A Homophobe Reviews “Ender’s Game”
I was a chubby little kid, so I got my fair share of bullying until I stretched out in high school. I was also molested by a male babysitter and introduced to hardcore bisexual pornography when I was eight, leading to a lifelong struggle with sexual addiction ever since losing my virginity while still in the 3rd grade – to a man. What does any of this have to do with Ender’s Game? Everything.
More on the sexual abuse later; let me first address why I love Ender’s Game so much and why I identify so closely with this tortured, compassionate military genius. As a fat, brainy little kid I spent a lot of time out-witting the occasional Neanderthal who thought he would use me to raise his standing. Like Ender, I learned to use my enemy’s strength against him, often re-directing their antagonism or even managing to make peace through diplomacy. And even if I had to defend myself I managed, much like Ender, to evade, escape or nudge the odds a little more in my favor by out-thinking the dumb ox. Sadly, I even got picked on by one particularly ruthless neighbor girl, who threatened to have her brothers beat me up if I didn’t do her homework and let her cheat off me on a test. I obliged, but when her final grade came in she was sorry she asked me to help, especially when she got held back and I went on to graduate number six in my class. Much like Ender, the military invited me to the Air Force Academy for a Summer Scientific Seminar due to my performance on the ASVAB tests. That ended in disaster, but more on that later.
The irony for those who hate author Orson Scott Card is that he has created one of the most beloved and imaginative novels involving a bullied child who spends his life overcoming, even crushing, his demons. But Card’s detractors know this, and while they will do everything possible to rob him of his due, I’ll bet money they will secretly borrow or steal a copy of the book and indulge the tingly feelings they get knowing there will be hell to pay if they get caught; the same tingly feelings I used to get, coincidentally, sneaking away from adult book stores in the middle of the night while I was in college. Weird parallels! I know, right?!
The movie is the final evolution of the original short story which appeared in the August, 1977 edition of Analog magazine. The expanded novel earned Card a 1985 Nebula and 1986 Hugo Best Novel award, and although I did not discover the book until my early 40’s, I have read every incarnation of it multiple times, as well as the sequels and the entire Ender’s Shadow series which follows the character of Bean. When Marvel began producing the comic book version I couldn’t contain myself. My dad had collected comic books since his childhood, which explains my love for the genre, but to see someone else’s interpretation of the images I had created in my head for the characters and their world was fantastic. But now, to finally see on the big screen, in all its CGI glory, the film adaptation of a book once deemed “un-filmable”! Well, let’s just say it was worth the wait… almost.
So what did the movie get right and where did it compromise? In general, I was pleasantly surprised by how faithful the movie tried to stay to the overall themes of the book, but those themes were treated much like a stone skipped across a lake – touching the surface just right but never going deep enough to understand enough of the “why”. I am so familiar with the story that I found myself easily filling in the holes and dressing out the sides, but anyone unfamiliar with the books will have a hard time appreciating the depth and subtlety imparted by Card, and even more movingly by the audio book version told through the incredible voice of Stefan Rudnicki.
I was amazed at how fast the movie flew through Ender’s time at his home in North Carolina. I wanted to see more of his brother and sister, Peter and Valentine, since their failure to make the cut for Battle School inform his very existence. The history and animosity between his parents and Colonel Graff was completely skipped, along with the importance of the two-child policy and Ender’s humiliation as a “third”, allowed by the government as if they had requisitioned Ender like a piece of military property. Also, Peter’s sadistic torment, balanced out by Valentine’s compassion, gave Ender the capacity to inspire a devoted loyalty among his peers while at the same time instilling in his enemies a mortal dread for his relentless and ruthless tactical genius.
Then there was Ender’s age. In the novel he enters Battle School at age six and has his own army by age nine, which helps explain why he is so hated by the older commanders who know they will never match this child prodigy. His young, tender age also deepens the tragedy and indignation of how the adults use him for their own purposes, even if those purposes may be noble in their own minds. Asa Butterfield was wonderful but he was too tall and too old. Petra was great, just as I imagined her, but she should have been a much older mentor for Ender. I almost laughed out loud to see a diminutive Bonzo Madrid looking menacingly up into his face, but the Napoleon complex was well done and made up for it. Also, I appreciated how tastefully they did the shower fight scene, which was pivotal in Ender’s development and fueled his fury against the adults running the school, and his life. I also liked how they treated Bernard, who originally got his arm broken for harassing Ender on the transport shuttle before they even get to Battle School. I very much appreciate that Bernard was redeemed, forgiven and even served under him with honor in Command School.
