MovieChat Forums > Ender's Game (2013) Discussion > Ender is a Monster

Ender is a Monster

posted 9 years ago by sentrypetal
7 replies | jump to latest

I've been reading the boards and find it surprising that people empathise with Ender or the other students. At the end of the book Ender has undergone a metamorphosis from a disturbed human being into a monster forged of cold logic with only one ambition victory no matter the cost. The process of this transformation was horrifying and disturbing reminiscent of child soldiers in many 3rd world countries. However unlike a child soldier Ender is a genius, mature far beyond his age his portrayal is not so much a child but a stunted malformed adult.
The worst thing though is what the movie is trying to achieve and that is apologetics / justification of Ender’s genocide.
1. Ender does not realise he is actually fighting real battles. This statement is farcical at best as Ender is a genius even an average person such as myself figured out that the battles seem too real for a simulation. More realistically Ender choses to delude himself as he is so focused on victory, so afraid of his demons (bullies / brother etc.), so focused on proving himself superior to those around him.
2. Ender saves the human race by wiping out an alien race for attacking us. Let’s role reverse if humans had been the instigators and attacked an Alien race killed a few and got beaten and then decided to retreat and 50 years later the aliens came back and exterminated us. Would we consider this to be justice - of course not. Eye for an Eye Tooth for a Tooth is not justice.
3. Ender is mercilessly bullied. Hmm lots of people get bullied they do not decide to send their bullies to hospital or make them brain dead or go on to commit genocide.
4. Ender saves the queen. Ahh yes hello Dr Mengele I heard you cured more people than you killed you must be a saint. Once again this does not in anyway pardon Ender’s genocide.
5. Ender is loved, followed and trusted. Hmm because they trust him we should too? Most dictators that committed genocide had the love, trust and adoration of a decent chunk of the population as well as children, lovers etc. cough cough Napolean.
6. Ender is a child manipulated by those around him. The movie represents him as a stunted malformed adult more so than a child. Furthermore Ender is a genius and mature far beyond his age, he knows with certainty right from wrong unlike a child.
So what is the movie trying to achieve? One can only conclude that it is intended to make readers apologetic to dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Caliphs, Kings etc. The movie wants you to sympathise with Ender and the students and by default sympathise with these dictators and their students / puppets (cough cough SS). What makes me uneasy is that it seems to have worked. The vast majority of people on these forums support and sympathise with Ender. Think I’m crazy, watch Charlie Chaplin's great dictator speech (some excerpts below):
We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost....
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural!
At the end of the movie Ender is a machine man personified with a machine mind and a machine heart the very thing Charlie Chaplin feared. The very thing Hitler, Stalin and the Emperor of Japan were. Ender represents thinking more than feeling, violence rather than compassion, his students are but extensions of him, he is made to be the unloved and he can only hate.

[–] milkfat-1 9 years ago

I suggest you try reading the book (and it's sequels). After that, If you still feel that Ender is a monster, then yes... I do think you're crazy.

1. Ender does not realise he is actually fighting real battles. This statement is farcical at best as Ender is a genius even an average person such as myself figured out that the battles seem too real for a simulation. More realistically Ender choses to delude himself as he is so focused on victory, so afraid of his demons (bullies / brother etc.), so focused on proving himself superior to those around him.

You can't expect to be taken seriously if you blatantly ignore the major plot device in the story. Ender didn't know the battles were real. That's a fact.

6. Ender is a child manipulated by those around him. The movie represents him as a stunted malformed adult more so than a child. Furthermore Ender is a genius and mature far beyond his age, he knows with certainty right from wrong unlike a child.

Again, you're ignoring a major plot device. Ender is easily manipulatable because of his age and his lack of world experience. His brilliance combined with his naivety is the entire point of the story. He is fully aware that he has unwittingly become a monster. He condemns all of his own actions and spends the rest of his life working to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again (to an extent that you can't even begin to imagine). Of course, this is much more clear in the book, but even the movie alludes to this: "I need to find out if I'm as gifted at peace as I am at war."

I can understand how you might draw some of your conclusions from the film, but I assure you that the books paint a much clearer picture. At any rate, your tirade about Hitler, Stalin, et al is just painfully ignorant.

[–] Wakanohana 9 years ago

Part of the problem with the movie was the casting of fairly mature teenagers in the key roles that were supposed to be played by younger children. Ender was supposed to about eight when he went to Battle School, and about twelve when he destroyed the Formics. Ender was supposed to be much smaller than Bonzo, not significantly taller and heavier. He was supposed to be Valentine's baby brother, not roughly the same age.

Ender was always supposed to be the youngest and smallest, bullied in school back on Earth and in the Battle School. If he had been portrayed as such in the movie, then his response seems more logical. But casting a boy who was as big as or even bigger than the "bullies" produces the confusion that sentrypetal suffers from.

[–] jbaddock 9 years ago

Ender does not realise he is actually fighting real battles.

