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Movie Review: Ender's Game
Note: in the lead-up to this film's release, a boycott was organized in response to Orson Scott Card's efforts as an anti-gay-marriage activist. If you find your desire to see one of your favorite stories clashing with a desire not to support Card's political views, an organization called the Equality Initiative has offered an alternative. They suggest going to see the movie, if you want, and then simply donating the ticket price to any of several related charities.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way: they cut a lot from the novel. Really, quite a lot. As a book, Ender's Game is not terribly long, and it's a very quick read. That makes it sound ideal for a movie interpretation at first blush. But part of the reason it's such a quick read is that it's dense with plot, character development, and internal narratives. The movie is dense as well, but mostly with events. What makes the book great is not so much what the characters do, but why they do it and how. So while the movie conveys the majority of what happened in the book, it fails to convey the reasons behind the facts. I don't know that they could have done any better within a two-hour time limit, but it leaves us with a question: is this film for people who have read the book, or for people who haven't?
Since the book has been out since 1985, I'm going to assume most of you are familiar with the story. I won't reveal the major plot twists, but minor and intermediate spoilers may follow. If you aren't familiar with it, then here's the bottom line: go read the book! It's good.
Right from the beginning we see how deep the cuts go. Central to Ender's time at home is the whirlwind of conflicting emotions running through him about his monitor, his family, and his status as a Third. The film rushes through these, hitting each only briefly enough to show the viewer that there exists something deeper. Ender mentions being a Third, but doesn't explain what a Third is, or why it's a point of shame and embarrassment. They introduce Peter, but fail to show that their relationship is more complex than your typical sibling rivalry. In the book, Peter is brilliant, sadistic, intuitive, and a hell of an actor when adults are around. In the movie, he's just a jerk for a few seconds before Ender rockets off toward the plot.
Even Ender's early fight with Stilson loses much of its impact. In the book, it really isn't much of a fight; Ender immediately has Stilson at his mercy. The point of the scene was to show Ender's deliberate use of brutality and intimidation to secure safety from the larger group of enemies. He's reluctant, but not hesitant. In the movie, this is distilled down to a command for Stilson to "stay down" before the fight has concluded and a shaky warning to the others.
So, even just 10 minutes into the film, we see the film is not taking the time to illustrate these characters to a new audience. That trend continues: most of the minor characters are cardboard cutouts of their literary counterparts. Bean is somehow in the same initial launch group as Ender, and simply serves as an ally. Peter and Valentine just serve as occasional spurs for Ender's development. (Yes, that means the entire secondary plot was scrapped. I'm not too sad about that; there's no way they could have given it enough time to do it justice. And it was always the least believable thing, for me, in a novel about space battles and insectoid aliens.) Alai makes mention of peace, but he doesn't have a role as a peacemaker. The contrast between his connection with Ender and the constant violence surrounding them is lost. Petra has more interaction with Ender than most, but it has some bizarre romantic overtones.
Well, then, what about the scenery? If the movie is for fans of the book, it should at least be awesome to see expensive CGI of the scenes we imagined in our heads when reading it, right? And it is.. sometimes. The space battle sequences are impressive, and seeing the students fly around in zero-g was neat. But it was also jarring, at times. Take the Battleroom at the school, for example. In my head, it was an approximation of space, with a dark background interrupted only by the simple "stars" and the gates. In the movie, there's an awful lot going on, visually. The walls are windows dominated by a view of Earth. Everything's polished and shiny. The light pistols shoot bright, Star-Wars-like laser bolts that flash dramatically when they hit something. All the ships in the battlefleet look fancy and brand new, instead of hastily constructed and out of date. Ender's interface in command school is far more graphical and pretty than is sensible. It's cool to see, and I suspect viewers who are unfamiliar with the book won't think twice about it. But it's clear that this interpretation is not straining to be as faithful to the book as possible, which is mildly disappointing.
The movie's acting was decent. There won't be any Oscar nominations, but they didn't have a whole lot to work with. As I mentioned earlier, most characters had their subtleties stripped away. Asa Butterfield does a respectable job with Ender, using glances and body language to supplement some of the situations where the story was simplified from an internal narrative. The casting director definitely made the right decision going with kids in their early teens rather than the much-younger ages from the book. Harrison Ford played Graff well enough, but it'd be more accurate to say he played Harrison Ford. If you tend to like his characters, you'll enjoy the role. If not, you might like Viola Davis, who played a surprisingly good Major Anderson. Those two characters were tweaked a bit in order to separate out their conflicting emotions about training Ender, and they pull it off. Ben Kingsley does a fine job in his abbreviated role as Ender's adversarial mentor.
A few other random notes:
- They gave up the biggest plot twist ahead of time; there were at least two obvious references to what was going to happen. Ender is kept in the dark, but the audience is not, which is too bad for new viewers.
- The fantasy game was represented pretty well. Like most other plot elements, it was stripped down to its essentials, but I was surprised by how well they integrated it into the story. I was expecting it to be cut altogether.
- Due to the trimming and simplifying of the story, the movie's dialogue was largely original. It mostly paraphrased the book. However, they occasionally threw in direct quotes from some of the more stylized lines. It happened infrequently enough that it broke immersion.
It's inevitable that a successful book won't fit within the confines of a movie script. We knew this going in. Nevertheless, some adaptations have succeeded by being as faithful as possible to the ideas behind the book. Ender's Game doesn't manage this. Other adaptations have been successful by reimagining the work for a new medium, thus drawing in new fans. Ender's Game doesn't quite manage this, either. It straddles the line, and in doing so, leaves us with a sequence of events that seems entirely arbitrary, when it should instead seem inevitable. If you're thrilled about the possibility of seeing expensive CGI for one of your favorite stories, go see it. Otherwise, give it a pass.
Hopefully they can make it as good as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That movie was excellent.
