YMMV / Ender's Game

Books

• Accidental Innuendo: The first book is chock-full of scenes with boys as young as seven going around the Battle School barracks bare-ass naked most of the time. Especially given that Card is so notoriously anti-gay, leading to this little joke.◊ (Slightly NSFW, but entirely self-explanatory.)
  • Taken up to eleven for British and Commonwealth readers, for whom the first book's oft-used term Bugger is a common mild and often humorous swearword ("bugger it", "bugger off", etc) – but which as a standalone verb means to anally penetrate.
• Arc Fatigue: "Ender fights a rival team and wins even though Graff stacked the odds against him" happens five or six times, all with pretty much the exact same outcome.
• Death of the Author: An odd example. Card's unapologetic statements on homosexuality have attracted a lot of controversy, but he's stated the book to not be about homosexuality in any way (instead pointing out that gay marriage was not a hot-button issue at the time the book was written). All the same, many readers attribute his beliefs to some aspects of the novel. Others believe the book could be applied to queer oppression due to its theme of being an outcast and attempting to function in a society where one doesn't fit in. In the midst of all this, readers argue if Card's own personal views can be removed from the book at all and how much it should affect their enjoyment of it.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Battle School is supposed to be horrible, and show the inhumane effects war can have on everyone to the point of training Child Soldiers. But the training in Battle School that the book goes into much detail about sounds like zero gravity laser tag combined with Capture the Flag. And the Command School simulations sound like a really advanced Real-Time Strategy game. And in his off hours Ender gets to relax with a really advanced Adventure Game. It all sounds really fun, Ender's specific trauma notwithstanding.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Calling the book a Young Adult novel is a surefire way to piss off fans of the story. The book may be readable at a late middle school level, but it is no more "just" for kids than To Kill a Mockingbird which tends to be read at middle school level. The fact that the movie adaptation adapted the book as though it were a young adult novel certainly didn't help.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The book says that the French, in their "arrogant separatism", refuse to teach Standard (English) to their kids until they're older than is ideal. Nowadays, a large percentage of French people speak English and/or some other non-French language. Meanwhile, there are huge controversies in America, the author's country, over teaching non-English languages to children.
  • Everyone's shock at Ender killing the giant to win that part of the game hasn't aged well at all, with the massive rise in Video Game Cruelty Potential. The movie actually ran into trouble here when it largely adapted the scene just as it was in the book despite this.
  • In the '90s, the end of the Cold War made the book's references to the Warsaw Pact obsolete. But in the 2020s, a resurgent Russia invading Ukraine and exercising influence in many of the former Soviet nations makes it uncomfortably relevant.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Blogging being Serious Business in Ender's Game, enough to cause international tension. Hilarious because if politicians took half of actual political blogs seriously these days, we'd probably have had World War III by now.
  • Even better: a Memetic Mutation going viral and managing to save lives. When Petra is in Russian captivity after returning to Earth, she creates a little dragon graphic with a code hidden inside, trusting that it will somehow get to Bean and he'll decode it. It works—she spawns a massive flow of dragon-related memes, Bean recognizes the connection with Ender's Dragon Army, and voila! Big Damn Heroes. Except, of course, Achilles has something of a plan going on...
  • The rather nuanced morality of the book is rather hilariously in contrast with Orson's extremely black and white views on politics and LGBT topics, culminating in his recent rewriting of Hamlet with gay demons.
  • At one point in the novel, Colonel Graff says, "You mean the computer's just making this up as it goes along?... That does make me feel a little better. I thought I was the only one." Come the film, Graff is played by... the Trope Namer, Harrison Ford.
• Ho Yay: Part of the book takes place on planet Eros, the relationship between the boys in the school is something akin to the homosexual ones between Greco-Roman cadets, Ender refers to Bonzo as being beautiful, Alai has what is very strongly implied to be a gay crush on Ender, oh - and the boys sleep together and wrestle buck-ass naked for most of the story.
