by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright November 2013
Overall the movie had a lot going for it. The sets and effects were nice, and the actors did a good job. The story was also innovative, but it didn't work out so well for me. I read the book long ago. What I remember about it now was that it was innovative in its use of VR -- this was one of the first SF books to exploit mixing VR and gaming. In 1985 when the book was written this was state-of-the-art thinking. (and even more so in 1977 when the short story version was published, Apple II's had just become available)
Fast forward to 2013 and we have the Ender's Game movie. This has some nice displays of space wizardry, and we even have one scene of a rocket firing in the right direction -- facing forward, braking its speed. Yay!
But on this encounter with Ender's Game I was more deeply troubled by the basic premise: That the military was going to bet the farm on a Chosen Person. That sat on top of a whole lot of other social action that didn't make sense for future military.
Here are the Technofiction issues.
Hollywood loves doing movies about basic training where there's a loud-mouth, threatening DI (drill instructor). They also love showing warriors in hand-to-hand, or at least face-to-face, combat. (These days computer games show the same kinds of devotion.)
The problem is: Military hasn't fought that way since World War One, and doing so was a huge mistake for that war! The basic rule of thumb in modern warfare is: If you see your enemy, one of you has made a big mistake and one of you is going to pay dearly in a few seconds.
So, the first problem of this movie was all the time spent preparing for all the face-to-face combat.
The second issue was all the gung-honess: "Ten-HUT" "Hat EASE!" These kinds of rituals are designed to instill mindless cooperation, not competition or out of the box thinking. These rituals are designed for peacetime and rear area use. They remind those not at the front line that they are still part of the military. The problem in Ender's Game is that the commanders wanted out of the box thinking -- they knew they wanted out of the box thinking! In both the book and the movie, "This is our only hope, Obe Wan." ...They were not going to breed it in this environment.
The third issue is that no military relies on one solution. There is a well recognized phenomenon called "fog of war". What it means is that no plan is going to be followed for more than ten minutes before it needs revision and adaptation. This is well known and has been a constant in the military equation for centuries. As a result every military structures its tactics, strategy and solutions on having backup and interchangeability. No one, no thing, is indispensable. It can be replaced. And given any choice at all, a seasoned commander starts a battle when the odds are ten-to-one he or she is going to win, and then keeps fingers crossed. Whichever hot shot proposed to this IF (International Fleet) military committee that, "We are going to win this by breeding and training our best. And our best is going to have to be a one-in-a-million out of the box thinker. And this is the only way we are going to win." would have soon been commanding KP duty while the committee continued searching for a more probable solution.
The ending with its trickery didn't work for me at all:
o First, the usual Hollywood violations of distance and time, this battle was won in ten minutes start to finish?
o Second, these simulations were so realistic and accurate that Ender and his team couldn't tell the real thing from a previous simulation? If they were that realistic and accurate, why did the military need an out of the box thinker? They could just run the simulations a million times with lots of out of the box choices and pick out winners.
o Third, the psych officer didn't warn the commander that Ender would get deeply upset over this trickery? The commander could have easily hidden the truth and let Ender and team keep running simulations for days or months afterwards, and finally announced, "OK. You're ready. I'll let you know when it's time for the real show to happen. Well done! And for now... DisMISSED."
And finally, some small points:
o The seats on the rocket ship that launched from earth didn't work for me because they had no arm rests to support arms while the G forces were high. In the same vein, no one's faces got pulled out of shape by the high G during the launch phase.
o You build a solar array around a rocket that billows out bunches of salty, corrosive smoke? Well I guess it keeps the cleaning robots busy.
o The aliens have the skill to infiltrate a human computer game? And the further skill to know specifically which human's game to infiltrate? Wow! But not enough further skill to mess with his mind and end the threat to them? Triple wow!
The Ender's Game movie production values are first rate and innovative. The movie addresses some interesting social and ethical issues. But they are pure story book issues, they have little to do with a military situation in any real world future.
That said, kudos to Card for some visionary SF story telling! And kudos to the real world for catching up so fast to his vision!
-- The End --