Enders Game could be the best movie ever, Orson Scott Card is not getting a dime of my money.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Firstly, homophobic is a ridiculous word -- inaccurate as hell. You can be against homosexuality (generally due to religious beliefs) and not have a phobia about it.
Secondly, it's a shame so many people will reject this movie because the author doesn't share their views or beliefs. Separating art from the creator is all too often a very important skill, that too many people lack.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Send $15 to a homeless gay teen charity and torrent Ender's Game in a couple of months.
Don't give assholes like OSC money.
I really enjoyed Ender's Game the book. All of the nonsense about the author aside, it was interesting, made sense, flowed well, and kept my attention (which is admittedly short). It's too bad the movie seems like it doesn't live up to that, but I guess that's all too common in movie adaptations.
Ender's Game is all about being in Ender's world, you are in his head you experience things the way he see and experiences it. That's why the ending of the book was shockingly good.
However this is difficult to translate into a movie especially with the Captain American/Iron Man style they chose to make it in.
did you forget to take your meds?
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034
And a few other article insunuating that actually the book was a group/commityn produce, which explain the disparity of quality, and style with the follow up book.
My opinion is that Orson scott card was always an asshat, and the whole book was *very* itnentionally a disguised nazi apologia.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Call me a hateful bigot, but casting that Asa Butterfield as Ender will be the downfall of this film. He ruined Hugo, ruined The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, and probably everything else he's touched. I have already promised everyone I know that I will not be seeing this in the theater, and not renting it.
go read the book! It's good.
If you're a teenager (or younger), yes, give it a read. If you're an adult, meh. There are worse ways to pass a rainy afternoon, but it's not a must read. It's young-adult fiction that does not hold up well for adults.
As for the movie, this is rare movie I thought could be longer. You get one hit of every major plot point--one fight with the bully in the first school, one interaction with Peter, one training battle with each team, etc.
What gets lost is why Ender thinks the way he does. In the movie, he's just born this tactical prodigy. In the book, he's a gifted kid, but we get to see how he learns to use those gifts.
And I didn't think the give-away for the final twist was that bad. Over all, I left not feeling angry for the money spent.
Ender's Game is the quintessential classic military sci-fi book.
I have to disagree with that quote. Ender's Game is an anti-war book. If you want the quintessential classic military sci-fi book, read Starship Troopers.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
So you were the type of student in school that "read" the assignment but failed to "understand" what he read. Never once did Ender seek "revenge." Never did Ender want to make them "Sorry" for beating him up. He wanted them to stop, and he was willing to hurt them enough so they would never hurt him again. This is very different than revenge.
I really don't understand where you come from in thinking that this is a revenge novel. In the Ender makes sacrifices because he is going through is for the betterment of humanity.
Survival is a large theme in this novel. not revenge. There is a huge difference.
I'm glad I was not your teacher for a literature class.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
First off, they paid for Harrison Ford, so they had to let him talk too much. In the book, Col. Graff doesn't say much. Also, Graff with his little aluminum thingie on his hand pulling in the kids in the battle room ("Use the force, Ford!") doesn't fit with the rest of the movie. Nowhere else do they have gravity control or tractor beams. Or magic.
We don't see much of Ender's development as a tactician. Ender is presented more as the Chosen One than the one who claws his way up to be the best. There's a flavor of M. Night Shyamalan ("The Last Airbender" and other overproduced turkeys) here.
As is typical of space battle scenes in movies today, the CG effects are great and the tactics are wrong. Battles are in way too tight a space, and everything is turning too tight and going too slowly. It's the George Lucas WWII biplane school of space battle. Big tactical idea: line up all the little ships as armor around the big unarmored ones. That dates back to the Roman legions, and went out when machine guns were developed.
Ender's Game is anawesome story. I loved it and I hope the movie does it justice - and I am glad the GollyWeird is actually doing a movie based on decent Sci-Fi for once in a long time.
I am torn my dear girlfriend. I love awesome sci-fi movies but yet deplore assholes.
I want to support Gollywierd in making decent Sci-Fi (i.e. Hugo science awards winners being made into movies).
Then again, to punish someone for their ignorance? If that were the case, I should be burned at the stake for my ignorance on many things - including my own bigotry on some things: I think all rich people are crooks.
To Orson Scott Card - or whatever his fucking name is - I love your novel, I disagree vehemently with your personal views.
What's the problem?
When do we draw the line at punishing people?
I agree with limited Government, but the Tea Party has gone Ape shit - should I be punished in all aspects of my life for that? - Regardless of your views on either side?
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie version of Ender's Game, but agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer's take on what succeeded and what failed. In fact, I probably enjoyed it so much because I expected much less. The glaring failures were all necessary to make a successful movie, but they still managed to indicate the most important philosophical points. Yes, Graff was harder than in the book (and Anderson's softness was used to make up for this), Bean was introduced too early and wasn't adversarial at first like he should have been, and what were they thinking with the romantic overtones with Petra... But we know why Ender did what he did and how it affected him, and that didn't change from the book.
My one sadness about this movie is that it didn't inspire my son to read the book (he started it last year, read the first paragraph of Graff's pre-chapter conversation, and decided he didn't want to read it). But at least my copy is now on loan to one of his friends who was inspired to read it.
Addlepated - punk & metal
Does it have the off the shelf obligatory love story tacked on?
Every movie has one of those now. it's standard.
Agreed 100%
If I had mod points I'd mod you up
Every closeup of Ender's face resulted in me thinking "Hey, what's Sheldon Cooper doing in this movie?!?"
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
In the '80s, decent fiction was commonplace, compared to now where finding a good author is difficult.
Card's fiction was average at the time, but because the bar is so low now, average back then is excellent now.
Of course the books after EG were "meh" at best. The overarching plot regarding Jane just seemed so anti-climactic after the what was at stake with the first book. The other books should have been one, perhaps at most two volumes.
