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[Ender's Game] Movie comes out Nov. 1st! OSC is a goose, but don't talk about it here!
OremLK
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After a decade in development hell, the film version of Ender's Game is finally coming out. It's already been released in the UK and will release in US November 1st. Most people probably already know of the book, even if they haven't read it themselves, but I suppose a quick introduction is in order.
Ender is a child genius conscripted into a training program in space, wherein he plays frenetic zero G games with other brilliant kids, ostensibly to teach them about leadership and military tactics in space warfare.
Earth needs these child geniuses to lead a war against the insectoid aliens who nearly destroyed the population decades ago, before barely being pushed back.
(Warning: This is one of those trailers with a lot of spoilers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UNWLgY-wuoThe book has achieved lasting popularity in part I think because it deals heavily with morally ambiguous situations, and in particular with the morality of violence. There is a weight to the material which makes it much more compelling—and disturbing—than the simple YA space adventure book some claim it to be.
If the film can achieve even half of that thematic potency, I think it will be a cut above your typical science fiction blockbuster, at least in terms of ideas and ambition.
Asa Butterfield (Hugo) plays Ender. Reviews so far have acclaimed his performance in the film.
Supporting actors include Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley.
IMPORTANT NOTE about Orson Scott Card and the thread rules: The book's author Orson Scott Card is an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, and this makes him a Very Bad Man. With that disclaimer out of the way, I've gotten permission from ElJeffe to tell you to please talk about that elsewhere. This thread is for the movie/books, not gay rights or separating the art from the artist or whatever other issues you want to discuss.
I also suggest we spoiler tag anything which reveals stuff about the plot for the sake of those who plan to see the movie without having read the book. With that in mind, I wanted to kick off the thread by talking a little about a (spoiler-filled) essay which has been going around the internet for years now, and why I think its analysis is wrong. Creating the Innocent Killer.
The author's thesis is that Card wrote Ender's Game, whether intentionally or driven by subconscious ideas, to make the target audience (in his mind, young bullied children) sympathize with a murderous Hitler-esque character. Basically to glorify violence and genocide and make it seem okay to destroy those who oppress you.
(As a side note, I find this “Godwinning” of the book amusing since I was first enthusiastically introduced to the novel by an orthodox Jew about a decade ago.)
Now personally, I find the essay interesting, and if there wasn't at least a kernel of truth in it, it wouldn't have grown so popular in internet circles.
But while I think the author has certain things right—Card certainly was using every tool at his disposal to make the reader sympathize with a character who is, indeed, a killer—I think the conclusion the author reaches is a shallow reading of the story which misses its true themes and stops short of really understanding the book.
In the book, Ender does kill two children (in self-defense taken too far) and of course destroy (almost) an entire alien species.
My issue is with the assumption that because we are meant to sympathize with Ender and admire his abilities, that therefore means we are meant to admire his choices. I would argue that the opposite is true. In fact, it is explicitly stated in the book that Ender himself does not admire what he's done. He feels soul-crushing guilt over his actions.
The last chapter is the key to understanding the book. It feels kind of strange; the story is over, right? Ender crushed the alien menace. He's the glorious savior of Earth! Child hero Ender, slayer of the evil monsters!
But no. We go years into the future, where Ender, consumed by guilt, is exiled from Earth to manage a remote colony on one of the planets whose inhabitants he destroyed. There he finds an egg, within which incubates the last queen of that species.
Ender finally achieves communication with his enemy, and learns they were not his enemy after all. As he was destroying them, they were trying desperately to communicate with him all along, to achieve some kind of peace for both races.
So what does Ender do? Two things. First, he sets out to find a planet where the alien queen can hatch and reestablish her species. That attempt at some form of atonement will be a toil of centuries wherein Ender uses relativistic speeds to skip across time like a stone across water, never laying down roots or establishing long-term relationships with anybody but his sister Valentine. A kind of self-imposed exile and punishment from all of humanity for what he's done.
But he doesn't stop there. He writes a book, which then becomes a religion. The purpose of that book? Firstly, to demonize himself for what he did. He turns himself—successfully--in the eyes of humanity from hero to monster. He is seen as being “The Xenocide”. Worse than Hitler.
