Ending all the Games

Ender Wiggin has to know.

Let me explain; Ender is a military savant, preposterously intelligent, and possesses an amazing gift for forging empathetic connections with people (and species) of all kinds. Often, he uses his empathy to figure out just how to motivate his subordinates, to connect with them and find the right words to draw out each individual’s particular talents. On other occasions, he uses the same gift to commit genocide. Ender is lethal because his empathy allows him to anticipate military opponents on a near-telepathic level, to understand the precise workings of his enemy’s mind through streaks of light in a holographic display. And yet, in the climactic battle of Gavin Hood’s film and the novel from which it takes its title, the audience is meant to believe that Ender has been tricked into thinking he is fighting a computer simulation guided by the decidedly human Mazer Rackham, when in reality he is facing a hive-mind fleet of Formics. To emphasize; Ender wins because his empathy lets him see inside the enemy, to know it on an impossibly intimate level. And the audience is meant to think that Ender can’t even tell if he’s fighting a human or a Formic. 

So I say again; Ender Wiggin has to know. 

Maybe, at the end with the Little Doctor whirling up, Ender lies to himself. This would be understandable, a very young child processing what he’s about to do in a way that will allow him to maintain his sanity long enough to finish the job. But somewhere, deep down, Ender understands that he’s about to annihilate a species, and he orders the trigger pulled anyways. Why? Well, perhaps because he thinks it’s necessary. The various adult characters (and government behind them) may not have Ender’s raw intelligence, but they are very, very good at manipulating him into believing that the war is a zero-sum game, with species-wide survival hanging on the outcome. That’s a possible explanation, but an uncertain one. And the uncertainty represents the largest flaw with Hood’s mostly-admirable adaptation. We don’t know what Ender is thinking, or how he can be capable of such brutality. For an answer, we turn back to the novel.

We all know at this point that books and movies work in fundamentally different ways. Books can convey inner life and emotional complexity to a greater extent, movies have a visceral and emotional impact much closer to that of real experience, etc etc. There’s another, mostly logistical issue; Books are really, really long. Ender’s Game is not a large novel, and still Gavin Hood had to cut big sections in order to get it on-screen. Thing is, he cut out the important parts. 

Way back when, 14 year old me read the novel and loved it, but was a little bored by all the Earth-bound, Wiggins-family-centric-bits. In other news, 14 year old me was an idiot. Much has been made of the ways in which the Wiggins siblings interact. Much more could be written on the genre tropes each fulfills (rampaging id/hotheaded loose cannon, nurturing female, tortured genius/hero’s journey). Except that they don’t. Card’s best trick in the book is to present three children, all brilliant, all deeply disturbed (in large part because of that brilliance), and spend the rest of the novel showing, not how they’re different, but how they’re all very much alike. Blood, as ever, calls to blood. 

Peter Wiggin is the most logical, grounded character in the novel. Yes, I said it. By the end of the book, his methods have greatly evolved, but his perspective on society and desire to rip it apart and build something new in its place have not. He is savage, but precise in his goals and efficient in his methods. To put it simply, Peter looks at the world, applies his intelligence to figuring out exactly what it needs, then spends the rest of the book becoming that person. And Valentine, sweet, gentle, caring Valentine. How is she different? Yes, as a child she is more compassionate but…. It’s no accident that Card inverts the two characters in their selection of internet personas, with Peter becoming the thoughtful voice of reason, and Valentine the anarchic rabble-rouser. Yes, each of them is playing a part, but they’re so good at it because they believe in what they’re doing. Each of them really, truly thinks that the global system is broken, and they’re the ones to remake it. 

Ender’s journey in the novel has little to do with the growth of his military abilities (those arrive more-or-less fully formed), nor is it in the formation of relationships with his army; Petra et al are undoubtedly important to him, but not vital to his sense of identity in the way that Valentine is. Instead, book-Ender is growing into his family legacy. He’s becoming a Wiggin, admitting to himself that he has the capacity for immense violence, and the God-complex / arrogance to pull it off. Yes, he’s the youngest and probably smartest of the siblings. But Peter and Valentine are much more honest about who they are, and the places they wish to take on Earth. They grow into those roles at greater speed. Ender is different, but only in the sense that guilt over his actions can overwhelm him afterwards. If we accept that he did know, on some level, what he was doing to the Formics, then we also have to accept that he’s capable of suppressing that guilt to an enormous extent, sublimating his own personal agony in the service of humankind. 

Ok, back to the film. This piece comes from a feeling that’s been nagging at me since seeing it, a feeling of something missing. I think it’s this; Film-Ender really is duped. He doesn’t know that he’s slaughtering real, live Formics. I stand by my statement that, for the character to be internally consistent, he has to know on some level that he’s committing genocide, but there’s nothing in the film text in support of that particular reading. Movie-Ender doesn’t know. He’s an isolated kid, pushed past the point of exhaustion, who thinks he’s playing a giant video-game programmed by another person. And that is disappointing. The novel is made great by its use of the siblings to inform the character of the protagonist, to show that violence, empathy, savagery and compassion are all bundled together in these three extraordinary children. Ender is slightly different because he better-balances the defining qualities of his brother and sister, but this a difference of degree rather than type. By largely cutting Peter (stock bully character, barely onscreen), and Valentine (equally stock cry-on-shoulder sister), the film robs Ender of much complexity. 

I’d argue that this is a mistake, although it’s a deeply understandable one given the constraints of a film’s running time, not to mention the all-important master of 4 quadrant appeal. The film gives us a version of Ender who is appropriately intelligent, cerebral in combat, and tormented by the actions he is forced to take. What he is not, though, is complex. He fights back when bullied, is taken from his home, fights more, flirts with Petra, almost kills Bonso (the worst Deux-Ex-Machina in a film with plenty of those), makes a heroic decision, does heroic stuff etc etc. He’s a good kid. Precise, clinical, with a lot of buried rage, but fundamentally good. The Ender of Card’s novel is something very different, something much darker and much more dangerous. And yet, he makes the “right” choice (based on the information he has, but that isn’t his fault). 

So I ask, which of these characters is more human?