I can't believe I wasted my money on this movie. I download 99% of the movies I want to watch, and I just had to support Card for this movie, and I was completely let down.
Having Bernard in Ender's army, and one his squadron leaders had me questioning whether or not the guy who wrote the screenplay had ever read the book!
In short, don't waste your money!
This review reads like that audio book The Stanley Parable, but not really at all. I'm pretty sure I saw the meaning of life in there somewhere, but then that begs the question, why is the meaning of life what it is? ...And, is life the most deadly thing in the universe? Probably not, in all honesty. I mean, viruses aren't alive and those are quite deadly, but then again, why would the virus exist in the first place if it were not for life to be something to consume? All of this being created by God and what not, the most living of anything, more living than existence itself. Probably. Not. Maybe. Really, life couldn't even be extinguished by a six mile diameter chunk of space iron. I seriously doubt a stellar singularity could do any more harm than that. Eight. Eight. Eight. Eight. Eight. Eight. You look so flattered you're now flat. And a bit chubby to spare. Your number is twenty-8.
You completely missed the point of the book if that's what you got. What made Ender the supreme commander wasn't his intelligence; he was brilliant, but not significantly more so than many of the other kids. Ender's gift was his empathy: what allowed him to overcome his foes was exactly that he DIDN'T see them as less than human, but that he respected, maybe even loved his adversaries, even as he set up to destroy them.
I won't argue about the rest of the series though
You must have gotten the book mixed up with another book. But it has been 30 years since the 1980s so that makes sense. Not sure where you got the revenge thing or the sub-human thing.
Ender's Game is about a reluctant hero, torn from his family and forced into the military where they required him to make brutal decisions to survive. He succeeds over his rivals and predecessors because his humanity made him a better leader. The irony of the story, and Ender's torment through the remaining books, is that he was seen as a killer when he, in fact, was not.
It's just a little boy's anti-bully revenge fantasy - "i'm gonna be meaner and smarter than you and them you'll be sorry for beating me up. and i'll justify whatever i do to you - even murder - by classifying you as sub-human coz you were mean to me. so there!"
I think you must have read a different book. Ender just wanted to be left alone. Any harm he caused to that end he deeply regretted, and he fretted hard about how to avoid it in the future. And..who did he classify as sub-human? He didn't even classify the buggers as subhuman. He was the only (or first) human that didn't.
My sentiments entirely. In fact I'm begining to think the film only got made because of his reactionary friends. It certainly wasn't because of talent or artistic merit.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
" It ranks near the top of virtually every list of good sci-fi novels. "
if you actually knew about SciFi you'd find that Ender's Game is a marmite novel: half of the readership love it, the other absolutely hate it.
Independently though it lacks of literally anything from character development, world building to actual writing style. And most critics agree with that.
The only thing that speaks for it is a potentially new and controversial idea. If that makes it top of the list, then help us...
If you don't belive what I am saying, just check goodreads out...
Just because someone does not agree with your opinion does not make their opinion wrong. Or that they did not "understand" something.
I think you're arguing semantics there.
Because the kid that all the bullies pick on ... and the adults either are too stupid to see it or actively promote it ... but he is The One who will Save Humanity.
Except that it is not about survival. It is about Ender being The One who will Save Humanity. And some mean people try to hurt Ender. And so Ender has to hurt the mean people so that Ender can get on with the business of being The One to Save Humanity.
Yay Ender!
Boo anyone who hurt ender!
I'm serious here. Did anyone feel any compassion for the people that Ender killed? No. They were cardboard cutouts of evil that existed solely so that Ender could overcome them as part of his character development. But not KNOW that he had killed them. Because Ender has to be innocent.
I've read Enders Game, and it was an "ok" sci-fi book. It's more about Drama and human relationships than sci-fi really. Think "deep space 9"... basically a soap opera with space ships. The ending is very predictable, I saw it coming by about the 3rd chapter. Even his name is a dead giveaway to his inevitable fate. But the books that came later... are horrible. I mean some of the worst stuff I've ever read. It turns into this magical fantasy land where trees and computers have telepathy and God knows what else.
I've yet to see what I'd consider a "Great" scifi novel turned into a movie. I'm not even sure if it's possible. Though I thought the same of the Lord of the Rings and they seem to have pulled that off with some success. Granted my threshold for a good movie is much lower than my threshold for a good book as a movie only wastes a couple hours of my time.
If you find your desire to see one of your favorite stories clashing with a desire not to support Card's political views, an organization called the Equality Initiative has offered an alternative. They suggest going to see the movie, if you want, and then simply donating the ticket price to any of several related charities.
This sounds exactly like the indulgences the Catholic church used to sell.
I'm glad I was not your teacher for a literature class.
The irony is that he probably got an A- for his report deconstructing Ender's Game as a petty revenge fantasy. Most of the literature teachers I've had to deal with love that sort of crap.
Disclaimer: if you, reading this, are a literature teacher and actually accept the explicit meaning as one of the meanings of a written piece, you are more rational than any I had the misfortune of dealing with.
Famous entertainer joins the Board of Directors for one of the most prominent political lobbying groups some people disagree with, more news at 11.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
flamebait (-1) score means it will never be seen by anybody ;).
Quite the contrary, actually.
The original "Enders Game" novelette was nominated for that year's (1978) Hugo and came in at #9 on the Locus Poll. The novel version (1986) won the Hugo, the Nebula, the SF Chronicle award, and placed 2nd in the Locus Poll. That's quite a bit above average. .
The 1987 sequel, Speaker for the Dead, won the Hugo, the Nebula, the SF Chronicle award, and 1st place in the Locus Poll. That was the first time an author had taken the Hugo in back-to-back years for best novel especially where the 2nd was a sequel.
Although I haven't read either in over 20 years, I think Speaker holds up better than Ender's Game in no little part because the basic plot of Game got ripped off a lot in the interval (The Last Starfighter, anyone? Which actually appeared before the novelization of Ender's Game but well after the original novelette. There were also a whole host of other "it was just a game/it wasn't just a game" stories).