The second purpose of the book is to enlighten all of humanity as to the true nature and intentions of the alien species he destroyed. To make everyone understand who they truly were and why they were not to be feared. That the entire war was based on a failure of communication. And most importantly, to pave the way for them to return without setting off another war between the two races.
That last chapter defines the book. I don't think Card was trying to send a single, simple moral message with Ender's Game. I think if Card is pushing one message it's not “Violence is great, kids! Go commit genocide!”, but rather “Communication and understanding are the key to peaceful coexistence, and without them, the consequences can be dire.” That said, I think the book's themes are too complex to be condensed into one didactic lesson. The purpose here is not to teach some specific thing so much as to make the reader think about many interconnected aspects of morality and human nature.
(As a side note, I find this “Godwinning” of the book amusing since I was first enthusiastically introduced to the novel by an orthodox Jew about a decade ago.)
Now personally, I find the essay interesting, and if there wasn't at least a kernel of truth in it, it wouldn't have grown so popular in internet circles.
But while I think the author has certain things right—Card certainly was using every tool at his disposal to make the reader sympathize with a character who is, indeed, a killer—I think the conclusion the author reaches is a shallow reading of the story which misses its true themes and stops short of really understanding the book.
In the book, Ender does kill two children (in self-defense taken too far) and of course destroy (almost) an entire alien species.
My issue is with the assumption that because we are meant to sympathize with Ender and admire his abilities, that therefore means we are meant to admire his choices. I would argue that the opposite is true. In fact, it is explicitly stated in the book that Ender himself does not admire what he's done. He feels soul-crushing guilt over his actions.
The last chapter is the key to understanding the book. It feels kind of strange; the story is over, right? Ender crushed the alien menace. He's the glorious savior of Earth! Child hero Ender, slayer of the evil monsters!
But no. We go years into the future, where Ender, consumed by guilt, is exiled from Earth to manage a remote colony on one of the planets whose inhabitants he destroyed. There he finds an egg, within which incubates the last queen of that species.
Ender finally achieves communication with his enemy, and learns they were not his enemy after all. As he was destroying them, they were trying desperately to communicate with him all along, to achieve some kind of peace for both races.
So what does Ender do? Two things. First, he sets out to find a planet where the alien queen can hatch and reestablish her species. That attempt at some form of atonement will be a toil of centuries wherein Ender uses relativistic speeds to skip across time like a stone across water, never laying down roots or establishing long-term relationships with anybody but his sister Valentine. A kind of self-imposed exile and punishment from all of humanity for what he's done.
But he doesn't stop there. He writes a book, which then becomes a religion. The purpose of that book? Firstly, to demonize himself for what he did. He turns himself—successfully--in the eyes of humanity from hero to monster. He is seen as being “The Xenocide”. Worse than Hitler.
The second purpose of the book is to enlighten all of humanity as to the true nature and intentions of the alien species he destroyed. To make everyone understand who they truly were and why they were not to be feared. That the entire war was based on a failure of communication. And most importantly, to pave the way for them to return without setting off another war between the two races.
That last chapter defines the book. I don't think Card was trying to send a single, simple moral message with Ender's Game. I think if Card is pushing one message it's not “Violence is great, kids! Go commit genocide!”, but rather “Communication and understanding are the key to peaceful coexistence, and without them, the consequences can be dire.” That said, I think the book's themes are too complex to be condensed into one didactic lesson. The purpose here is not to teach some specific thing so much as to make the reader think about many interconnected aspects of morality and human nature.
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
OremLK on
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It should be: Will Ender survive battle school?
Instead, it is: Will Ender SAVE HUMANITY?
EDIT:
@OremLK I totally agree with your spoilered analysis.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Quick rundown of the book in bullet points.
Ender is singled out by the staff at battle school so that the other student will start resenting him and pick on him. This happens at the earliest opportunity to maximize his isolation.
Ender is abused by his senior officer Bonzo and harrased by elder students. Ender is forced to kill Bonzo in self defense because the staff did nothing to stop the abuse.
Ender is constantly pushed by the senior staff, assigned more matches then any other leader and every time he succeeds he gets effectively punished by being given more and more difficult matches.
