Fortunately for me in the past year the two books that are neck and neck for the spot of my favorite both received film adaptations with large budgets and talented cast. The first is The Hobbit which has had a huge following due to it being the prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which already has a massive audience. The second is Ender's Game, which to be honest is comparatively a much more obscure series. Both series are similar in many ways despite being in the near opposite genres of fantasy and science fiction. What I'd really like to talk about is how much Ender's Game left to be desired and how it could have benefited from the methods used in what will be The Hobbit trilogy.
To help get things into perspective watch this trailer for Ender's Game as well as these two for the first and second part of The Hobbit trilogy.
Ender's Game
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Hobbit Desolation of Smaug
Whats it all about?
Ender's Game was originally a novel written by Orson Scott Card, which along with it's sequel Speaker for the Dead, received notable awards such a Hugo Reward and Nebula Award. The movie was Directed by Gavin Hood, who I know from his work on Wolverine: Origins (2009) as well as an acting role on the popular science fiction series Stargate SG-1 (2004).
Orson Scott Card Gavin Hood
Asa Butterfield, best known for his role in Hugo (2011) and The Boy in Striped Pajamas (2008) stars as the movie's main character: the cunning, intelligent and tactical Ender Wiggin. Meanwhile acting legend Harrison Ford co-stars as the manipulative, ruthless and borderline cruel Colonel Graff.
Asa Butterfield Harrison Ford
So whats the plot?
The plot is actually relatively straight forward. Years ago an ant-like alien race known as The Formics attacked earth and by some miraculous feat Earth's greatest military commander sacrificed himself and single-handedly halted the entire invasion. Years later Ender Wiggin is enrolled in a special program where the best and brightest of earth's children groomed to one day move on the orbiting space station known as Battleschool where they will be forged into the perfect military soldiers and commanders. Implanted in the back of his neck is a special device that allows observation of his every action through his own eyes by military officials such as the drastic Colonol Graff.
This is the basic plot without any spoilers and ends up being a great movie with many moments that made me tremble with anticipation, as well as stellar action scenes. Unfortunately without the prior knowledge of having read the original book many parts of the movie may end up confusing or seem much less significant than they were intended to be. It is more than likely both the book and movie are great places to start, but I would not advise going with one without the other as they both compliment one another extremely well.
How did it go?
Overall I quite enjoyed this adaptation of one of my favorite books. Gavin Hood and Harrison ford no are strangers to the Science Fiction genre and thought it may seem like blasphemy I honestly feel this was one of Harrison Ford's best performances to date and that is saying a lot. I was a tad bit disappointed with Asa Butterfield's performance however. For someone who's previous major roles are characters that are meant to cause a lot of emotion in the audience I feel like he simply didn't capture the true essence of the character. Ender was meant to be incredibly intelligent child who is forcibly forged into a perfect and ruthless tactical commander at the age of only six years old! He carries the weight of knowing that the very survival of his species is on his shoulders at it is supposed to slowly crush him until he begins to worry hes not even human anymore! That is how the character was meant to be portrayed but he is instead naive and easily manipulated. Some people praise the serious demeanor of his acting, but whether it was poor a transfer in novel to screen writing or the actor's style I feel like the true core of the Ender character was lost in translation.
Had the movie focused on that instead of the action it may have been one of the best movies of all time. The adults in the movie did a much better job in their roles and the contrast between the scenes featuring Colonol Graff and the other adult characters seemed almost like a completely different movie than the scenes featuring Ender and the other children. I believe it tried to hard to be like other more recent science fiction movies that focus on grand battles and sleek futuristic technology.
John Bane provided his opinion in his November 5th, VLOG video. His opinion was that when you got to see a movie adaptation of a book your expectation is to see certain scenes you imagined when you were reading and how accurately they match up to it. "It was an action movie, it really was." He states while adding that the main focus of the story was really the non-action elements.
The Slashdot blogger known as Soulskill does make a very good argument in the movie's defense though. "It's inevitable that a successful book won't fit within the confines of a movie script." They mention at the end of their article. Though this is most definitely true it brings me back to the comparison I mentioned earlier regarding The Hobbit Trilogy.
The Hobbit Comparison
I feel that Ender's game wound have benefited by being split up into multiple movies with powerful scenes instead of jammed into one where it felt it needed to gloss over many of the more dramatic scenes in favor of fast paced action. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey left out no details that were in the book, in fact it actually added content from additional books in the series that took place at the same time. Ender's Game could have done this and in my personal opinion pulled it off way better. I'll stop there due to the risk of spoiling either of these amazing series for those reading, but I am deeply saddened by the loss of this opportunity.
Final Verdict
Ender's Game is by no means a bad movie. It has spectacular action scenes and excellently portrays them just as I imagined them from the book. Is it a cultural milestone that will have an impact on the world at large? Much to my disappointment it does not. It instead tries to attract a younger demographic with fast paced action and the typical "growing up really sucks" stereotypes. Even worse it still attempts to act like it is the incredibly serious and emotional plot featured in the books. This has been the fate of many famous movie adaptations of literature and was my biggest fear when I heard it was being produced. I fear the chances of a sequel will be minimal due to the confusing plot and a very poor release date that forced it to compete with anticipated movies like Thor: The Dark World. Many critics agree with many of these points according to a recent post by CBS shown below.
Creating this review has made me want to reread the book as well as read more books from the series. It made me mostly want to experience what I felt the first time I read it, but with the more realistic perspective that the movie portrays. I went to see the movie with my friends and they liked it as well for the most part. One of them has read the book and the other hasn't. The one who has't was rather confused about the plot while the other was happy with the action scenes, but liked the book more. By creating this I realized a lot of movie adaptations are directly affected by public opinion of their authors. Ender's Game was almost scrapped due to controversy on Orsan Scott Card's personal views on subjects such as gay marriage. Tolkien led a rather charmed life and was an all around well liked and celebrated person in general. Maybe these things have a larger affect than we realize.
John Bane's Vlog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZuaA0KBTpo
CBS Post
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57610451/enders-game-reviews-critics-weigh-in-on-sci-fi-film/
Soulskill's Review
http://slashdot.org/story/13/11/06/1921209/movie-review-enders-game
I have long been a fan of Orson Scott Cards writing and fell in love early with Ender's Game. While a classic story, It infuses so many elements of story telling that it stands out as a fine and strong example of its genre.
ReplyDeleteI can completely agree with your take on the trilogy. Ender's Game should never have been attempted as a single film. They could have made an opening movie (if I may) much like Star Wars First film (4th in the trilogy) "A New Hope" or The fourth film (2nd in the trilogy) "Phantom Menace" and given the story a chance to open up around the early development and crushing weight laid on the shoulders of our young protagonist. Clearly the movie could have benefited by multiple films. As you pointed Mathew, the entire trilogy or multi-film aspect is becoming so prominent in movie making to make me nearly critical of the directors faith in his film. While I do not feel it was a bad movie, It lost so much of what the story was to almost call the retelling a bit tripe if I may say so. I vote book over movie by far in the case of Ender's Game.
There is a lot that can be gained from these two sights on both Ender's Game and Orson Scott Card; (http://www.hatrack.com/) The Authors personal website and this is an interesting look at the applications of the novel today (http://www.hatrack.com/research/teachers/reading_ender.shtml)