Having just gotten back from viewing the movie (I wish I'd seen the Imax version instead), I pulled a random positive review off of rottentomatoes -
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...d_from_orson_scott_card_s_novel_reviewed.html
The reviewer (the distinguished yet randomly-named Dana Stevens) starts out her review by pointing to Card's politics -
"I knew of Card primarily as an anti-gay-marriage crusader and vocal right-wing crank..." and a "prominent homophobe."
Ok, so she's a democrat Obama voter who believes people should be taxed for something they don't need or want.
Those first few lines are important, however, because in the end she ties those in with an obligatory slap in Card's direction.
"...this effects-heavy but still slight-seeming movie has a strangely tractlike quality: It seems to be intending some lesson or moral that, as a nonreader of the book, I never quite got."
I kind of agree with that. It is "slight-seeming" in that most of the plot-points from the book were sacrificed for time. For example, when the mean sergeant finally salutes Ender, it lacks the development the scene should have been given. So it kind of falls flat, but I forgive it, because after all its a book-to-movie adaptation.
But the fact that she doesn't get it - why does that surprise me? She must be the kind of reviewer who thinks the hovercrafts in the Matrix movies were flying underwater. In other words, she should stick to reviewing movies such as "Home Alone 2," and leave the adult-level movie reviewing to the adults.
"Ender’s Game unfolds in an airless, abstracted world that seems to have little relation to our own."
And??? I mean, seriously, if she truly doesn't "get it," then no wonder she thinks it has little relation to our own world.
"It’s a shame..."
Yes, it's a shame that all you could manage in life was an English degree and a reviewer job at Slate.com.
But if it's such a shame, where did you come up with this preposterous idea?
"...because Ender’s Game’s central premise—that in the future, after a catastrophic planetary invasion by antlike aliens known as Formics, Earth’s leaders will use children to lead the super-high-tech counterattack because of their superior brain plasticity and intuition—is an idea that’s full of possibilities." - Such as, "
satire[???] in the film’s portrait of a hyper-militarized culture of heroism," "potential for satire in the film’s portrait of a hyper-militarized culture of heroism" [????????????], or a Matrixy "religious allegory" [??????????????????????????????].
I have a better idea - let's just stick with the original plot and forget your ludicrous allegory suggestions. The fact that you didn't understand the movie is not the movie's failing - it is YOURS.
The reviewer then gives an overview of the plot-line, in which she actually stated that she liked the video-game sequences. But if that's the only reason she didn't rotten-tomato the movie...
"Viola Davis appears as a lower-ranking battle-school officer who tries in vain to convince Ford’s gruff honcho to incorporate the faintest tinge of compassion into their training protocols, but both Ford and the movie treat her as window dressing."
No. Far from being window-dressing, she manages to talk down Harrison Ford a time or two, and this has a major effect on how the movie turns out. So the reviewer was just plain wrong here. That's not opinion, that's a fact.
"The ending aspires to a moral ponderousness that the rest of the movie can’t quite support..."
Can't QUITE support? What kind of weasel-wording is this? Ender PLAINLY shows his moral character throughout the movie, and thus the "moral ponderousness" is made very, very easy to understand - except to certain reviewers.
"Gay activist groups have proposed a boycott of Ender’s Game... I can understand wanting to skip Ender’s Game as a matter of moral principle, but you can also feel free to blow it off just because it’s not that good."
Then why on Earth, or on the Formic home world, did
Ender's Game get a ripe tomato next to your review at Rotten Tomatoes?
To add insult to political injury, as a parting shot in her insult-laden review, Dana Stevens claims there is a connection between Card's use of the term "Buggers" to describe the alien invaders, and Card's alleged homophobia.
It sounds to me like Dana Stevens has a dirtier mind than Orson Scott Card. But what do I know? I don't even work for the Slate.