All with the knowledge and approval of Graff and the leaders of the battle school.
In the end,
That's a powerful message to send to kids. Its also the wrong message. It tells them to suck it up when exposed to abuse. It tells them abuse is for their own good. It tells them that telling adults would be useless. And the book is basically one long Hagiography of how all the shit Ender went through made him a better person.
The film will probably cut all that out in favor of Ender Vs Graff.
They were trying to sculpt him into a killer and eventually a mass murderer, and they succeeded. Ender is shown to have been born with extraordinary empathy, which is why he was destroying himself with guilt. Regardless, there was no "good outcome" from all the stuff they did to Ender.
He became a broken exile filled with regret, and the war itself turned out to have been a pointless slaughter.
I think it was supposed to be horrifying that Ender was abused repeatedly and made to feel adults would never help him. I don't think it was supposed to be some kind of "no pain no gain" message, but instead just the opposite.
Also, I think it's important to note that Ender's Game was not written for kids nor initially published as YA. It was written about children, but not for children. It started as a piece of short fiction in an adult science fiction magazine, then the expanded version was published as an adult science fiction novel.
Its very much "no Pain, no Gain" scenario from Graff side, several of his scenes say so almost outright. A more accurate saying would be "the end justify the means" and in this case the means was child abuse.
Ender did not become a better person by our standards, but in universe its made plain that the Ender capable of killing the buggers was considered superior to the Ender they started out with. They wanted him to be capable of genocide and they molded him into such a killer. All that horrifying abuse and in the end the abusers where right. Ender needed the abuse to become the person capable of saving the human race. The abuse was justified. The abuse was in-universe a good thing because it saved the human race.
The guilty exile became later on, when he learned that the war and the abuse was for nothing. Even then Speaker for the dead tried to have it both ways.
As for the book not being meant for kids, that has no relationship the real world reception of Enders game. Setting apart that there was no YA genre when the book was written(at least not as we know it), its now a YA book. Its also mentioned in a foreword by the author that he wanted to write Kids as Kids saw themselves. To write child characters that children would identify themselves with. If that's not writing for children, then what is?
By the way, I am very familiar with the origin of Enders Game. I have read the original short story. I have read several of the sequels and most of the Enders shadow series. Before I learned what a douche OSC. I was mostly critical of them even before learning so.
I do think there is supposed to be some moral ambiguity there, but I don't think it was supposed to be a case where the ends clearly justified the means. If anything, I would suggest it at least leans the other way, while leaving enough wiggle room to make you think about things instead of telling you what you should think.
It's honestly not very subtle.
We don't learn about the peaceful intent of the buggers until after their destruction. Up until then everything justified it. We where presented with no contrary viewpoint of the war until afterwards. In a fairly shitty epilogue I might add. Right up until the epilogue Buggers where evil and wanted to destroy humanity. They had attacked twice before and it was safe to assume would attack again. They killed without provocation and never tried to open diplomatic contact. The books makes this abundantly clear in the main text.
The creation of Xenocide Ender was presented to us as an acceptable even praiseworthy thing. It saved humanity, even Ender says so at the time. Even his guilt was presented as an acceptable loss until the epilogue. That's when justification of the whole war is ripped apart.
The Epilogue does not justify the 300 so pages that came before it. Especially since its an asspull to have it both ways on the genocide issue. Its the weak spot in the expansion from short story to full novel to be honest and was only put there as a sequel hook from what I can tell(OSC wanted to publish Speaker of the Dead first, but the publisher though people wouldn't want a novel lenght sequel to a short story).
OSC spends 300 pages telling us the Buggers have to be destroyed for the survival of humanity. Then he spends 30 pages telling us we are wrong and horrible people for doing so.
And I actually do think the epilogue is foreshadowed sufficiently earlier in the book.
I still remember my first reaction to the big twist... it was a gut punch. The "Yes, he won!" Is instantly replaced with this horrible sinking feeling as all the adults are cheering... You don't think that was intended? Because I do. And Ender knew all along, he knew what he was doing, that's why he was having constant nightmares and gnawing himself bloody in his sleep.
And throughout the whole story you're thinking, why the hell are we spending so much time on this fantasy game? Then the epilogue arrives and you're like. Oh. That's why.
