Ender's Game: the movie

In the last post, I discussed Ender's Game, the award-winning book by Orson Scott Card. Ender, by the way, is from a rendering of the name of Andrew Wiggin by his sister, when she was small. It also can have another sort of meaning.

I have now seen the movie. Let's put it this way -- my wife liked it. It's a PG-13 film, for violence. There's no sex at all, and very little questionable language. We thought that the sound track was louder than it should have been, but have heard worse.

As would be expected, there were some deviations from the book. The most obvious one was the age of Ender, and the other battle school trainees -- they were 5 years, or more, older, than they were in the book, which actually makes more sense.

There were some other minor changes. The enemy species was called formics -- bugger was not used. The role of Petra Arkanian was magnified somewhat, which is a good thing. She was well played by Hailee Steinfeld. Asa Butterfield played Ender, the lead role, and did a good job, also, although we couldn't understand a few of his lines. Harrison Ford did a good job in an important role, and Viola Davis looked like she belonged in service in a future military.

There was even less religion in the movie than in the book. Ender's brother, Peter, was less important than in the book.

I don't wish to give away the plot, any more than in the last post, but will say that the theme, in the movie, is not so much relationships, and how they work, as it is war, and the morals of it. Is all fair in war? The book did deal with that, quite a bit. It was written before the war expense, fatalities and injuries, drone attacks, invasive data collection, and, depending on who is talking, torture, of the Bush 2 and Obama administrations, so was not a commentary on them, and the movie shouldn't be taken that way, either. There will be serious moral questions about war whenever one is fought or contemplated, and Ender's Game brings some of them to the fore.

Thanks for reading.