"I agree with limited Government"
So does pretty much every one. It's a false issue manufactured to appeal to simpletons while not giving any real answers.
The question is, what is limited?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The movie suffers from the compression of the novel -- the audience deserved more of the battle room, if nothing else, and a better idea of how grueling the schedule there and in Command School really was -- it looks like a couple days at most.
But the biggest issue with compression is moving command school to near the Formic homeworld. I couldn't figure out why, especially as they kept with the concept of instantaneous control with the ansible (FTL communication). But it was mainly so that they didn't have to break from Ender's shame at his destruction of his enemy to the hope of restoration by finding the last queen's egg.
Ok, I can see how that helps streamline things, until you realize that, uh, he just stepped off a military base, brought something alien back with him, and now he's going to traipse across the galaxy to find a place to put it? Um, no. That can't happen until he's already been out of the military.
They should have split it in two: Battle school, maybe up until the first victory of Dragon Army (going any further leaves too little for a second movie), then the rest. That would have let the characters breathe, let them have a decent epilogue reuniting Ender and Valentine, and the Hive Queen, and maybe even some way of bringing in Locke and Demosthenes.
Design for Use, not Construction!
I'm pretty sure you're talking about Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, And not Ender's Game .
Interesting, what the book does say is that the author thinkgs a bullet will fix all issues.
"I'm glad I was not your teacher for a literature class."
Because you don't want him to understand how to read literature?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1. I understand the need to trim the general aging of the characters. Using an endless succession of the kids to age them over the timespan of the book wouldn't have worked. However since the kids were now a fixed age it rushed the storyline.
2. Giving away the fact he was fighting the real battles was just stupid
3. Having a single ship carry the little doctor (which was now not so little)...was a total waste of a plot device
4. They should have spent more time on the training of Dragon Army...establish Ender's creds as a leader
5. Changing the ending sending Ender off alone was an error, I don't know if they intend sequels, but it really messes with the continuity
6. Bean was TOO big! and they spent no time on his relationship with Ender
7. The move had the soul of Ender's Game, but not the heart
8. The kid's ethnicities are all screwed up, plain and simple
9. Card wrote versions of the movie over the years perhaps one of his revisions should have had more influence
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
...they finally got that out? 10 years ago, Penny Arcade was speculating on the movie's crappy video game tie-ins.
".. brutal decisions to survive."
to succeed not survive.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nobody is being honored or praised here.
Anti-Card activists are simply practicing intolerance towards intolerance.
And even that is done merely through them calling for a boycott. I.e. Passively.
They are not going around spreading anti-Card propaganda and making shit up about him, calling him a pedophile and mentally ill, nor are they joining political movements aimed against him personally.
You know... like he does from his bully's pulpit.
As for the movie... could have used half an hour more.
But not of the Peter and Violet subplot. Which would be ridiculous today.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I agree completely with the authors review of the movie. I really do not know if someone who has not read the book would even understand what was going on half the time. For example after Ender gets the dragon team there is a quick scene where Harrison Ford say something to the effect of he's pushing them hard and in the back ground you may notice that his team looks to have moved up a leader board. But the very next thing they do is his final battle... So if you missed the significance of the leader board you would assume that this is also his first battle, which makes no sense with the dialog later in the battle. So the entire movie felt like a highlight reel of the book.
A lot of science fiction was written for an adolescent audience and was intended as a boyish fantasy. Why complain about it being what it was intended to be? The problem is that Hollywood is taking material written for teens and then everyone expects them to be much more mature and grand then they could possibly be. Star Wars was just a horse opera in space, but I have to agree, there was never any excuse for Jar Jar Binks.
There is so much more depth and content in a novel than could possibly be explored or shown in a movie. I thought this film was well done for what it was.
Frankly, I felt the same way about "John Carter". The only real complaint I have about that film is the name of it. They should have kept the original Edgar Rice Burroughs title of "Princess of Mars".
Not sure what the slam against I Robot is.
imo, it is one of the few movies, and the only one I use as an example, where the movie was better than 'the book.'
In this case, I know the movie was actually an amalgam of several different short stories.
That's one reason it was good. You can't really do a good movie of a novel. Short stories seem to translate better.
Asimov's writing was wooden (that is a common opinion) and the movie smoothed it out.
I have not seen Ender's Game the movie but have read the book several times. It is one of my favorites even tho Card is also a somewhat wooden writer.
The background stories I have read tho said he dropped the Demosthenes garbage from the movie.
Great. That imo opinion detracted from the novel. It was just basic heavy-handed preaching because the writer wanted to make an obvious point.
I remember reading an interview with John Grisham when his first novel The Firm was made into a movie.
They asked him which was better, the book or the movie.
A. The book. The book is always better because more is left to the imagination.
And he had not seen the movie (which had a completely different ending than the book).
Hell, there's already been a slew of bastardized versions of it, so I'm not sure why people are so huffy about another one that made for a pretty good movie (besides Lebeouf of course, but I think he gets killed so that's a fair trade-off).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Did anyone feel any compassion for the people that Ender killed?
Ender did.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
In the second plot of the book, Peter and Valentine both take on anonymous political roles. After Ender defeats the bugs, Valentine eventually gets on a ship headed toward the dead alien planet to begin a new human colony. During the journey, Valentine (on the ship) ages just a few years while Peter (on Earth) ages a full lifetime.
Where in the book do you see Ender striving to succeed? That wasn't his motivation. He never wanted to be the leader. He was just trying to get everyone off his back, and to like him enough to stop bullying him.
In Ender's physical fights, he was always defending himself against a superior opponent. Not trying to prove something. In the battle school showers, he would have been killed. It wasn't about success.
