things that stuck with me and the scenes around the Alien home planet were done well.There were a couple of things that took me out of the movie for a bit. I thought it was kind of dumb that Ender's brother was supposedly rejected for being too quick to resort to violence; yet, Bonzo(?), who was basically the same sort of bullying, violence-prone and somewhat unintelligent thug made it to command school? The fact that he wasn't all that intelligent also belied that only the best and the brightest made it into the program in the first place. It also made me laugh that a supposedly hyper-intelligent tactical genius like Ender wasn't able to start figuring things out when the entire high command shows up on a distant outpost, requiring a trip in suspended animation, to witness a "graduation simulation".The one other thing that struck me was the dichotomy between the main theme of this film, as written by Card [in his book], and his actual real life political views. I came out of the film asking myself how a man like that could write a piece of fiction touting understanding and attempting to communicate with those that are different, before attacking them, and then behaving exactly the opposite in real life.Other than that, a decent enough SF movie.

 

[DaveF]

Bonzo is a bully. Not surprising to find someone of his ilk in battle school. Peter Wiggins is a brilliant psychopath capable of ruling the world. He was too smart and too violent for battle school. The book draws this out, the movie signals it but doesn't have the same depth.

 

[Edwin-S]

Bonzo is a bully. Not surprising to find someone of his ilk in battle school. Peter Wiggins is a brilliant psychopath capable of ruling the world. He was too smart and too violent for battle school. The book draws this out, the movie signals it but doesn't have the same depth.

It's been a long time since I read the original novella, so I didn't really remember what Peter Wiggins was like in the book; although, after you mentioned it, I vaguely started remembering that he was something of the sort. Like you point out, the movie doesn't really succeed in making that point. The movie Peter mostly comes across as a bully prone to resorting to violence as the initial response, rather than as a graduated response.