Thank You Mr.Hood

Rating: Null/10 (4 November 2013)

Just saw Ender's Game Thank you Gavin Hood.
I was afraid this would be turned into a "Special Effects masquerading as a story" movie like the last Star Trek (vomit, vomit) movie. But Mr. Hood kept to Ray Bradbury's statement that Science Fiction is "taking comfortable people and asking them uncomfortable questions." It didn't hurt that Mr. Card was one of the Writers/Producers.
This film focused; as the book did, on Andrew Ender's evolution from the youngest of three eugenically selected children into the Commander of Earth Forces in a battle of special extinction were only one side will be allowed to survive. His dealing with the fact that he was a Third in a world of two births only: growing up in the shadow of his beloved older sister Valentine and his hated older brother Peter. That he was the last hope of the family after both his older brother and older sister washed out of Battle School. That he is humanity's last best hope to protect Earth from extinction.
It raised the questions of child abuse and murder. In the book Stilson dies when Ender fights back after being bullied in 6th grade. It briefly touches on mental abuse and torture and when letting something between children goes too far. But Viola Davis' Major Anderson does provide some of the counter argument and balance her character raised in the book. It is obvious some of the subplots (like Bean's history and the Eugenics six friendship bonding) had to be downplayed or left out.
Harrison Ford does not play Graff. Harrison Ford is Graff. I think when I reread this book I will hear Mr. Ford's voice in my head whenever Graff talks. He plays him with the same quiet desperation the character in the book displays. He shows his character torn between doing what he feels must be done to Ender to mold him into the leader they need and the reality that in molding him he is destroying the child Ender and creating the Admiral Wiggins. And feeling the loss, feeling the empathy and connection with Ender.
And I loved Rackham's speech to Ender in his quarters at Command School about the markings on his face. Although I am sure most of the younger audience will miss the point Rackham makes about these tattoos telling his personal and his family history; and that decorative body art tattoos are a denigration of this long and honoured tradition.
I was very pleased with the ending where the movie did not hit you over the head with the fact that the Graduation Game was no game. But that it was thousands of humans following Ender's commands and dying in battle at the Formic's home world. It left the concept to sink in with the audience the same way the consequences to Ender's actions were becoming apparent to him.
The end played very soft the fact that Ender had taken a Formic Queen with him when leaving Command School after the formic War. It left the door open for the sequel although Speaker for the Dead is even more a psychological novel and less an action story than Ender's Game.