I liked Ben Kingsley as Mazor Racham, but his initial meeting with Ender missed a great opportunity at humor. Ender gets pinned during his first lesson on underestimating his enemy, but he doesn’t learn Mazor’s identity until Mazor turns his back to leave and Ender drop kicks him into the door, turning the lesson back on his new master. And why didn’t we ever come to understand that Mazor should be over a hundred years old? They should have taken a moment to explain the time effects of near light-speed travel purposely undertaken to keep Mazor alive until they could find “the one”.
As for the battle room scenes, I loved the way it was imagined. And the scene with Bean tied to a line was almost straight out of the book! I can excuse the necessity of reducing each army down to a dozen or so soldiers when the book had platoons of 40, but I cannot excuse seeing only Salamander and Leopard (?) Army!? I almost felt like the entire battle school consisted of only Ender and Bonzo. Where was Rose “the Nose”? Where were Rat, Phoenix, Scorpion and all the other armies? Where were Han Tzu, Carn Carby and Fly Molo? Why was Dink Meeker so underused? Where were the hundreds of other cadets? Why didn’t we better see how these kids were gleaned from every country on earth, not just the USA, and the way that cultural diversity affected their relationships in battle school because of national conflicts back on Earth? Why was there not more time spent on seeing Ender’s rise on the leader board and the isolation caused by the jealousy of the other commanders?
The movie seemed to be in such a hurry to get to the last fifteen minutes that it abandoned the rich panoply of characters that made the book so much fun. Yes, I know it’s a bad thing to cram too much into a short movie, but it was equally disappointing to see the “Enderverse” shaved down to so few supporting characters that it felt like a half-empty room at your 20th high school reunion. The movie just flew too fast – I never got the feeling that Ender spent over three years at Battle School, it felt like he just went there for summer vacation. We don’t see how the adults and other commanders throw everything at him, deliberately trying to frustrate him, break him down, weary him with the injustice and unfairness of it all in a concerted effort to find his breaking point. We never really appreciate how hard he fought back, frustrating them instead with his genius, single-minded determination and unparalleled gift of strategy.
We also don’t see enough of the mind game, and how desperately he tries to exorcise the influence of his sadistic brother, Peter, through the love of his sister, Valentine. We also don’t fully see how that whole thing ties into the formic race he is preparing to battle. As for the bugger queen, she was well done and that scene was powerful. I’ll spare further comment for those who have not yet seen the movie, but I will say that her true influence was sorely missed. In the book, Ender wakes up from his nightmares sometimes bloody from chewing his own fist in torment. That’s important – I never got the feeling he was haunted as much as he was in the book.
My biggest gripe with the movie is it just moved too fast. We don’t see him age, grow or develop into the hounded, tortured and utterly exhausted young man he should be by the time he fights his greatest battle, and that brings me to his final exam. They utterly changed the entire psychology and point of the choices he makes. I won’t give the ending away, but when he arrives for his final exam with an audience of top military brass he does not care anymore. He wants to be kicked out of school and he does not care how. He actually tries to screw up so badly, do something so outrageous that he will be happily escorted back to earth. The movie takes a different approach and has him trying to please his superiors, an approach which I felt dampened the impact of what happens next. The emotional impact of the ending was there, but muted because of the change in motivation, in my opinion.
Still, even with all that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I will see it multiple times. I’m saddened that so many people will hurt the careers of the young actors involved in this film simply because of their hatred for the book’s author, and that brings me back to my opening comments. I rarely contribute to Comicbookmovie.com, but when I have posted I have made it a point to be deliberately provocative. I do so intentionally, because I feel I must counterbalance the flow of popular culture on this particular subject. Being molested and infected by hard bisexual porn in the 3rd grade robbed me of my innocence. By the time I got to middle school I had had more sexual encounters than most newlyweds, mostly with males. What do you think that does to a small child with a brain like wet cement? Everything leaves an impression that is almost impossible to erase without jack-hammering the entire foundation.
