I didn't read the books but at the end it makes out like the humans are the bad guys yet the bugs did try to conquer earth. They started the war and tried to kill all humans so why should we show mercy. I was on the commanders side even if the bugs said they wanted peace why risk it, they could just be saying that whilst they build up an army like germany did before ww2 and like Japan did when they bombed pearl harbour.
shareNo, the aliens were not the good guys. They were just an alien species that recognized they made huge mistakes with man and were trying to make up for it. Ironically, humans would realize they made a very similar mistake in dealing with the Formics around a hundred years after the Formics realized theirs.
They started the war and tried to kill all humans so why should we show mercy.This is one of the biggest issues to deal with in the story. Humans were attacked because the Formics didn't realize we were sentient beings. When they did realize they did the only thing they could and avoid any more conflict with humans. But humans, not knowing what the Formics were doing could only plan for more war. I agree with you, without knowing what a hostile force intends, the only thing you can do to ensure your survival is to destroy them. Hindsight allows you to see that perhaps you should have done things differently but in the moment you have to deal with the situation using the information you have. Even if humans knew that the Formics weren't planning to attack anymore, how could we trust them? We know human nature, not Formic nature. We know that intentions are all well and good. But the Formics had been anything but peaceful in previous encounters so why should we trust them that they would actually be peaceful or stay peaceful?
Beautiful response, but to those who conceived the film I have a question---why, with all the incredible technology for weaponry, did no one on Earth ever develop a computer program to communicate with a species like the Formics? They, too, were advanced technologically, so just because they did not speak an oral language, they must have had a written language. They could not make aircraft without blueprints and some kind of drawings, specs, material requirements, manuals...
Math and physics are universal---so they form an excellent starting point for any communication. Carl Sagan pointed this out long ago in his book Contact. It was shown in the movie as well. But sharing these universal facts...perhaps geometry, simple math that can be drawn (1 + 1 = 2 for ex) and basic physics would open the door and a program could illustrate these and encourage a response? They had many many years.
A very narrow minded plot in so many respects---where were anyone between the age of 20 and 60? Only Dap, the psychologist in the military and Ender's mother was shown. And there were just a couple of female classmates? By the 1970s, females were equally represented in college, and almost equal numbers in advanced education. They have been joining the military for decades and fully participated in the war effort for WWII, from holding non combat support positions inside the military to working in factories to make sure Allies had enough vehicles, aircraft and weapons (including the first A bombs), and materials to make them, to the surprise of the Axis powers. Why would they cut their numbers in future wars? Crazy. And the soon-subservient sargeant (?) Dap was possibly a worse model for men over 20 but not yet seniors. Did males just inseminate their women, then disappear?
An alien race with a hive mentality.
We are using our own knowledge of the hive as per, ant, Bee wasp, termite. They have built wondrous colonies but no one has found a blueprint or written plan. Every [member] of the colony has a pre programmed function including the various queens. We also believe that various messages are sent over fairly long distances proportional of course to the insects size. When one is threatened others come to their aid. So to liken an alien species in this way probably means normal communication may not be possible. Cannot remember fully but some sort of communication was suggested in one of the Starship Trooper stories. This was also a tale of mass killing of an alien species in defence of earth.
During the final battle, when the Formics defended with millions or maybe hundreds of millions of fighters ... in all the battles, when the Formics outnumber the human fleet 1000:1 or greater ... how could anyone believe they were not a mortal threat to humanity? How could Ender believe he could have reasoned with the Formic queen for a truce?
That queen was manipulating his mind even back at the Battle School.
The book was better than the movie.
How could Ender believe he could have reasoned with the Formic queen for a truce?
That queen was manipulating his mind even back at the Battle School.
Who knows if they were good or bad? We just assumed they were bad and needed to be annihilated. When they first came to earth, they weren't necessarily "attacking" us. We assumed they were here to destroy us.
All we ever see of stars are their old photographs. - Dr. Manhattan
What we have here here is a failure to communicate.🐭
shareNo. I think this was an anti-war film, and there were no real good or bad guys in it. Both sides stumbled into war and were vicious and callous to the other, and that's what Ender sought to deal with.
shareIf you think there are good guys and bad guys you didn't get the movie. There is no good or bad, but conflicted interests and communication barriers. Both species are trying to do the best for their own.
shareThe point was that nobody had tried to communicate with the Formics which is something that comes across rather more stongly in the books than in the film. Ender was tricked into believing that the final battle was simply a war game so that he would have no qualms about annihilating the enemy - it was only a game, after all. Had he known what was really at stake, he might have acted differently. We'll never know if that would have resulted in the end of the human race, because we never did get to see what the motives of the Formics were - as Ender pointed out, they'd had decades in which to attack Earth, and they hadn't, so were they about to now? So what we have is a pre-emptive strike on the part of humans when there's a fair amount of evidence that the Formics were not a threat any more. That's what upset Ender - the fact that there was never any attempt to open up a dialogue with the Formics. OK, maybe it would have been futile, but they didn't even try.
One of the things I liked about the story is that there were no good guys or bad guys, there was just a conflict on interest between two groups, and a complete inability to understand each other. Until it was too late that is.
shareWe only saw the military point of view from one side. Only after the end did we see the political side of the other. For the military it is always victory or defeat, there is no compromise, it is politics that decides on compromises. If the formics had tried to negotiate then they did not show it. They knew humans would attack and so build a zillion ships. The military seeing that can only come to one conclusion and that is they are going to attack..
We can see even now how humans will not communicate but plan on conflict and not even believe the other does not want conflict. Even if they are building up their defenses that still shows they are planning for war. To avoid costly mistakes you need to build trust and communicate. Both are hard when you dont understand the other.
In the end, there really are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in this story (movie or book). It seems the formics are evil for much of the story, but eventually you come to find out that they simply didn't understand human biology. They thought we were similar to them, i.e. individual drones with no consciousness simply blindly following the directions of a hive mind. When they fought amongst themselves, they never killed each others queens, only the mindless workers until one of the queens surrendered. Thus no sentient life was destroyed in their own wars. When they realize that every single human they killed was as sentient as one of their own queens, they're horrified. They never would've come back to attack Earth again, because they never would engage in a war that necessitated the destruction of sentient life if they could avoid it. But since there was no way to communicate with us, the IF didn't know that. And thus, the IF turns around and wipes out almost their entire race because of a similar misconception. You could easily argue that neither side is really morally culpable (or at least, not completely) for their respective genocides. They were all the victims of circumstance.
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