• It Was His Sled: At this point, it's very hard to avoid spoilers of the ending.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Originally, Ender's Game was just another short story that Card wrote to pay the bills. He only expanded it into a novel so that it could serve as an introduction to Speaker for the Dead (the story that he really wanted to tell). While Speaker is certainly well-regarded among sci-fi aficionados, Ender's Game has become one of the most widely read sci-fi novels of all time, and it's now required reading in many middle schools and recommended reading in some military organizations like the United States Marine Corps.
• Mis-blamed: Ender's Shadow is sometimes blamed for giving some of Ender's accomplishments to Bean to as to make him look smarter. All of Bean's actions there (gaining the deadline, leading Dragon Army in the final battle, saying the joke that gives Ender his epiphany) are in Ender's Game. Only two are semi-retcons; the kid who takes the brunt of the assault in the first battle wasn't named, and Ender himself notes someone may have given him a great army, though he assumes a teacher organized it.
• Narm:
  • Soldiers treating it like such a big deal that Ender thinks outside the box while playing a video game. Sure, there are in-story reasons, but with video games becoming such an important part of childhood, and with so many types of video games out there (including those that encourage outside-the-box tactics), it feels silly that no one else ever thought of attacking the giant in the game. Yes, even in 1985: The first three games of the Ultima series predate this book, and one of the series' Running Gags is players finding various implausible ways to kill Big Good Lord British for much less In-Universe justification than the giant gave (so much so that it named a trope). Similarly, it's hard to comprehend that "fly towards the enemy feet-first to present a smaller target" wasn't the first thing they figured out about zero-g combat.
  • Just about everybody at battle school seems to be some kind of ethnic stereotype- a French Jerk, a cynical Israeli character with a big nose who calls people "goy", a haughty Spanish character named Madrid whose pride is specifically mentioned to be because of his heritage. Add to that vaguely uncomfortable allusions to the Jews having a disproportionately high number of commanders, Ender calling Alai the N-word, Alai calling Shen "slanty-eyed", the characters almost constantly referring to one another in racial terms... and yet, the book seems to genuinely promote a message of human unity. It reads like an anti-racism message from a Victorian phrenologist who's never actually interacted with a non-white person.
• Nightmare Fuel: Ender's sessions in the mind game are horrific. First, he kills the giant by clawing its eye out and digging into its brain. Then, there are the werewolf children that brutally murder Ender's avatar until he kills them. And then the end of the world...
  • Ender's brother Peter, especially his nasty little hobby: crucifying squirrels and skinning them alive.

• Spiritual Adaptation: Orson Scott Card considers Rise of the Planet of the Apes to be "the first truly successful adaptation of my novel... to appear on the screen".
• Spoiled by the Format: If you're paying attention to how many pages are left at the end of the book, you know that the Command School "simulation" has to be the real thing... because there isn't enough time left in the book to do it all over again.
  • Averted in the digital (iTunes) version. They placed a preview for another book at the end, so you finished the story while still believing there were many more pages to go.
• Strangled by the Red String: Peter and his last minute hookup with Petra.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Colonel Graff's reaction to the news that his years of formalized child abuse - and the Apocalypse How genocide that it led to - were all completely unnecessary must have been... interesting. Not to mention how he reacted to the Hive Queen book, which makes Ender look like a monster (something Ender agrees with) that ended up turning Earth's greatest victory into a horror story.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Inverted. Card was always really confused when people referred to this book as children's literature, instead insisting, "There's no such thing as children's literature."
  Card: Ender's Game was written with no concessions to young readers. My protagonists were children, but the book was definitely not aimed at kids. I was perfectly aware that the rule of thumb for children’s literature is that the protagonist must be a couple of years older than the target audience. You want ten-year-old readers, you have a twelve-year-old hero. At the beginning of the book, Ender is six. Who, exactly, is the target audience?