In the final test at battle school, and in the final battle against the Formics, Ender had given up and didn't care. It was Bean that won out in both cases while Ender was pretty much using a crazy suicide tactic.
So no, Ender was not driven to succeed. In the subsequent books, his only drive is repentance. Much like his drive for acceptance in the first book.
If he constructed his argument well, then he should have, too. Essay writing isn't about being correct - it's about how to presenting a premise, and defending it rhetorically. I've written many essays that I knew (and the marker knew) were "incorrect" in their premise, and received high marks because I argued well or cleverly.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Only once did I find a movie as good as the book. The one and only classic, "Bladerunner."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I only saw the movie, but already sadly had the ending spoiled before I watched it. Even so when Ender was tricked I didn't immediately notice it and like him thought it was part of the training up until they got to the home world. Then I realized it was for real and it did resonate emotionally with me. (Sadly I figured it out by the length of the simulation battles, you don't spend 20 minutes simulating a battle and then redo it for reals)
However. There's a pretty big plot hole in my mind, and I'm curious if it's from the book or a result of trimming for movie length.
The rules of the gravity training game are obviously written by the author to get Ender to intuitively figure out how to protect the "missile" and get it through a well fortified position. As soon as they described the rules to the game it was obvious that idiots would focus on scoring points but the real strategy was to get someone through to the base.
That means the adults who planned out the training rules already had in their mind the weapon they planned to bring to the home world, and they knew it would be heavily fortified by a swarm of enemies. It took years to develop those weapons. The adults already knew exactly which tactics were needed and in fact trained the children to do just that.
So why use children?
Putting troops into a pointed shape and plowing through lines of enemies is only a few thousand years old and well understood. Protecting the payload and delivering it behind enemy lines is routine. Was Orson Scott Card just indulging in Messiah parallels?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I haven't read the book so I was relatively unbiased going in. That said I knew while I was watching there were things not fleshed out just as you stated. I also knew what was going to happen when the cue's you eluded to were given to the audience. Overall I was entertained but left feeling the need to read the book to fill in the holes. I also agree that the tech should not have been so pristine. Even if they hadn't been hurriedly put together the controls and ships would have normal wear and tear.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
You didn't actually read the book, did you.....
I'm serious here. Did anyone feel any compassion for the people that Ender killed? No. They were cardboard cutouts of evil that existed solely so that Ender could overcome them as part of his character development. But not KNOW that he had killed them. Because Ender has to be innocent.
Yes, and the innocent boy wipes out an entire sentient species. Meanwhile his psychotic, megalomaniac brother brings about world peace but only as a means to seizing supreme world power for himself.
It's not about survival or teen nerd wish fulfillment, it's about how our much our intentions matter as compared to our actions.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
I think Hollywood had a unique opportunity in the Ender series to do something unbelievably "audacious".
They should of filmed "two movies' simultaneously, and released them at the same time. Ender's Game & Ender's Shadow. It'd have been risky, but unique. Go see two movies, about the exact same thing, but from two different perspectives.
Just the debate as to which one to see first would have brought them more media attention than any advertizing they could buy.
And if I recall, I think it did have the ability to not only unfreeze. But to move someone, as in when they were floundering in the empty sections of the battle room.
SPOILER:
So I don't think that was off. And I believe that was one aspect that helped tip Bean into realizing there was gravity control
I was only moderately impressed with Ender's Game as a novel. I predicted most every major plot twist. New the spoiler from almost the very beginning. Yada. Yada.
But Ender's Shadow I found to actually be a more engaging and deeper story on many levels. Bean
If you want to see a good sci-fi book turned into movie. Go watch Babylon 5. Just don't ask me where to find a copy of the book.
... the ridiculous voice-activated weapons that dramatically underplayed the importance of desert tactics, making Paul's force the technologically superior one ...
Yes the sonic weapons were perhaps the greatest disappointment in the movie. However it wasn't desert tactics per se that made the Fremen an incredibly superior fighting force. It was the brutal and unforgiving environment that they grew up in that made them so, it was quite the Darwinian process. We see something similar in the Emporer's Sardaukar environment. Its being the product of such environments that creates the discipline and the physical and mental toughness that leads to being greatly superior warriors. At least that is the premise of the books.
It was a great Christian allegory, Love thy enemy, so you may destroy them utterly.
....gave it a 3 out of 5.
Was never particularly interested in reading the books. They simply didn't look all that interesting.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
The whole "Savior of Humanity" is actually Peter. The aggressive sociopath. The one that ends up keeping the world from obliterating itself because people are power-thirsty idiots. Earth was never actually at risk from the bugs exterminating them. But hey, that's awfully complicated for a movie, so let's just leave that in the book.
Ender isn't a savior, he causes a genocide.
I think I have to agree that it's just kind of an anti-bullying revenge fantasy. The mental backflips that the story pulls you through to justify those killings is just kind of fluff. It can be extended to the whole humanity vs bug overplot as well. Taken that way, at least Ender feels bad about it in the end.
I know an even better approach. Add the movie to Couchpotato. Whenever the movie eventually comes out and then shows up on your machine, watch it. This way, you don't have to worry funding Card's lobbying for government expansion in the fight against liberty, and you don't have to counter-fund, either. This is a double-win, because you're helping to get the money out of politics.
Piracy: it's the only honorable thing to do.
The movie was great. A lot of history has happened since the book's release and we've learned a lot about how technology really plays out. The whole Demosthenes and Locke angle for example is frankly ridiculous in a modern light, as xkcd pointed out: http://xkcd.com/635/
Then there are the filming aspects such as you couldn't well have him go from age 6 to 13 not without a lot of look-alikes that never really look alike, nor could you have shown any of the children nude to an American audience, or had the language, or had as many characters, or try filming his being physically isolated from his team in command school and making it interesting. Some things had to change, but the real story is still there.
