Thoughts on Ender's Game
I really against all better judgement walked into the theater wanting to like this movie. The cast should have been dynomite, and the kid who tormented Hannah Montana's brother stepped up to the plate and did a fantastic job until he got half assedly PG'd out of the movie. But there ends the list of things that made this worth watching, his performance as Bonzo was the only time I wasn't thinking about walking out of the theater. Everything else is the most expensive performance of book jacket liner notes which were scraped together from the italicized plot points from the Wikipedia plot breakdown of Ender's Game which were then triple distilled through Save The Cat.
This movie is everything Hollywood is hoping will save itself from itself. So obviously they carefully avoided doing ANYTHING new or interesting. They were to afraid of making something smart because audiences "don't like smart movies" which is weird because they are making a movie about genius level kids learning to be interstellar generals and the geo-political effects of underestimating the power and determination of a person just because they haven't hit puberty yet. So naturally there are plenty of explosions, Harrison Ford gets to chew scenery, so if you're into that kinda thing then you got that to look forward to. Butterfield who was amazing in Hugo basically spends his time running around updated sets from 2001 while watching Randy Quaid kill himself over and over again at the end of Independence day. His one directorial note is to "almost cry" for 1 hour and 58 minutes only to finally let the rain fall down just so an Alien can wipe a tear of his cheek. I am not exaggerating this part.
The director read the book after he spent time in the military which is obvious because instead of doing any of the battle school scenes from the book he just sort of re shot selected scenes from the first half of The kids bop edition of Full Metal Jacket while Butterfield kept trying to write Letters to Mr. Vernon repeatedly explaining why he was in detention. These letters are important apparently because they keep bringing up his need to send letters to his sister because in the book I remember some dumb ass side story where his sister and brother were pen pals or some stupid thing. This movie is more about A young Bill Murray in space boot camp just trying to sass the brass and live the easy life, or something. Kids shoot each other and war is bad m'kay?
Also super important themes on the indoctrination and tactical use of games, because waving your arms around like a fucking land locked synchronized swimmer is what makes you the best and most leaderist leader that ever lead a group of people who speak in catch phrases and have no character development what so ever. Buttterfield spends so much time waving his arms around that MY shoulders hurt by the end of the movie.
I also like that the story is supposed to be about Ender being a super good leader, which we experience by watching him get promoted for sending a text, given an army for having a crush on a girl, and made lord high commander of the Omega Doom space fleet because he built a raft. I know are whole montages they cut from this film because there are several times when it feels like your about to be loving laid into a pointless montage and then they just skip over it and you have no explanation that time has passed or that shit just got real but the movie has moved forward and you're just left to accept the fact that that montage which would have been pretty and possibly related some sort of minor character development for any one of the MANY characters kind of sort of almost in this movie, is no longer there and its time to watch more selected scenes from the cliff notes Ender's game.
Things I learned from this film:
Action speaks louder than words, Enders Game the book is a staggeringly deep emotional and mental experience, very little dialog and a LOT of thinking. Having 'brilliant" characters do nothing but think out loud in bold megaphone style dialog is just about the most efficent way of making something you intend to be serious into a live action Warner Brothers cartoon.
The best way I can sum this up is that Ender's Game the film feels both in emotional depth and visual style like a more mature, slightly older but still very fucking stupid sequel of Starship Troopers.