Whatever you want to think about how Card's personal views do or don't bleed into his fictional works, his blog does exactly leave a lot of room for ambiguity on the former, and they are not exactly enlightened.
The climax of the book was
Then there is the epilogue:
Its like OSC realized that
It also ties into the abuse angle. If Ender hadn't blow up the planet humanity would have lost the war(or so they believed). They repeatedly put Ender in abusive situations where the only way out was to react violently and go beyond the rules. The kid, Bonzo and finally the buggers. They constantly piled on the abuse, escalating his reaction every time. If they hadn't abused him until he wanted to break the game, he wouldn't have blown up the planet. In fact if Ender had accepted the abuse without fighting back even once... The Buggers would still be alive...
So standing up for yourself in the face of abuse is wrong.
As for the twist. You didn't guess from the name Ender's Game alone? I guessed it from reading the back cover and title. Shit, I even guess the reaction of the adults in the room.(not talking about the epilogue, but the game), and I read it in the early 90s
And, you know, the entire Speaker of the Dead series.
I will go see this, since I loved Ender's game, and both series of sequels (the Bean saga, and the Speaker of the Dead series)
However, I have to agree that the move trailers are spoiling the best parts of the book. You're not SUPPOSED to know what Ender is really doing until the very end.
As far as feeling horrible about it..
Everyone on all sides does some pretty shitty things though - Graff to the kids, Ender's family to Ender, Ender to those under his command, etc. That's what happens when people get their backs up against the wall and feel like they have nothing left to lose. The ends start justifying the means pretty darn quick. It's quite obvious the experience has mentally destroyed Ender and any number of other people. It's not glorifying violence at all. It says "Ok, yes, if you are facing extinction, violence is justified. But...are you really so sure that's the situation you're in? How much do you really know? Maybe it actually isn't too late to resolve this peacefully - maybe the other side is reaching out to you but you are blocking it" There's also the theme of responsibility you bear for just carrying out orders and plausible deniability and being used for potentially evil acts without, in theory knowing about it, and possibly suppressing subconsciously what we know to be the truth of our actions import under pressure from authority.
And in the end, all the violence and death and destruction was completely and utterly pointless. All the humans the bugs killed in the first two wars didn't need to die, and all the bugs the humans killed (and I guess, the entire human fleet died too) didn't need to die either. This is made abundantly clear in the Speaker for the Dead series, which deals in all the pain and suffering that can be caused by lack of understanding, empathy, and communication.
And the Bean series makes it abundantly clear the horrible toll the battle school had on those children, and what a dangerous, volatile situation it was to take all of Earth's best and brightest and turn them into little Napoleons, as the earth plunges into wars left and right led by the battle school children - or by groups using these children as pawns. For all of them, not just Ender, the school permanently warped and scarred their lives.
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The epilogue was also added for a specific purpose, which was not to add depth and complexity to the story, the morality of the characters' actions, or the xenocide. It was added because OSC wanted to reuse Ender in his Speaker for the Dead. He had the idea of Speaker in his head, wrote Ender's Game, realized he wanted to use Ender for the other story, so he added the epilogue.
My point is that people reading moral complexity and depth in the story are mistaken. The story is a straightforward "abusing children into committing xenocide is cool", with a few pages tacked on as an afterthought for the author to be able to reuse the character in other stories.
But if we still want to argue the morality shades of the story in light of the tacked-on epilogue, let's see:
2. Graff is exonerated of all charges by the tribunal, including setting up Ender's murder of Bonzo.
3. Humanity inherits all the worlds formerly colonized by the Buggers and expand out into space.
4. The Buggers forgive Ender and entrust him the last egg of their race.
5. Ender recognizes the xenocide was done in mistake... and that's it. No recriminations, no backlash, no reparations save for writing a book and carrying the last egg to a safe place which is literally the bare minimum he could conceivably be asked to do.
Yeah, I'm having trouble seeing the deep complex negative interpretation people are talking about.
As I understand it, they've basically changed that whole idea:
Interesting... and also, Ender's Game plot twist is pretty well-known by now, even to people who did not read the book. So I guess I can see the rationale for this change. I wonder though if they'll leave the rest of the story as-is, or if they'll create a new twist to replicate the feel of reading the book.