The battle-room couldn't have been better. It was perfect. Harrison Ford made for a wonderful Colonel Graff. Asa Butterfield concerned me, but did great. The brilliance of the story, and the telling, is still very much there in the film. This isn't to say I didn't wish some things were ever so slightly different, Ender seemed a bit more emotional / he was shown as a bit more extroverted than I would have preferred, but fuck, it was a good movie.
I'm pleased with the result and pissed at the usual "the book is b-b-b-etter" crowd, as if that had shit to do with anything, or the fucktards willing to put knives in the back of the entire film crew because of some stupidity that came out of the mouth of Orson Scott Card.
See it.
Apparently what's between your legs is the most important thing in your life. If people who see homosexuality as perversion had taken your approach rather than their more-tolerant approach of tolerating the individual while opposing a policy, Hollywood would have gone bankrupt decades ago. Tell me: do you take such "moral" stands on your other purchasing decisions? Do you watch Roman Polanski (had his way with a little girl) films? Do you watch Morgan Freeman (married his own step-granddaughter) films? Support Woody Allen (Married his own stepdaughter) films? I suspect your moral compass is a bit more "interesting" than you let-on
I actually think its one of the most profound anti-war stories I've ever read.
Greed is the root of all evil.
"Did anyone feel any compassion for the people that Ender killed? No."
Reread the last few chapters. I certainly felt compassion for the enemy as well as remorse and so did Ender.
Missing this critical idea is the most critical aspect of the story and what made the book great.
Greed is the root of all evil.
For the sake of perspective it may be worth noting that she is a couple grades ahead of her peers and in advanced classes for that grade. A story with gifted children may have a natural appeal.
In response to the original post I'd add, they didn't give it away. The audience was made aware that the fleet was approaching, but anyone who noticed the "27 days, etc." on the display and heard Ender say "months" in his message to Valentine were probably few, and most likely thought that it was a mistake. There was zero real indication that the battles were real. I'd venture to guess that a number of us think otherwise because we were looking for that spoiler, because we knew.
There's no such thing as "homophobia". It's a political term brewed-up by "gay" activists to imply that opponents of sexual perversion are irrationally afraid in a mentally-ill manner. People who view homosexuality as abnormal are not afraid of it; they simply see it as biologically nonsensical, medically inadvisable and morally wrong. Anybody flinging the term "homophobia" about is only advertizing their own lack of serious intellectual argument. Name-calling is simply not an argument
Oh, and don't equate the phonies of the WBC (most are democrats and they never seem to wave their posters in the Castro) with the typical opponent of "gay marriage" etc. for that, too, is intellectually lazy and dishonest.
This was supposed to be a review of a MOVIE. For some reason, homosexuals cannot resist making everything about their personal plumbing. Not everybody agrees with you....boo hoo... get over it. Nobody agrees with me on everything either. I've seen plenty of films made by homosexuals....should I have boycotted those films and twisted any movie review comment into a comment on their views of marriage/sex/etc???
There's an article here http://plover.net/~bonds/ender.html that, once you get past the deliberately inflammatory intro, makes a heck of a lot of sense.
Ender's Game makes way more sense when you read it as a combination of nerd-wish-fulfillment and some weird-ass militant Jesus propaganda. He (and only he) can empathize with the people who are killed - he loves them so much, that he must destroy them. When he kills other children, it's because of his wonderful rationality - but it's okay, because he didn't _mean_ to, and besides, he's really, really sorry. He "sacrifices" himself with self-imposed exile at the end of the novel, ending up spreading his philosophy throughout the cosmos.
Ender is an endlessly-suffering figure, targeted for (what else) his greatness. He's a "Mary Sue" character through and through.
(It's also interesting to think about the imagined persecution of straight white christian (mormon in this case) men, and how it relates to Ender, whom everyone is necessarily against).
rather than Frank Herbert's Dune, it's a pretty fun ride. I hated it the first time I saw it, but now it's one of the few movies I can enjoy seeing multiple times.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Card hasn't written anything worth reading. OK, I'm not enough of a masochist to read all his work, so I could be wrong, but I've tried 3 or 4 of his books, and had no desire to finish any of them. I did slog all the way through Speaker, but fool me once.....
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I'm tired of the homo's whining so I took the whole family. On top of that I convinced large swaths of friends to go too as a counter to the boycott.
...for a long time. Ender is one of my favorites, but I tried several of his other works back in the 90s and....meh.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I've made several comments on this site about how Card's work mostly sucks, so....guilty of anti-Card propaganda. But it does suck.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
...not WWII. And yes, being the internet accuracy police is a full-time job.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
http://www.hatrack.com/misc/Quotes_in_Context.shtml
From reading this document published on his personal fan site in response to these allegations, I take that his view is that marriage is, by definition, a bond between a man and a women.
Just speculating, but he may not have any issue with a homosexual bond at all so long as that bond isn't called "marriage".
And this is what I found to be the theme preserved from the book. It is an moral dilemma that has been present in warfare for, well, pretty much as long as there has been warfare. How far do you go to stop the next war? Is it moral to burn a city to the ground if it leads to 100 years of peace? Does someone's intent make a difference, or does only the outcome matter? These are some of the questions for your High School literature student.
it leaves us with a question: is this film for people who have read the book, or for people who haven't?
The movie could care less who is watching it. I would say that, for 99% of these type of films, it is never a good idea to watch it if you have any sort of fondness over the book on which it is based. A single 1.5 - 2 Hr movie simply cannot put enough content onto the screen to match that of a decent sized book, and so the book fan will be unsatisfied. All that is premised, of course, on the movie plot not being a hack job of the original book.
- I stole your sig.
