Of Battle School and buggery
Nov. 9th, 2013 02:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_deep_magicSo I went and saw Ender's Game. I'll donate the price of my ticket (and that one Chik-fil-a chicken biscuit I broke down and bought) to the Human Rights Campaign, even though some sources say Orson Scott Card's not getting anything off the back end of the movie. And the movie was...
Okay. Not bad, but not great. Which is almost as disappointing as bad, given how long they've had to plan this thing.
For those of you reading this (if any) who haven't read the book, it was long considered unfilmable largely because of the elaborate Battle School scenes, which take place in zero gravity and are central to the plot. Well, we have the technology for that now, and it looks fantastic. (Though it's truly unfortunate that this came out so soon after Gravity. Gravity is a directorial and cinematographic masterpiece; the zero-G scenes in Ender's Game are merely competent in comparison.) The whole movie is visually perfect. For once, much of it actually lined up with what I'd pictured, and what didn't actually looked better. The casting is spot-on, save for one character who is supposed to be threatening to Ender but is about half a foot shorter (though the problem there might be the way his scenes were shot). Ben Kingsley is brilliant. They even managed to keep the multicultural nature of the Fleet to some extent, though the only nod to the gender imbalance was casting Viola Davis as Major Anderson, whose gender is not specified in the book. Weirdly, I always pictured Bean as Ralphie from A Christmas Story, sans glasses -- though that's not at all how he's described, and I'm glad they cast a nonwhite actor in the role.
Yet it's amazing how the movie hews so closely to the plot and the major themes of the novel, but somehow comes up not quite soulless, but definitely blanched. I've probably read the book a dozen times; I may watch the movie again if it comes on TV sometime. Even the ending, which is hinted at more directly in the book yet still comes off as more of a surprise, is gutted of much of its impact. I've been trying to come up with what could have been done differently to preserve the emotional impact, and none of them are easy fixes.
1) The movie is hugely compressed in time. Not only are things cut out (That fabulous Battle School? We get to see two practice sessions and two very brief battles.), but the book takes place over a span of five years, from the time Ender is six until he's 11. The movie takes place, the best I can figure, over the span of about two months, and all the "kids" look to be at least 13. Yes, it's a small difference, but it's the difference between true children and teenagers. Also, the time crunch doesn't allow for the kind of characterization and emotional build-up that's necessary for the punches, when they come, to really land. It's the difference between showing someone slowly exhausting himself versus literally saying "we get very little sleep."
2) It's far less violent than the book. I'm not advocating child-on-child violence, but the fact that it happens is a big part of what makes the book so shocking. You don't even need blood and gore to do that. The actual battles look like floaty fun time, when the book details very specifically how steep the learning curve is to move around in zero gravity. You can't change trajectory once you push off of something -- you keep going until you hit something, and during the first practice, that's actually what the kids do.
3) I love Harrison Ford, and he's not phoning it in here, but the role might've been better served with a less sympathetic actor, or at least a sharper script. When he's mean to Ender, when he pushes him past his limits (which you don't even really see, but it's implied), you don't question whether he's got good intentions. C'mon, he's Harrison Ford, of course he's the good guy. They do try to control for that, but they do it by making Major Anderson, who consistently voices objections to Graff's methods, softer and squishier. Come to think of it, it might have been better if Viola Davis and Harrison Ford swapped roles. The more sympathetic you make Graff, the more you have to deal with the uncomfortably fascist undertones that ultimately get strongly refuted in the book, but less so in the movie. Because of...
4) The Ending. The more I think about it, the more I chalk it up to bad writing. Mystifyingly bad, actually, for how important it is. The denouement is actually handled quite deftly considering how different it had to be from the book due to the time crunch (the book ends when Ender is 25 and living on another planet, and it's essentially a lead-in to the very different and actually unfilmable sequel, Speaker for the Dead, but I'll get to that in a minute). I get that they didn't want the movie to have an epic run time, and they actually spent more time on the last section of the book -- Command School -- than I thought they would, considering how truncated the Battle School scenes were. But without showing the build-up, the simple passage of time and the mental hardship it takes, the decisions Ender makes don't make sense, or seem to be made for the wrong reasons.
5) So, basically, I wish they'd gone full-on Return of the King and just said "fuck it, if this story takes three and a half hours to tell, then your ass will remain in that seat for three and a half hours and you will like it."
