Sitting at Fort Bliss for a second time getting ready to deploy, it seems almost ironic that I showed up with the intent of seeing a particular film before I departed. Back in 2005, that film was
Serenity. This time, the film was
Ender's Game.
I read the book a long time ago, and bought it when I was in college. It's been one of my favorite books, regardless of Orson Scott Card's thoughts on same-sex relationships. I always have to exercise some discretion on movie adaptations since I know you can't squeeze the entire book into the movie (for a particularly hideous example, I cite Stephen King's
The Stand), but I thought this was generally okay.
Some things that stuck in my mind:
1. The parts where Ender Wiggin stops bullying could have been more graphically done. I thought that was a pretty important part of the story.
2. I wasn't keen on the changes made in characters and some of their development from the book to the movie. It felt artificial.
3. Not enough attention paid to Peter and Valentine Wiggin. Time doesn't really permit, but also pretty important for exposition.
4. Hyrum Graff is much less likeable (and far less complex a character) in the film than in the book. On the other hand, Mazer Rackham is played true to form. I particularly liked the Maori ink.
5. There's a paragraph from the book
Ender's Shadow that stuck in me as I was watching the space combat scenes:
That's
why they were giving most of their commands orally. They were being transmitted to real crews of
real ships who followed their orders and fought real battles. Any ship we lose, thought Bean, means that
grown men and women have died. Any
carelessness on our part takes lives.
Yet they don't tell us that precisely because we can't afford to be
burdened with that knowledge. In
wartime, commanders have always had to learn the concept of "acceptable
losses." But those who keep their
humanity never really accept the idea of acceptability. Bean understood that. It gnaws at them. So they protect us child-soldiers by keeping
us convinced that it's only games and tests. Therefore
I can't let on to anyone that I do know.
Therefore I must accept the losses without a word, without a visible
qualm. I must try to block out of my
mind the people who will die from our boldness, whose sacrifice is not a mere
counter in a game, but of their lives.
6. Finally, this one, from the Ender's Game book itself:
"there's a war on, and our best talent is gone, and the biggest battles are ahead."
The last two particularly stick with me as I prepare to go back to Afghanistan; while I've been told that I will not get the closure I wanted from my last deployment, the film Ender's Game, for its limitations, was a useful moral azimuth check for me.
Buying it on disk when it comes out. I, of course, will still be in Afghanistan when it comes out, so I might wait to get it until I come back to the USA on leave or at the end.