It may not be a revenge novel, but GP is right that it's just bad writing. My two biggest faults with the book are that the author doesn't understand what it means to think like a genius and he has forgotten what it means to think like a child. These wouldn't be huge problems except for the fact that almost all of his characters are child geniuses. So you end up with a book full of child characters written with adult thought processes where the only thing childlike about them is their supposed age. And to make them geniuses, Card constantly makes them simply know things that aren't knowable without exposing the thought process that really makes someone a genius. Combine all that with terrible prose and the novel is disposable fiction that may have some interesting points (e.g. the ansible), but really doesn't deserve the praise that many people give it.
FWIW, my understanding of genius comes not from being one but from having been privileged enough to know and have many conversations with someone who ran a school for the gifted for 30+ years. Her insights and books on the subject of geniuses, particularly children, should have been required reading for Card prior to trying to write the story. Unfortunately, he probably would have quickly realized that in order to write a child genius well, he'd need to be far more clever than he actually is.
I thought we all agreed several months ago that Card was a outspoken bigot who didn't deserve our entertainment dollars to fund his fight against the social equality?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
... in hell that I will be seeing Hollywood destroy another SciFi classic after the hatchet job they did on Carl Sagan's Contact.
The thing they found deep in PI's digits, which was arguably the most important part of the whole book, was totally removed from the movie.
It's like remaking Fawlty Towers but taking out Basil Fawlty because he's too abrasive. Or as if they had remade The Office but replaced the boss with someone less psychotic - don't be offended, SteveC, I mean the *character* is psychotic :-)
The poster tagline is ridiculous. "This is not a game". WTF, I thought that was supposed to be the big plot twist?
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
And again you fail.
I read the original novella version of this story in Jerry Pournelle's There WIll Be War anthology in 1982 or so, and read the novel version when it came out. I revisit the book every half dozen years or so and know it rather well.
You, on the other hand, don't know what the fuck you're talking about. "So bad you're not even wrong", as Dr. Feynman put it.
I've made several comments on this site about how Card's work mostly sucks, so....guilty of anti-Card propaganda.
...and all that.
What you are describing is a single person of limited influence voicing personal opinion in an online forum, in a discussion on that particular topic, to persons of similar limited influence without using any of the usual propaganda techniques.
You're not even properly qualifying for a troll.
Now... should you coin something like "Card's a Retard! Ender's Game is Lame! Boycott the Bugger!" and put it in your sig so it gets repeated with all your posts and should you then you go making a bunch of posts on various topics in order to spread your anti-Card word...
That would be anti-Card propaganda.
Probably not very effective, but it would cover both the definitions and the methods and techniques of propaganda.
Barely.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I disagree. Ender was constantly analyzing his performance as an army commander and looking for ways to do it better. Even before he became a commander, he was analyzing his own commanders' actions and resolving to remember them so he didn't repeat their mistakes.
Ender was driven by understanding and competence. And he wanted to promote understanding and competence in those he led. When Bonzo or Rose the Nose did something stupid that blocked him becoming more competent, he considered that idiotic. Even before he was made a commander, he was holding practice sessions helping himself and anyone else who wanted to become better at the game. He was making improvements in the way the game was played until the day he graduated.
I have always been into hard science fiction, especially Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov amongst others. When I finally got around to reading Ender's Game a few years ago, I must admit to being very disappointed with this story. I always found the story more of a character development story with a plot twist that just happened to take place in space, but could have been set in any number of different ways and not necessarily in space - perhaps this is the case with most good stories where drama takes place in the development and conflict with the characters own personalities and those around them - however it's pretty much a waste of a good story to set it in space and make it difficult for audiences to identify with the enormity of the sacrifices and horror of it taking place in that setting. If I was to do the screen play for this movie I would start with the second book in the series and then flash back to the first book so that the audience could at least first realise that something terrible was done and at great cost and the juxtapose that against the desperation of the human race before-hand needing to make big sacrifices and play tricks on the very people that drew the conflict to its climax and close. Enough rambling. I will pony up my $10 and go see the movie, albeit with not high expectations because I don't think Enders Game deserves to be in the top spot for "science fiction" in the first place. My tip for a story that should be turned into a movie. "The Rowan" - a good read and with telekinesis its always a bit of fun for visuals and some drama in the space opera setting.
That's why the ending of the book was shockingly good.
Really? I'd have called it mildly unexpected and rather a let down but then I was unimpressed by the rest of the book. Most of the supposedly "brilliant" ideas he came up with were in the "bleeding obvious" category, at least for an adult, and so while you could argue he was smart for a kid it seemed abundantly clear than an adult would have been a far better choice.
Except not. As has been repeatedly quoted, he made decisions not merely to survive but to win over his opponents completely. That is, he made "brutal decisions" but they weren't necessarily required of him.
Should I make some joke here about Jesus and his humanity and self-sacrifice?
No, Ender was a killer. Ender didn't intend to be a killer. Ender was, as it was cast, put into a situation where his lack of omniscience made him an innocent killer. But, of course, that's a flight of fancy. It's the making of great fiction. It's also wholly unreal.
Really, the basic fundamental issue with Ender's Game is precisely the point that Ender put his life above others. For all of his supreme empathy or supreme humanity, he never chose to place others above him. It sort of puts in perspective OSC's philosophy and really makes you wonder about any claims of his belief in Christianity, as the very core of Christianity is Jesus' supremacy yet his ultimate self-sacrifice to save everyone--all the unworthy sinners, all those who brutalized him in the crucifixion, etc., and all from a genuine (if you believe that sort of thing) supreme being that could easily view humans as humans view insects.