I interpreted it as a child soldier story, more or less, with humanity's best minds and machines already long dead at the hands of the Buggers. A military full of whatever remaining bottom feeders and a desperate society decide that these kids must really be the thing they need, because they're basically all they have left, and forcing them into the foxholes. What happens in the story is a result of that operating procedure.
Ender's Game is not supposed to be a story about epic 3D high-stakes space battles. Hell, all Ender even really saw of the 'simulated battles' described by the book was a bunch of dots and arrows on a computer screen - not some shining 3D surround sound IMAX holodeck like in the trailer. It's a story about the psychological pressures imposed on a kid who's being trained to save the world.
Most of those battles don't even take place until the last quarter of the book, anyway. The majority of the story is set in the halls, dorms, and battle room of battle school.
^ I agree ^
Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn't seem to believe that they can make a compelling sci fi movie without SPLOSIONS SPACESHIPS LASERS OMG, so this is what we're getting.
mod edit: Spoilers, dude.
The Buggers are basically constructed to be the perfect monster- we have no way of communicating with them, they look incredibly scary, they seem hell-bent on exterminating all humans, and they've very nearly done so already. So it's this crazy extreme scenario where all the usual rules of morality go out the window, and you can justify anything. It's like those annoying philosophical brain teasers where they ask questions like "would you murder 10 children to stop Hitler?" and the answer is obviously yes but only because that's such a ridiculously contrived example with very little relation to the real world.
And it doesn't really change much to say at the end "oh yeah apparently the buggers just misunderstood us and they wouldn't have invaded again" because no one fucking KNEW that. It would be like if Aliens tacked on a scene at the end where it told us that the aliens were actually nice, they just didn't understand that killing us was wrong, so really Ripley did a monstrous thing by killing all their eggs. You'd just be like "oh come the fuck on that's ridiculous" and that's how I feel about trying to make Ender or Graff seem evil in Ender's Game. It's an epic plot twist though.
Did you actually even read the essay at all? The author does not 'Godwin' the book: here's the relevant text:
The author is not comparing Ender with fascists, and that is certainly not the central these of the essay.
The original short story was written in 1977 and was the first science fiction story Card ever published. I have read it, and yes, I did know that the story was changed to fit with Speaker as a sequel.
That said, I disagree that the epilogue was simply tacked onto the end. I think it's quite reasonable to say that over the course of the story's transformation from an early piece of short fiction to a fully developed novel, Card's view of his own work likely changed and new insights and ideas arose as he improved as a young writer. I also don't believe he would just combine two ideas in such a sloppy way; he's talked often about how his best stories come from the concatenation of two disparate ideas and the tension and transformation which arises between them.
In terms of your specific points...
1 - 3. The initial reaction of Earth follows quite simply on the belief that Graff & Ender have saved humanity from extinction. The population's collective mistake is revealed within the text of the novel, and its opinion is noted to have widely changed by the end of the epilogue. Their expanding onto the bugger worlds is also a logical next step from winning the war.
4. Yes, the buggers entrust Ender with their last queen. What other choice do they have? Anywhere humanity discovered them they would be exterminated. Would anyone else besides Ender, who it's revealed they've been telepathically linked to throughout the story, understand them well enough to take on the task?
5. I would hardly say that Ender suffers no recriminations or backlash and makes no reparations! He sacrifices the rest of his life hopping from world to world trying to find the Hive Queen a home. This is explicitly stated in the very last paragraph of the book! The last damn sentence is "He looked for a long time." He ensures that humanity will forever view him as the Xenocide, that he will never be able to set down roots until he finds the Hive Queen a home. I would argue that rather than the "bare minimum", Ender actually does the absolute most he could possibly do to make reparations.
That's pretty much how I feel.
...I mean, @Richy and @Kipling217 , let's say that aliens really did come here and, say, annihilated Australia (sorry, @electricitylikesme ). And then we invented a planet-killing weapon as a 'last resort' or whatever, went over to their planet and blew it away entirely, exterminating that alien race. Let's say this alien race looked like a bunch of bugs.