The weird thing is that I think you have to have read the book to enjoy the movie, seeing things like the Battle School and Command School in their full glory. Even the little touches that don't come from the book but help build the universe -- the propaganda posters in the doctor's office, the computer simulation of Formic anatomy -- might be hard to appreciate. (Incidentally, while "Formic" is the official names of the aliens, in the book they're always referred to as "buggers." I don't know if they replaced it because they thought it would sound rude or because they were trying to distance themselves from any hint of homophobia -- for his many flaws, I genuinely don't think actual buggery is what Card had in mind -- but it seriously takes away from the amount of spite from the aliens that is built into the language, which in turn robs the movie of more of its emotional impact.)
Normally, I'd say "read the book instead"... and I still will, but get it from a used bookstore or borrow it from a friend. Or join Paperback Swap, which I've been using for years and it is truly awesome, particularly for getting out of print genre books. I just mailed an old Dilbert book to Alaska today. But anyway, anyone who's read the book and especially anyone who's read the rest of the series, especially Speaker for the Dead, is utterly, utterly shocked to find out about Card's political views. Actually, I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ewinfic is the one who first clued me in and can attest to my disbelief. Because the main theme of the entire series is that terrible things happen when sentient beings of any type don't try to understand each other on the other's terms instead of their own. If I remember correctly, there's even a debate about whether or not to kill off a possibly-sentient virus. Even in Ender's Game, Alai saying "Salaam" to Ender in a society that seems to have outgrown religion entirely? That's in the book, which was published back in 1985. It's just mind-boggling how someone who could craft a story so elegantly centered not merely around tolerance for those who are different, but around love, could also spew such hate and talk about "the enemy" like the callous characters in his books do. I really like this article, which talks about the disconnect much more eloquently and from a slightly different perspective. (There's no spoilers in the article, though it does talk a little bit more specifically about the plot.) It also puts Card's homophobia into context with his other increasingly conspiracy-minded political views.
And that's what I have to say about that.
Okay. Not bad, but not great. Which is almost as disappointing as bad, given how long they've had to plan this thing.
For those of you reading this (if any) who haven't read the book, it was long considered unfilmable largely because of the elaborate Battle School scenes, which take place in zero gravity and are central to the plot. Well, we have the technology for that now, and it looks fantastic. (Though it's truly unfortunate that this came out so soon after Gravity. Gravity is a directorial and cinematographic masterpiece; the zero-G scenes in Ender's Game are merely competent in comparison.) The whole movie is visually perfect. For once, much of it actually lined up with what I'd pictured, and what didn't actually looked better. The casting is spot-on, save for one character who is supposed to be threatening to Ender but is about half a foot shorter (though the problem there might be the way his scenes were shot). Ben Kingsley is brilliant. They even managed to keep the multicultural nature of the Fleet to some extent, though the only nod to the gender imbalance was casting Viola Davis as Major Anderson, whose gender is not specified in the book. Weirdly, I always pictured Bean as Ralphie from A Christmas Story, sans glasses -- though that's not at all how he's described, and I'm glad they cast a nonwhite actor in the role.
Yet it's amazing how the movie hews so closely to the plot and the major themes of the novel, but somehow comes up not quite soulless, but definitely blanched. I've probably read the book a dozen times; I may watch the movie again if it comes on TV sometime. Even the ending, which is hinted at more directly in the book yet still comes off as more of a surprise, is gutted of much of its impact. I've been trying to come up with what could have been done differently to preserve the emotional impact, and none of them are easy fixes.
1) The movie is hugely compressed in time. Not only are things cut out (That fabulous Battle School? We get to see two practice sessions and two very brief battles.), but the book takes place over a span of five years, from the time Ender is six until he's 11. The movie takes place, the best I can figure, over the span of about two months, and all the "kids" look to be at least 13. Yes, it's a small difference, but it's the difference between true children and teenagers. Also, the time crunch doesn't allow for the kind of characterization and emotional build-up that's necessary for the punches, when they come, to really land. It's the difference between showing someone slowly exhausting himself versus literally saying "we get very little sleep."
