CliqueClackEnder’s Game is the best adaptation it can be, but is that enough?
Orson Scott Card has often called his book ‘Ender’s Game’ unfilmable. Did director Gavin Hood and stars Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield pull off what the author originally thought impossible?
Literary history is filled with “unfilmable” books, stories that might be too incredible or deal with subject material too sensitive to market successfully. Film history is filled with movies that were once “unfilmable,” occasionally successful (Life of Pi and the television adaptation of A Game of Thrones), but usually less so (Watchmen and Cloud Atlas). Author Orson Scott Card has long said his classic Ender’s Game would never work on the big screen, citing Ender’s internalized drama too difficult to get across (I personally would have pointed the significant amount of violence surrounding a six-year-old, but that is just me). It took Gavin Hood’s screenplay to bring the controversial author on board.
Note: That will be the last mention of Card’s personal opinions in this piece. They have been covered in detail across the breadth of the Internets. I disagree with those beliefs, but don’t believe they have any bearing in my – or your – opinion of this flick.
Asa Butterfield plays the titular Ender, a young prodigy whom military leader Colonel Graff believes will be the savior of the human race. Years before, Earth was nearly annihilated in an alien invasion, and the military is preparing a counterstrike. Ender is thrust through a training regimen that his older siblings, including sister Valentine (Abigail Breslin), washed out of. Most of his classmates, including Bean (Aramis Knight) and Alai (Moises Arias) resent him at first, but eventually learn to trust and follow him, though gal-pal Petra (Hailee Steinfeld) seems to be on Team Ender from the start. A pair of Academy Award winners in Viola Davis and Ben Kingsley round out the cast as military leaders in Ender’s education.
From a technical perspective, Ender’s Game is amazing. The sound design in the IMAX version in particular will blow audiences away – or at least feel like it will. The CGI work in both Ender’s game and the space battle sequences are top notch. This is the kind of movie you think back to the quality of SFX ten years ago (think Matrix Reloaded) and then dream about what movies will look like ten years from now.
Hood’s movie is probably the best Ender’s Game flick we could ever hope for. The screenplay was able to maintain most of the overall story, though Valentine’s personal story is nearly completely absent. Ender is (necessarily) aged up from the book and some – some – of the violence is muted. Sadly, much of Ender’s evolution into a leader in the second act is more than a little rushed (sadly, because it is my favorite part of the book). There’s more than enough material for one movie in Ender’s Game, but probably just a smidge too little for two movies.
Ender’s Game is a solid – but not spectacular – flick. Butterfield and Ford both show well, and the effects are phenomenal. Hood has redeemed himself a little after a poor showing with 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But while I liked the flick, it does not come close to packing the emotional punch that the book did. Since there is no (reasonable) way to have a six-year-old beat a classmate to death on screen, I am not sure that Card was wrong. But Hood’s flick is the closet we will ever get.