Would you really feel bad or morally outraged? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. I'm pretty sure that even if someone told me, "But those aliens were really just trying to beam information to Australia that one time! They didn't mean it!" I would say, "Eh, fuck it, just a bunch of fucking bugs anyway,"
I guess that's not very philosophically complex, but give me a break.
Everyone always exterminates the Klackons instead of trying to get those fucks to assimilate.
But I'm pretty sure I'm okay with that. Because it was a bunch of fucking bugs.
The morality would actually be more interesting if the book didn't have Buggers at all. What if they didn't exist, but the rest of the plot was still the same, with the same sort of dystopian sci-fi militaristic setting?
So Ender is being bullied by a kid, and the kid attacks him, and Ender doesn't like being bullied and so he fights back, and he fights back really hard, and he kills the kid. Morally justified? I don't know, but it's a much more interesting question than it is if it's part of Ender's training to save the world.
Or at the end, when Ender suddenly finds out that the "games" he's been playing are real. What if that killed humans instead of monsters? Again, I don't know if he'd be morally justified in that situation, but it's a way more interesting and realistic plot. The buggers, for most of the book, are a sort of moral "negative infinity" that just wipes out ordinary ethics.
As it is- I can basically read the plot of the book in two ways. One, it's an attempt to justify adolescent rage- "I'm better than them, I wish I could kill my bullies, they deserve to die!" basically Ayn Rand in space nonsense. The other interpretation is hard core religious- the book shows that everything Ender did was totally rational, he's the smartest human ever, but all his brains just led him to doing the wrong thing. So he would have been better off abandoning rationality and trusting faith instead. I don't agree with either of those at all, but if you're looking for a meaning moral "lesson" to take away from the book that's all I can see.
Only problem is, I have no idea how this book can be a coherent movie.
My problem with these situations is the way that they are framed: first, that Ender is supposedly 'superior' to everyone else, and second that Ender feels the need to try and push home a message on anyone he's defending himself against (the buggers, his enemies, whatever) with excessive violence. He doesn't just defend himself - he defends himself and then hurts (well, kills, but he doesn't realize it on the spot) his adversary so they will fear him.
I can accept that this is how a person might act in such a situation - I cannot accept that this is how a morally 'superior' person would act in such a situation.
I may not like the book, but I still feel people should be able to see the movie with an open mind.
The Ender. I must admit I have wondered and this is the right thread to ask: Is your name a reference to Enders game?
Also:
As is their attempt to communicate only with Ender and only through dreams. They know human language from Ender. They didn't try sending a single ship to Earth and communicate? Even if they can't talk, they could write.
No; I took this handle from Zone of the Enders.
Otherwise enjoyed it.
Yes, I believe that was my point, or close to it at least. As someone else has pointed out, OSC has setup an extreme and unrealistic black-and-white situation: aliens who tried to wipe us out twice, whom we cannot communicate with, whose actions make no rational sense to us, and who look scary to boot. He sets up the story so that xenocide is the logical and morally right thing to do.
Which is fine. It's still a well-written and interesting novel. There's nothing that says that every novel must have deep complex onion-layered setups. A good novel based on an unrealistically-simple setup is still a good read, and at the end of the day that's what matters in a novel.
I just get flabbergasted by people who try to read deep complex morality plays in this novel. There is nothing like that in Ender's Game. All the characters, including the victims, agree that child abuse and xenocide are the right thing to do and forgive the perpetrators, even hail them as heroes. And the setup is pushed to the extreme so that we, the readers, are forced to agree with them. A few pages at the end meant to setup the Speakers series and that include a passing note "oh by the way, they were wrong" is not enough to pretend there was a deeper hidden moral debate all along.
For your convenience, a list of significant changes as I recall them, with the exception of revised ages, races and genders.
-Ender starts the plot enrolled in a military academy as part of "the program".
-After first striking Stilson, he tells him to "Stay Down". Stilson does not oblige. Stilson's fate is not made explicit.
-All the insults like "farteater" are jettisoned. Like "Bugger", this is probably for the best.
-Bean is in Ender's Launch Group.
-Dapp is a by-the-numbers drill sergeant nasty until Ender gets Dragon Army.
-Dink Meaker is in Salamander Army. So is Fly Molo, but that's all we see of him.