In the late 80’s I saw the explosion of AIDS firsthand as a paramedic, and saw how the disease went from a 93% male homosexual vector (7% IV drug users) to women and children, due in large part to the army of bisexual men hopping from room to room in adult bookstores for a quick encounter, like little social butterflies, then taking it home to their wives and children. I know - I was there watching them. In the early 90's I became a Red Cross HIV-AIDS educator and saw the lies and propaganda fomented on the world just to take the heat off of one particular demographic, just because they were better educated and funded, having no one to spend their wealth on but themselves. I have watched the slow encroachment of perversion into the mainstream, as if the horror of my childhood abuse had now become normal, and even expected. I have watched public opinion slowly turn upside down in a bizarre fulfillment of Isaiah 5:20, to the point that now popular music videos claim Jesus as Lord of the gays and Christians as the real enemies of Christ.
I write these things with a heavy heart, because I have two nephews who have chosen the gay lifestyle. I say that lightly, because what is that “lifestyle”? What is gay art, drama, literature, film, conversation, poetry, society, etc? No matter how lofty it starts it always disintegrates into the same two themes – rebellion and deviant sex. I know – I’ve spent plenty of time with them. It’s all about the orgasm and the most exotic way to get it, no matter how they pretend to higher virtues such as civil rights. And although they cannot, or will not, procreate naturally, the drive for offspring is still there so they must reproduce artificially – usually by terra-forming the impressionable minds of the young and unsuspecting, like me at age eight.
My nephews know how I feel about the subject, and they know I will never lie to them, coddle them or encourage the direction they are taking. But they also know I love them dearly – I would take a bullet for either of them and fight any bully off of them with a stick. But they are also victims, of a society hell-bent on corrupting the world away from a God they hate to distraction, and only too glad to drag as many as they can down to hell with them.
My wife, bless her, knew everything about me when we met and she married me anyway. So did my first wife who died of cancer fifteen years ago. Just before she died I stole and finally cut that little porn book into tiny pieces in front of her, but if I close my eyes, I can still see every page of that damn book in full color, just as I did almost 40 years ago. It is forever burned into my brain to torment me until the day I die. In this age of instant internet porn and a Godless HBO, this may seem rather quaint and amusing, but that only shows how deep down the sewer America has fallen.
Pornography is not victimless. When I was in high school, I was assaulted by a gay stranger that I had to literally fight off me. Everyone remembers Matthew Shepard, but no one ever talks about Jesse Dirkhising, who was brutally raped and murdered by two homosexual males. I have aborted at least one and possibly a second child as a result of my sexual addictions. I ran into one girl years later who was now pregnant with her third child, and she still cries, wondering if it was a girl or a boy, knowing we will face that child again in heaven. I lost my college scholarship and a chance at the Air Force Academy because of this addiction. It is as powerful as crack and just as hard to give up. I have ruined my life and the lives of several other people while trying to battle this demonic plague.
But I also know that I have fought a good fight against this garbage. I have begged and been forgiven by my Lord and Savior Jesus, the Christ, who told the woman caught in adultery that, yes, neither does he condemn her, but GO NOW AND SIN NO MORE. I know that the man who molested me was sick, and had likely been a victim himself. I know that many who defer to the gay lifestyle have father issues and histories of abuse, molestation and abandonment. I know they need God as much as I do, but I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and watch Jesus being co-opted into a golden calf for these pagan demoniacs to dance around.
As I write this, Orson Scott Card will continue to be demonized for standing his ground on the continued Satanic degradation of my beloved country, and I know that one day soon I will likely be killed by the very preachers of the new “tolerance”, with their fake Jesus – an impotent, compliant god made in their own image – smiling from their banners, for simply having the audacity to be ashamed of my past behavior. May God forgive us all for what’s about to happen to the late, great planet Earth.