2. Deconstruction of Ender's Game

Greetings dear followers, and to everyone else who should chance upon this.

If you haven’t heard of story structure before, or the term Pinch Point makes you think of acupuncture, I’d like to invite you to read my previous deconstruction of Equestria Girls.

Today, as promised, the deconstruction of Ender’s Game. This deconstruction obviously contains spoilers, so if you haven’t watched it yet, read on at your own risk.

I’ll start with a short synopsis from imdb.com, so those of you who have recently seen the film can skip this: The Earth was ravaged by the Formics, an alien race seemingly determined to destroy humanity. Seventy years later, the people of Earth remain banded together to prevent their own annihilation from this technologically superior alien species. Ender Wiggin, a quiet but brilliant boy, may become the savior of the human race. He is separated from his beloved sister and his terrifying brother and brought to battle school in orbit around earth. He will be tested and honed into an empathetic killer who begins to despise what he does as he learns to fight in hopes of saving Earth and his family.

It’s 106 minutes long, not counting the credits. This means we should expect each part to be about 26,5 minutes long.

Part One: As described in my previous blogpost, this is the setup. We get to meet Ender Wiggin, our protagonist. We see the kind of society he lives in, the kind of family he comes from. We learn that he has been chosen to attend combat school, a military program stationed on a space station orbiting earth, and we get to learn the rules of the space combat the troops are fighting against each other to see which troop is best.

Both his sister and his brother tried to get into that program, but failed: His brother was too violent, his sister was too compassionate. This introduces the antagonistic force of this movie. The Formix? Not it. In order for Ender to succeed, he will have to find the right balance between violence and compassion.

We also learn that Ender has been singled out by Colonel Graff, the head of battle school, to become his “next Napoleon”. His special abilities and unique temperament make him ace material to become the supreme commander of the armed forces, and Colonel Graff will do all he can to make Ender a leader.

First Plot Point: Predicted time: 26,5 min. Actual time: 27 min. Ender, now in battle school, has spoken out of turn and aggravated a superior Sergeant. While Ender is on the ground doing push ups as punishment, the Sergeant puts him down: “You will never be Commander, I will never salute before you!”. Ender, out of breath and still doing push ups, says: “Yes, you will.”

BOOM, first plot point right there. Why? We’ve known before that Ender was set to become commander, so nothing new there. One thing changes though: Up until this point, this role has been not of his choosing. He tried to fit in, only to be sabotaged by Colonel Graff who singled him out. This “Yes, you will” is the first time Ender makes this goal his own, no longer running from his destiny.

Part Two: After the Sergeant has left, Ender tells his fellow cadets to go to bed, assuming his leading role… and they obey. “Too easy,” was what I thought, and apparently the screenwriter agreed; after discovering the mindgame, a thing later used to foreshadow something vital that’ll only make sense in part four of the film, Ender is sent to a new troop, leaving all of his newfound friends and followers behind.

His new troop is the Salamander troop, and its commander is an aggressive, small-man-complex piece of work called Bonzo. Bonzo is pissed about getting a newcomer into his troop, and tells Ender to participate neither in training nor competition; he’d only stand in the way. Ender isn’t all-too discouraged, though, since he met a girl in the Salamander troop called Petra, and she says she’ll practice with him in their free time.

First Pinch Point: Predicted time: 39,75 min. Actual time: 38 min. Bonzo found out about Petra and Ender’s free time training, and forbids Ender to train at all. In private, Ender confronts him and says: “I will follow all commands you are authorized to give, but if you take away my free time, I will get you iced.” Woow, hold your horses, is that how you talk to a superior in a military organization? I think not. Ender was within an inch of losing control there, of becoming violent, of becoming like his brother. This makes this scene the pinch point of part one.

Right before the midpoint, Ender play’s the mindgame again, this time seeing a large insectoid that turns into his sister. Then, their environment gets bombarded and his sister runs into a collapsed castle and seems to hide inside an egg-like structure. All foreshadowing, all not making any kind of sense but for the last view minutes of the film. We’ll get back to that.

Midpoint: Predicted time: 53 min. Actual time: 49 - 53 min. This one is comprised of two scenes: At 49 min, an alarm goes off on Colonel Graff’s screen. The camera zooms in on the screen, and we see a very interesting visual: the human fleet of warships, nearing the detection radius of the Formix… around their own planet! This is the first time the audience learns that the cadets are not, in fact, trained to defend earth from the next invasion, but to eradicate the threat of the Formix once and for all. We also learn that there’s a limited amount of time to get Ender fit for the job. Colonel Graff does not comment the situation in this scene, but you can almost hear him think: the countdown nears its end. He speaks it out loud in the scene at 53 min: “We’re out of time.”