• Values Dissonance: While many aspects were uncomfortable even when the book came out, a lot of things would not fly today. There's the character Rose de Nose, for example, an Israeli character that's mean to Ender and says he's "nothing but a pinheaded pinprick of a goy." The K-Slur is also said in this scene, and the fact that so many of the Strategos are Jewish can come across as problematic. In another scene, Ender calls Alai the N Word, and Alai calls Shen (an Asian character) "slanty-eyed."
• The Woobie: Ender. Bullied by his psychotic brother while he was very young, then recruited by the military as a Child Soldier and forced into a war of extermination at age 6, afterwards having to live the rest of his life with guilt over the atrocities he committed in that war.

Movie

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The songs Bonzo makes the cadets sing during the run to the battle room are a tame example of military cadence, fitting for school age children but not out of place in modern US basic training.
• Awesome Music: The Flaming Lips' Peace Sword: Open Your Heart. Which plays over the end credits.
  • Steve Jablonsky's score definitely qualifies as well. The tracks "Ender's War", "Ender's Promise", "Salamander Battle", "Final Test", and "Commander" being the main standouts.
• Broken Base:
  • Right after the first trailer was released, debate erupted over whether it spoiled the twist ending or whether the complainers were the ones spoiling it by openly whining about it.
  • Fans of the book are torn on whether the increased age of the cadets in the film is justified.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Bean grew up on the streets of Rotterdam, or did he mean Gotham?
• Incest Yay Shipping: Valentine and Ender are very loving towards each other, and the fandom noticed. (This was present in the book, and especially with audiobook productions, but it was turned up for the movie)
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Primarily for fans of the book - those that hadn't read it seem largely satisfied with the result, while those that had wish it was longer than the 1 hour, 45 minute runtime for 300+ pages of source material.
• Mis-blamed:
  • The reviews often attribute positives like the ethnic diversity of the cast and non-pejorative name "Formics" to the film, while blaming Card for negatives like the name "Buggers". Both positive aspects come from Card's books too.
  • Many have protested the film because of Card's negative views of gay marriage, threatening to boycott the film so as to not give him money. Turns out Card actually makes NO money from the film's ticket sales. He got all his money years ago from selling the rights, and from sales of the book itself.
  • Many fans of the book blamed the film for dumbing down the reveal that the Formics are a Keystone Army led by a queen, by making the ship Mazer Rackham's attacks be a big obvious mothership that looks more important than the fighters. Not only are there other "motherships" of the same size in the background, but the book itself mentions Formic ships of different sizes, including starships that hold hangars of fighters.
• Narm:
  • The "Giant's Drink" scene falls victim to this. In 1985, when Donkey Kong and Galaga were still all the rage, a realistic 3-D video game was still "futuristic," and the idea of graphically murdering someone in a video game was still shocking. In 2013, the supposedly hyper-advanced "Mind Game" just looks like an unremarkable tablet game. Furthermore, Major Anderson's extreme reaction to Ender killing the Giant can seem kind of ridiculous, since any modern gamer would do that just to see if they could. This is compounded by the fact that it's presented as a stand-alone game in the film, while the book had it as part of a Wide-Open Sandbox game, which would make it more likely for players to just dismiss the challenge as rigged and find another one. Being a linear game here, Ender's solution becomes the obvious choice.
  • Ender's reaction to being hit in the chest when he and Bean are trying out the Battle Room weapons. If the weird, stilted delivery wasn't enough to put it here, the fact that he seems way too happy to be paralyzed across his entire body does.
  • The dragon army's symbol is eerily similar to the Mortal Kombat logo, only with an orange dragon on a black circle rather than a black dragon on an orange circle. Good luck unseeing that.
• Older Than They Think: "They're ripping off the training of the SPARTANs and the invading Covenant!" "The Formic spaceships look like Reapers!" "Ender is a child messiah at a school for special children!" Ender's Game precedes Halo, Mass Effect, and Harry Potter by nearly 20 years (though admittedly, since this movie came out after Mass Effect, one could still make the "appearance rip off" argument, but that's for another day).
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Peter is more like a one scene terror, really.
