MovieChat Forums > Ender's Game (2013) Discussion > What is with the people who claim to 'fe...

What is with the people who claim to 'feel' for the aliens

posted 8 years ago by Michael_Richards420
7 replies | jump to latest

Dude those aliens were pieces of *beep* they attacked earth, they were clearly intelligent to know we was down there, they were intelligent enough to get into that stupid vr game to tell ender stuff, which in and of itself is another attack on our things

They could have tried to tell ender they wanted peace and it was just a misunderstanding, the humans were totally justified in destroying them all, they would have done the same

At the end I would have rallied up a marine death squad and just murder the *beep* outta that queen and smash that bastard egg and I'd be laughing while I did it

Then I'd evacuated that staging planet they was on and destroy it cause there was bugs still there all within a 10 year Olds walking distance, who knows how many they missed

[–] AutoexecBatman 8 years ago

Wow, you really missed the point of the story. The point is that when people go to war, they tend to demonize the enemy, convince themselves that the enemy is pure evil and desires nothing less than their total annihilation and that therefore, we have no choice but to exterminate them first.

This is why during war there tends to circulate exaggerated reports of enemy atrocities. During World War I, there were reports of the German soldiers eating babies.

In fact, it is rarely if ever the case that the enemy is truly 'evil' or desires or complete extermination. There's a fever that people tend to develop during war where people convince themselves that the worst atrocities imaginable are somehow justified because the enemy is not really human.

The fact that in this specific case, the enemy really WASN'T human only illustrates this point further. The enemy wasn't human, but it didn't deserve to be exterminated either, but somehow men convinced themselves that it is right to exterminate them.

The other point is the way that military training tends to desensitize one to violence so that one can commit horrible atrocities with a clean conscience and not feel like you're doing anything wrong. Again, that is exactly what happens in this story, Ender is so completely desensitized that he is not even aware that he is fighting a real war at all.

The story is an exaggeration of reality in order to make a point about the nature of war. If you don't get that, then you're clueless.

[–] Michael_Richards420 8 years ago

No way, you're absolutely wrong, I get what your saying, about people hyping things up but these aliens genuinely were evil, there is no grey area here, they came to our planet unannounced to kill us all.

The humans were facing literal extinction, there is no recourse here, the aliens absolutely must be destroyed.

Do you feel bad for the aliens in Independence day?

[–] satyr_child 7 years ago

Yeah... its never clear how the war started. In fact the footage they show of the Formics coming to Earth it sure seems like the humans fire first.

I think the ending implies pretty well that had communication been possible the war could have been avoided.

Or not... since humans are a violent species that solve problems with violence and create problems with violence.

In other words, it's impossible to know whether the Formics came to exterminate humans or to simply colonize.

I loved this movie. Watched it several times. The soundtrack is incredible. The acting is great. It sucks that it didn't do well enough for a sequel. Guess i'll have to settle for reading the series.

[–] adrianmantsch83 8 years ago

That's the thing, they were not evil pieces of *beep*. I don't remember if they mention this in the movie (they might have said it), but the Formics were hive minded. And they didn't know humans were sentient because they didn't know a species could be sentient without being part of a hive. You see, they didn't understand the concept of individuality.

And they couldn't tell Ender and the other humans they wanted peace, because they couldn't communicate the way we do. They only "spoke" to each other telepathically and their ships didn't even have a communication system. Considering this biological and technical limitation, they did the only thing they could when they realized humans were intelligent: they left and they never returned.

And no, the humans were not justified in destroying them all. Think about it this way. Let's say your government (whatever country you're from) attacked another nation 100 years ago but your army realized their mistake and never returned. Tomorrow, your former enemy decides to nuke your entire country and kill EVERYONE. Are they justified? Is that a good thing? Think about it for a moment.

[–] AutoexecBatman 8 years ago

Sadly, this movie just did an extremely poor job of representing the book. Because it just presents the destruction of the Bugger home world as a big victory and makes Ender look like a complete ass for even questioning it. I don't blame people who haven't read the book from not understanding the point of the story.

I understand that a 2-hour movie cannot possibly be as complex, with as many subplots as the book, and that a certain amount of stuff has to be cut, but honestly, they cut too much. This could never have worked as a 2-hour movie if they had even just an extra half hour or an extra hour, make it a 3-hour movie, it would have been so much better.

I just think about all the things that they got wrong in this movie. For one thing, there were TWO invasions, not one. The first invasion was exploratory, the second one was an attempt at colonization. And the gap between the invasions was longer, in the book it had been 70 years since the last invasion, not 50.

And they never even explained that the reason why Mazer Rackham was still alive is because of the effects of time dilation when they sent him on a near light speed cruise around the solar system at the end of the second invasion. They made it look like there was nothing unusual about the fact Mazer was still alive.

And they did an extremely poor job of representing just how the hive queen was able to enter Ender's mind. Virtually none of the moral complexity of the book is present in the movie.

But I understand that part of the reason why the movie was so short is because the special effects company went bankrupt during production, and they literally had to scrape together a movie at the last minute from the footage they shot and there is nearly an hour of incomplete footage that never made it into the movie.

This whole production was a poorly managed disaster.

[–] adrianmantsch83 8 years ago

Sadly, this movie just did an extremely poor job of representing the book. Because it just presents the destruction of the Bugger home world as a big victory and makes Ender look like a complete ass for even questioning it. I don't blame people who haven't read the book from not understanding the point of the story.

True. The director is to blame for why people that only saw the movie don't understand why some of us sympathise with the Buggers. The book is a masterpiece, the film is not. It's not a bad science fiction movie but compared to its source material, it sucks.

This could never have worked as a 2-hour movie if they had even just an extra half hour or an extra hour, make it a 3-hour movie, it would have been so much better.

I think it would've worked better if they would've combined Ender's Game with Ender's Shadow and make a TV show, or at least a miniseries (10 or 13 episodes).

[–] AutoexecBatman 8 years ago

What Gavin Hood claims he wanted to do was film two movies, Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, at the same time, and released them about 6 months apart. But the production company vetoed that idea because it would be too costly. That would have been much better.

But the one thing I think they did get right is the battle room. It doesn't really look the way that the battle room is described in the book, but it does look great. The battle room scenes are the most cinematic part of the book, and he got it more or less correct.