2) It's far less violent than the book. I'm not advocating child-on-child violence, but the fact that it happens is a big part of what makes the book so shocking. You don't even need blood and gore to do that. The actual battles look like floaty fun time, when the book details very specifically how steep the learning curve is to move around in zero gravity. You can't change trajectory once you push off of something -- you keep going until you hit something, and during the first practice, that's actually what the kids do.
3) I love Harrison Ford, and he's not phoning it in here, but the role might've been better served with a less sympathetic actor, or at least a sharper script. When he's mean to Ender, when he pushes him past his limits (which you don't even really see, but it's implied), you don't question whether he's got good intentions. C'mon, he's Harrison Ford, of course he's the good guy. They do try to control for that, but they do it by making Major Anderson, who consistently voices objections to Graff's methods, softer and squishier. Come to think of it, it might have been better if Viola Davis and Harrison Ford swapped roles. The more sympathetic you make Graff, the more you have to deal with the uncomfortably fascist undertones that ultimately get strongly refuted in the book, but less so in the movie. Because of...
4) The Ending. The more I think about it, the more I chalk it up to bad writing. Mystifyingly bad, actually, for how important it is. The denouement is actually handled quite deftly considering how different it had to be from the book due to the time crunch (the book ends when Ender is 25 and living on another planet, and it's essentially a lead-in to the very different and actually unfilmable sequel, Speaker for the Dead, but I'll get to that in a minute). I get that they didn't want the movie to have an epic run time, and they actually spent more time on the last section of the book -- Command School -- than I thought they would, considering how truncated the Battle School scenes were. But without showing the build-up, the simple passage of time and the mental hardship it takes, the decisions Ender makes don't make sense, or seem to be made for the wrong reasons.
5) So, basically, I wish they'd gone full-on Return of the King and just said "fuck it, if this story takes three and a half hours to tell, then your ass will remain in that seat for three and a half hours and you will like it."
The weird thing is that I think you have to have read the book to enjoy the movie, seeing things like the Battle School and Command School in their full glory. Even the little touches that don't come from the book but help build the universe -- the propaganda posters in the doctor's office, the computer simulation of Formic anatomy -- might be hard to appreciate. (Incidentally, while "Formic" is the official names of the aliens, in the book they're always referred to as "buggers." I don't know if they replaced it because they thought it would sound rude or because they were trying to distance themselves from any hint of homophobia -- for his many flaws, I genuinely don't think actual buggery is what Card had in mind -- but it seriously takes away from the amount of spite from the aliens that is built into the language, which in turn robs the movie of more of its emotional impact.)
Normally, I'd say "read the book instead"... and I still will, but get it from a used bookstore or borrow it from a friend. Or join Paperback Swap, which I've been using for years and it is truly awesome, particularly for getting out of print genre books. I just mailed an old Dilbert book to Alaska today. But anyway, anyone who's read the book and especially anyone who's read the rest of the series, especially Speaker for the Dead, is utterly, utterly shocked to find out about Card's political views. Actually, I think
ewinfic is the one who first clued me in and can attest to my disbelief. Because the main theme of the entire series is that terrible things happen when sentient beings of any type don't try to understand each other on the other's terms instead of their own. If I remember correctly, there's even a debate about whether or not to kill off a possibly-sentient virus. Even in Ender's Game, Alai saying "Salaam" to Ender in a society that seems to have outgrown religion entirely? That's in the book, which was published back in 1985. It's just mind-boggling how someone who could craft a story so elegantly centered not merely around tolerance for those who are different, but around love, could also spew such hate and talk about "the enemy" like the callous characters in his books do. I really like this article, which talks about the disconnect much more eloquently and from a slightly different perspective. (There's no spoilers in the article, though it does talk a little bit more specifically about the plot.) It also puts Card's homophobia into context with his other increasingly conspiracy-minded political views.And that's what I have to say about that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 03:55 am (UTC)"C'mon, he's Harrison Ford, of course he's the good guy."
XD
"but get it from a used bookstore or borrow it from a friend"
Or torrent. :D A friend recently sent me PDFs of Speaker for the Dead (which I've yet to get down to reading) and I think some of the other books. internet ftw.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 05:30 am (UTC)Ok, thanks for the heads up! I know that it's about adult!Ender, so I figured it wouldn't have the same children's-book vibe to it.
The only other book in the series that I've read is Ender's Shadow (it follows most of the first book, but from Bean's perspective), which I also liked a lot.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-10 05:38 am (UTC)