  • The last Hive Queen who gives Ender the cocoon. Nothing can be said between them, but their peaceful contact is enough to let them trust each other.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Card's negative stance on homosexuality has tainted the film's publicity, enough to be noted on Wikipedia. It's sparked much debate about whether one should separate an artist from their work, or if merely paying for it is a vote for their ideology. Unusually for an adaptation like this, the first trailer does not mention Card except for a very tiny credit in the mass credit roll at the very end. The people behind the film also made a massive effort to distance themselves from Card, saying that it's just a sci-fi story that in and of itself doesn't indicate anything about homosexuality. And, perhaps most notably, Card himself attempted to assist them in this (as mentioned higher up on this page), pointing out that boycotting the film would not actually impact him in the slightest but instead tarnish the actual filmmakers (Gavin Hood, Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Steve Jablonsky, etc). While it's unknown how much this contributed to the movie's Box Office Bomb status, it was definitely a factor.
• Questionable Casting: Casting Moises Arias as Bonzo (Rico in Hannah Montana) made it impossible to take him seriously, given how much shorter he is than Asa Butterfield. We're supposed to take him seriously as a physical threat, but that's impossible because Ender could clearly take him if it were realistic. This is on top of his whiny, high-pitched voice, his petulant personality, and his cheesy "Salamander's number one!" chant (which sounds like something ripped out of a summer camp comedy). Back in the book, his Establishing Character Moment came when he was disgusted at how small Ender was when he got put in his army, thus making him comment that Ender could "Walk between his legs and not even hit his balls."
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: From what was revealed in the trailers, plenty of complaints arose that the candidates are too old, that Mazer Rackham's battle was at Jupiter instead of Earth, that Ender's training at the Battle School is too short, etc. This, of course, escalated with the movie itself, which cut other elements like Valentine and Peter's side-plot, most of Dragon Army's career, most of Ender's jeesh, and the epilogue where Ender writes his book The Hive Queen.
  • On top of this is that, due to time constraints, characterization was dropped in favor of getting the critical details inserted appropriately. It also violates Show, Don't Tell (ironically, given the medium) by having Ender mention that Command School had been going on for months, where he and his team were going at it every day - so Petra's Heroic BSoD in the middle of one fight is completely omitted, and Ender's reaction at the final simulation was vastly different than in the book. ^Spoilers In the novel, he decides to use Dr. Device on the Formic's homeworld because he'd gotten fed up with the vindictive cruelty he sees from the adults in forcing them into a hopeless fight, deliberately crossing the Moral Event Horizon so they'd flunk him out. In the movie, he cheered alongside his jeesh for overcoming impossible odds in the simulation.
  • The removal of the Formic's second invasion of earth and Ender's conversation with the Formic Queen removes most of the Poor Communication Kills aspect of the story and portays humanity in a poorer light. ^Spoilers  In the novel, the Formics, a Hive Mind, opened fire on what they assumed were Human drones, as they assumed humanity must be a hivemind like them, thus they felt they were just aggressively saying hello. Humanity in retaliation destroyed one of their motherships, killing one of the Formic's sentient beings. The Formics were enraged at this brutality and performed a proper invasion. However this time they realized that humans aren't a hive mind like them and that every being they killed was fully sentient. In horror, they retreated back to their home world. Humanity gave chase to put an end to them, not realizing the Formics never wanted to attack Earth again, not that the humans had any way of knowing that and thinking that the two previous invasions were a prelude to more. As the Queen tells Ender, the Formics didn't wish to be destroyed, hence why they protected themselves from Earth's invasion, but they held no grudge against humanity for the invasion.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Yes, the Battle School teaches Training from Hell. But it looks so cool that who wouldn't want to attend it?
  • At the end of the movie, the Formic queen—unspeakably beautiful, and a welcome intimation that both Ender and his victims can begin to make peace with his crimes.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: In the current geopolitical climate, the film is bound to elicit a lot of politicized commentary, especially given that it features Child Soldiers, drone warfare, and the dehumanization of the enemy.

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