How is he expected to know the difference, when everything he sees is projected on a 3D hologram (or whatever), the same as in his training simulations? Yes, we may well suspect that what he is seeing is real, but can we know for certain? As far as he is concerned, this is his graduation test, which he has to win, regardless of cost or consequences - total war in other words, in a scenario that has been set up for him by adults and over which he has no control. I would also question how many battles are we talking about? As far as I am aware, there is only the final battle in the film in which he is placed in command - why would he not assume that this is simply a simulation? (OK, in the book, there are several battles to be fought and I would agree that, there, he might have suspected something, but not in the film.) And even if he did suspect that what he was seeing was real, how the hell else was he supposed to react, when his orders were to win the battle at all costs?
In any case, if Ender really is a monster, why was he so upset once he realised he had wiped out an entire race? Or are you saying that this was all just an act on his part? Why then did he undertake to try and find a home for the last surviving queen? Are these the actions of a monster? In reality, the monsters were those who had used him.

[–] sentrypetal 9 years ago

To answer your questions:
1. How was Ender supposed to react, when his orders were to win the battle at all costs?

Like any compassionate human being is supposed to react quit, get court marshaled and jailed. Ender does not do this in which case what difference is there between him and the SS or the German Army when they were raping (whitewashed post war), killing and exterminating Russians, the Jewish people and the disabled.

2. If Ender really is a monster, why was he so upset once he realized he had wiped out an entire race.

Oppenheimer was extremely sorry when he saw the effects that the Nuclear Bomb had on the Japanese people, doesn't make his crime any less grievous. Just like Ender he was so focused on one path (his was advancing science, Enders winning a war) that they didn't care about the consequences. Much like Ender - Oppenheimer's invention may end up being the end of the human race.

3. Why did he try and find a home for the last surviving queen?

Guilt just like how Oppenheimer went on to campaign against Nuclear proliferation and regulation. Again doesn't make his crime any less grievous and doesn't undo what is done.

4. In reality the monsters were those who had used him?

They are monsters as well, no doubt about it. Ethically though who is the greater monster the person who orders another to kill or the one who pulls the trigger. I believe both are equally responsible.

5. Choice

Ender chose to do the wrong thing no one held a gun to his head and said do it. That makes him guilty of his own actions. He chose to hurt those that did not hurt him, chose to pre-emptively strike and chose to use a weapon of mass destruction. Throughout the movie he questions his path because he knows what he is doing is wrong. He is a greater monster as he was not born a monster like his brother (a sociopath) but rather chose to be a monster.

5. He was duped or did not know what he was doing

If Ender was like any other child then yes this may be applicable after all children do not have clear understanding on right and wrong. Ender is different he is a genius. A chimpanzee has an IQ of 80, an average adult human an IQ of 100. Ender probably has an IQ higher than 180 (which was the IQ of Bobby Fisher). A full 80 points higher than your average adult human. Ender is no child soldier or religious fanatic he knows exactly what he was doing.

So if you sympathize with Ender look carefully at the intent of the book which is to dupe you into doing so. It's intent is identical to other famous books like Mein Kampf or Propaganda from Goebbels.

[–] mangokittty 9 years ago

Oh shut up. You're one of those people who only see their side of the argument. Ender very much thought it was a test. A game if you will. Which is part of why he was so brutal. He thought he had to win and prove something. He states a couple times in the movie that he wasn't supposed to be born. That this was his purpose. So he undoubtedly had some sort of pressure he put on himself. It wasn't just guilt that made him regret his actions. He is a very gifted strategist. If he had known it was real life that certainly would have factored in. It stated in the movie that they didn't know exactly what the alien species intended ted. They came to start a colony, but we chased them away. We essentially started whatever war was going on. They didn't come back for 50 years. They could have wanted peace. The main goal was to eliminate future problems. They didn't care about what happened to the aliens. Ender realized what happened and you could see that it affected him deeply. That it went against his actual morals. When he thought it was just a game sure he went along with it. He knew that was what was expected.

[–] Tarquin_Q_Zanzibar 9 years ago

You seem to be going to great lengths to find fault where none exists. Your understanding of the movie seems to be minimal, so I would suggest you read the book, which makes things more explicit, and - more importantly - will illustrate why you are so hopelessly wrong on most of your points.
Some of your remarks seem to be deliberately contentious, e.g:

"To answer your questions:
1. How was Ender supposed to react, when his orders were to win the battle at all costs?

Like any compassionate human being is supposed to react quit, get court marshaled and jailed"

In what kind of world do you imagine 12 year old children refuse to play video games on the specious grounds that playing such games constituted a war crime?
Despite it being explained multiple times that Ender did not know it was real (and what you thought as a viewer of a fictional movie has no bearing on what his character believed) you persist in taking this line for no other reason I can see than to be difficult.

"You've got lovely eyes Dee-Dee, never noticed them before, are they real?"

[–] nerevar59 9 years ago

You're wrong. Put away your pseudo intellectual b.s.