-Bonzo Madrid is like a full head shorter than everyone else other than Bean. I suspect this was deliberate, to establish the chip on his shoulder. However this comes in lieu of explaining his "Spanish Honuor".
-Ender has a single battle with Salamander, in which he immediately defies Bonzo when Petra is frozen and then does what he did with his first Rat Army battle.
-Peter is never seen again after his scene in the Mind Game.
-Locke, Demosthenes and all the landside political intrigue is jettisoned. This too is for the best.
-Ender goes straight from Salamander to Dragon Army
-Alai and Bernard are in Dragon Army. Bernard is there to show someone previously hostile now liking Ender.
-Dragon Army's rise through the ranks is done offscreen.
-The one onscreen Dragon battle is a mixture of Dragon v Salamander and Dragon's final battle.
-Petra joins this battle after an extra conveniently sprains his ankle.
-Again during the shower fight, Ender gets Bonzo in a hold and says he could break his arm if they continue. Like Stilson, Bonzo doesn't oblige.
-The injury to Bonzo is cracking his skull on the bathroom floor. It's immediately apparent to Ender he's hurt him terribly. Bonzo is seen undergoing surgery in the infirmary, but it's implied he's brain dead, and Ender knows this.
-Major Anderson begins to apologise and let slip to Ender that Graff let it happen, but Graff shuts her up. She then resigns, talking about how she'll have to repair all these broken kids when the war is over.
-Eros is not named, and stated as being close to the Formic homeworld, and yet also a forward staging ground for their attack on Earth? :?
-Mazer Rackham had a moment of insight about the queen during his battle, rather than it being dumb luck.
-Ender's squad is Alai, Dink, Petra, Bean and Bernard. With the exception of Fly Molo, none of the other leaders are even mentioned.
-It's Alai that says the Enemy Gate is down. Which makes sense, as it's Alai Ender discussed the concept with in their first time in the battle room.
-For some reason Ender is sedated after discovering the truth, despite not appearing to me to be that compromised.
-The new queen is in a rock formation on Eros, conveniently within walking distance of IF Command, and Ender discovers this shortly after being sedated.
-Ender meets an old queen who is dying, and it's to this queen Ender promises to find a new home.
-Ender departs immediately after the battle and his promotion to Admiral, writing a goodbye letter to Valentine.
So what did I think?
I like the casting. Asa Butterfield feels really withdrawn and beat down, which fits with how I see Ender. I also like that in both his one-on-one fights he gets the upper hand and then says "please don't take this further". He doesn't want to win all the battles after this one, but neither of his opponents will listen. Harrison Ford comes across as something of a Bastard but kind of a necessary Bastard, and I think the film wants the audience to decide for themselves who is right. Ender has a line saying "how we win is important", which is meant to contrast from his debut scene where he's playing a space fighter game with Stilson, and instead of defeating him in open combat he leads him into an asteroid field, but I don't know if it fits. Having Bonzo be shorter than everyone felt odd at first, as I think it was the difference in size that made Ender's victory more shocking to bystanders. However I think it was a visual way of portraying that Bonzo has a chip on his shoulder, combined with someone saying he hates to lose.
A lot of things aren't explained. Why is Mazer still alive? Instantaneous Communication? Did they travel to Eros faster than light or was there cryosleep involved? If cryosleep was needed then how did they only have 28 days?
Visually it's pretty great. There's Minority Report interfaces aplenty, and the final space battle is visually stunning. I wanna play in the Battle Room, dangit!
Couple of side notes: The ageing up of everyone makes it really weird when Peter plays Buggers Formics and Astronauts with Ender, and talking about how he could "accidentally" kill Ender when he's almost certainly above the age of criminal responsibility, if not already an adult. A neat shout out is Mazer has a big Maori - is it? Could a New Zealander confirm? - Tattoo over his face. He explains it's a way of remembering his father, who was killed in the invasion, a way to "Speak for the Dead".
I think this movie's strength is its aesthetic design, casting and characters for the most part. The plot sometimes suffers from "tell, don't show" and "mention, don't explain" in the rush to get through all the scenes. Dunno if I'd watch it again, but I'm glad I did.