Visually stunning, well performed, but my oh my.
As a small example, Ender's emails home to his sister, with whom he has a string emotional rapport and which he reads aloud, read like a dry, cold shopping list of what's just happened and what's about to happen. Like so much of the dialogue, they serve the purpose of informing the audience, and *no effort whatsoever* has been made to make it fit in with the story. It's so unbelievably appalling it actually makes you feel like the makers have a personal grudge against their audience.
What's more, the movie is brimmed with premises that make no sense - and it relies heavily on these to function. For example, the essential premise that the Formic's "can't talk" and so humanity has never attempted communication - yet they a have huge, industrial-sized and highly technical army, that invades far-off planets - so it's clear to everyone from the start that unless they spontaneously do the same thing at the same time, then it's obvious they communicate with one another, and have done so for thousands of years. I'm not kidding - the notion that they communicate *at all* only occurs to Ender right at the end of the movie, in a somewhat forced scene that was thrown in to make the end make sense - and this fact, or the failure of mankind to realise it, is absolutely pivotal to the plot! His commander even denies out loud that it's possible for Formics to communicate - fifty years *after* they launched an invasion on planet earth!
Equally bizarrely, the Formics' motivation for invading Earth is that they are about to "breed themselves into extinction" (sic). I can barely imagine how lazy and ignorant you have to be to surmise that because overpopulation = bad, therefore overpopulation = extinction. Give it half a moment's thought, heck, even do a little cursory research - it's just not a bright conclusion to reach, is it?
Throw in some really uncomfortable lines - you know the ones - establish a strong character for Ben Kingsley (he always shines at these, I think rather he established it for himself) , then give him some throwaway line that serves no purpose except to inform the audience what's going on (again)... oh God, stop it, it hurts!
As the final image faded to credits, I actually muttered "f*** you" under my breath, because that's truly how I felt. Kind of violated.
Do yourself, and the film medium, a favour - TAKE YOUR MONEY ELSEWHERE
As a small example, Ender's emails home to his sister, with whom he has a string emotional rapport and which he reads aloud, read like a dry, cold shopping list of what's just happened and what's about to happen. Like so much of the dialogue, they serve the purpose of informing the audience, and *no effort whatsoever* has been made to make it fit in with the story. It's so unbelievably appalling it actually makes you feel like the makers have a personal grudge against their audience.
What's more, the movie is brimmed with premises that make no sense - and it relies heavily on these to function. For example, the essential premise that the Formic's "can't talk" and so humanity has never attempted communication - yet they a have huge, industrial-sized and highly technical army, that invades far-off planets - so it's clear to everyone from the start that unless they spontaneously do the same thing at the same time, then it's obvious they communicate with one another, and have done so for thousands of years. I'm not kidding - the notion that they communicate *at all* only occurs to Ender right at the end of the movie, in a somewhat forced scene that was thrown in to make the end make sense - and this fact, or the failure of mankind to realise it, is absolutely pivotal to the plot! His commander even denies out loud that it's possible for Formics to communicate - fifty years *after* they launched an invasion on planet earth!
Equally bizarrely, the Formics' motivation for invading Earth is that they are about to "breed themselves into extinction" (sic). I can barely imagine how lazy and ignorant you have to be to surmise that because overpopulation = bad, therefore overpopulation = extinction. Give it half a moment's thought, heck, even do a little cursory research - it's just not a bright conclusion to reach, is it?
Throw in some really uncomfortable lines - you know the ones - establish a strong character for Ben Kingsley (he always shines at these, I think rather he established it for himself) , then give him some throwaway line that serves no purpose except to inform the audience what's going on (again)... oh God, stop it, it hurts!
As the final image faded to credits, I actually muttered "f*** you" under my breath, because that's truly how I felt. Kind of violated.
Do yourself, and the film medium, a favour - TAKE YOUR MONEY ELSEWHERE