What’s interesting and different about this midpoint compared to the one in EqG, is, that our hero is not aware of the contextual shift the midpoint brings along. It still kicks him from wanderer into warrior mode, though, because the people that are aware of the midpoint’s impact have the power in that school: Colonel Graff gives Ender his own commando, comprised of a few familiar faces from his first troop and some others. He can finally show that he’s fit to be a leader.

Part Three: Predictably, our Gary Stu Ender kicks ass at commanding and his troop wins a battle against two veteran troops at the same time, one of which is the Salamander troop. Bonzo is pretty pissed.

Bonzo confronts Ender in the showers to beat him up, but our scrawny, fourteen-year-old Gary Stu hero not only wins, but (this time presumably by accident) incapacitates him. Ender is very sorry for what he did (although staying true to his policy of eliminating threats once and for all), and, after hearing that Bonzo is getting sent back to earth for his recovery, even wants to accompany him. After Colonel Graff forbids this, Ender quits the program and goes back to earth, having enough of it all.

Second Pinch Point: Predicted time: 66,5 min. Actual time: 64 min. Back on earth, Colonel Graff talks Ender’s sister into convincing Ender to re-enlist into the program. In the conversation with his sister, they touch on the concept that, once Ender truly understands the enemy, he is able to destroy it, but also loves his enemy as it loves itself. So, this time, it’s not the violent side that’s the antagonistic force, standing between Ender and his goal to become commander and safe the earth, but the compassionate side, embodied by his sister. This sister basically tells Ender though that she doesn’t believe he’s quit because of that, but because he’s a coward. Manipulative cungirl.

So, Ender’s back in the military and off to the next level: Command school. Command school is set on a planet that was a former outpost of the Formix, but has been forcibly taken by humans so that they have a base that’s close enough to remote-control the fleet to the Formix’ home planet.

Ender learns several things: They’re fighting a war of aggression there, with the goal to eradicate the Formix threat once and for all. He’ll have to go through a series of training simulations to prove his skills as a commander, with a bunch of his old friends as his subordinate commanders, taking his orders. He also learns that the Formix seem to have a hive mind, which means that if he kills the queen, he incapacitates the rest of the enemy fleet.

Second Plot Point: Predicted time: 79,5 min. Actual Time: 79 min. As stated before, this is the last injection of expository information. Here, it’s called the molecular detachment device, or short, “The Little Doctor”. This weapon will disintegrate anything, no matter how big, as long as it’s close enough together to allow for a chain reaction to spread out. Scary? It should be. It’s the Chuck Norris among weapons of mass destruction. Comparing this to todays atomic arsenals is like comparing a bazooka to a rubber band canon. Anyone smell genocide, yet?

Part Four: As expected, command school is tough but Ender aces all simulations… wait, he failed one! I believe this is the only time we see Ender actually fail at something in this movie, what a relief; he’s human, after all. But I’m digressing. One day, it is announced that after another, final simulation, Ender is going to be named commander of the entire fleet. This simulation will apparently be the attack on the Formix home planet.

Things come as they had to: Ender wins the simulation by not only annihilating the entire Formix fleet, but by vaporizing the planet itself. Then, he learns that this was no simulation after all, and he’s just killed an entire species, leaving him the tragic, innocent by motive, mass murderer. Or savior of humanity. Depends on perspective.

Then, the foreshadowing done by the mindgame comes into play: There is still one Formix queen left, on the planet command school is stationed on, and she’s tried to communicate with Ender through said game. Although she herself is dying, there’s an egg with a new queen inside, and with it, Ender sets out to find a new home for the species. I wonder what his superiors said to that, but we’ll never know.

That’s it for structure, but I’d like to comment on something else: Why isn’t everyone screaming “GARY STU” at the screen while watching this movie, and why has (at least the book) so much appeal? I think it is because for most people, Ender Wiggin is not a Gary Stu, but an Escapist Character.

So what’s the diff? A Mary Sue or Gary Stu functions only as the author’s wish fulfillment, whereas an Escapist Character works for the audience, too; anyone who was ever bullied will know the feeling of wanting to destroy their adversary. Not hurt, no, destroy. We know this is over the top, and it doesn’t fit into the society we live in: Be nice, get along. Ender gets this wish fulfilled, though, he incapacitates both Bonzo and this one bully at school back on earth… and he is portrayed as completely guiltless. He just did what he had to do, and him blaming himself comes off as a humble gesture on his part, since all of his surroundings reward him for his ruthlessness.

Then of course, Ender is singled out. Haven’t we all felt singled out, alone, at some time or another? Wouldn’t it make you feel good about it if you knew it was because you’re special, because you’re better than everyone else around you, because you’re destined to rule them all? All the abuse Ender has to suffer at the hand of his superiors is for a reason. People get abused without reason all the time, and this is pure wish fulfillment for all of them.

That’s it for Ender’s Game. I hope you enjoyed this deconstruction. As for the next, I’m thinking about doing Law Abiding Citizen, but if you've got wishes or suggestions, feel free to comment below!