*sigh* But, then, I guess I'm just a big Star Trek nerd.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
My problem with the movie is simple: dozens if not nearly hundrets of completely unnecessary changes to the story. ... well, figureing which it is at least) ... and is UGLY. In the book no queen ever is seen. In the sequel book "Speaker for the Dead" the hive queen is described as the "most beautyfull creatue ever seen" ... more important: the whole discrepancy between sub light travel and instant communication on one hand and the suspicion that the hive queens can do mind communication instanty is put away
a) the fornix never have attacked earth, the battles where in space, hence the defenders where not flying air planes but space fighters
b) even the idea that they had motherships and drones is questionable, in the book the attacking ships all look the same, hence it was a "genious masterpiece" to figure the ship of the queen in between them (just killing the mothership, obvioulsy is not hard
c) in the movie the dragon team does only one single battle (against two teams) while in the book that is the final battle of a long series
d) a Fornix queen shows up
e) the movie completely leaves out that the human space fleets are flying with just below speed of light and are under way since decades to the fornix planets while on the other hand communication is instantly
f) point e) means: it was difficult for earth forces to reach all enemy planets in a relatively short time frame. The farest away planets where reached with the oldest ships, hence the huge variation in difficulty and strategy in the "simulations" while the fleets started more recently where bigger and had more modern ships. In the movie they only have "the fleet" which is ridiculous overpowered in comparision to the book.
g) Ender is not in deep space (movie) when he battles the Fornix, he is on the Sol Systems asteroid Eos (book)
h) in the movie it is completely unclear (at least none I talked to got it) that most of the so called "simulations" in the battle school where actual battles (not only the final battle)
i) in the movie they don't explain how they figured a faster of light communication system
j) and no, the hive queens did not come for the water of planet earth. They simply wanted to found a collony and _gave up_ after they finally figured that there was _sentinent_ live on earth. As man kind never answered to their communication attempts the hive queens assumed humans only where _dumb_ like fornix worker/warrior drones.
Ofc there are changes that are necessary, at least to get a "rated for 12 year olds" label.
E.g. Stilson, the bully in the school at the beginning of the movie: he gets killed by Ender (yeah, the guy writing the review obviously missed that). The other bully, Bonzo(?), the latino troop leader, also got killed by Ender, he did not die by an "accident" or survived as seen/claimed in the movie. Ender killed him deliberately (not aiming to kill him, but attacking him with potential deadly techniques and accepting the risk)
Funny ofc is that Ender is practicing Aikido (or more precisely Aiki Jujutsu in the movie with Petra ...) gave me a smile, especially as some idiots behind me in the ranks imediatly started talking loud over the movie sound that those techniques would never work, rofl.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Anyone that read the book should prepare to be disappointed, you can't convey that epic read in one movie.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Seems you did not understand the story either :D
And yes, everyone has the right to challange someone else "understanding", that is not an ad hominem.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
A ban that was subsequently overturned, was it not?
Card and the homophobes are playing King Canute. Try as they might, they cannot order back the tide. They might have the occasional local and temporary success, but the writing is very much on the wall here.
So then why care if he wants to waste his money supporting a futile fight?
But on the other side, Ender's Game the story has had uncounted amounts of positive effects on people (including me turning my life around, and all the second order effects that spill from that). Exposing more people to that story is only a good thing (especially if it leads to reading the books - the first three are very, very powerful and life-changing works of art)
I was shocked to my core to learn how reprehensible a person Card really is - and I still struggle to reconcile how that person could possibly write Ender's game, Speaker for the Dead, and the other one (the Shadow series is just Card going back to the well and largely forgettable) That, in of itself, is a valuable lesson.
I'll happily trade some money flowing into the hands of bigots to fund windmill-tilting if that results in a world where Ender's Game exists.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Okay, fair enough. He had a will to succeed.
My issue was that geekoid is linking that will to succeed to his brutality, which makes him sound ambitious. It makes him a horrible person, when he was actually a compassionate person. He was not ambitious. He didn't hurt people to get ahead.
Boring book, boring movie. Harry Potter better in both media.
I liked it. I just got home from the theaters. Even if I knew the ending, it was a total mindfuck. I think they cut enough to make a film out of it, and kept everything that even sided on important. Great adaptation, and I hate most movies.
fuck all the faggots and perversion-lovers who oppose a great guy like Orson Card
It's also a peculiarly christian kind of double-think - a "loving god" that loves you so much he'll send you to burn in hell for eternity for breaking some (mostly arbitrary and silly, but some sensible) rules with the free will that he gave you.
No sane person could think that made any kind of sense, but it's a popular viewpoint with some kinds of christians - particularly those who want to still call themselves christians while ignoring the message (things like turn the other cheek, not casting the first stone) and devoting themselves to the vengeful and sadistic version of god described in the old testament, with a choice selection of arbitrary rules from leviticus (e.g. homosexuality is still bad, but eating shellfish or milk & meat together - cheeseburgers are baal-worship - is no longer an abomination).
it wouldn't be a joke. Ender is, and was obviously intended to be, a Christ figure.
but the kind of Christ that bad-tempered, vengeful old testament "christians" would have preferred him to be, without any of that turning the other cheek nonsense. jesus merged with action-man rambo, the wrath of god in person.
which shouldn't be surprising to anyone. apart from Ender's nature being blindlingly obvious, OSC did it again later. Card's second major series - Alvin Maker - was a thinly-veiled pseudo-fantasy/pseudo-bibliography of Mormon founder Joseph Smith.
"is this film for people who have read the book, or for people who haven't?"
Alien faced the same issue: one core element of the plot (that the "evil corporation" knew the danger that the crew were about to face) was clear in the book (which wasn't really a novel but rather a "novelization" of the screenplay) but not so in the film. In the film there is a 2-3 second sequence where this issue comes up but is easy to miss. The point is: two different audineces appreciated the film as a bloody good film, end of story. That they came to it with different baggae and expectations merely altered their experience (in my case, knowing what was about to happen to John Hurt and watching the audience reaction - itself massively entertaining.
Just got home from seeing the movie. The reviewer gave an accurate description of the movie. I read the short story when it was first published in Analog magazine in 1977. Star Wars had just come out and that was how I imagined the battle scenes. This was light years better. Everything else was a little disappointing but nothing twice the budget and another two more hours wouldn't have fixed. Do go see it. It's worth the price of admission. The bigger the box-office on this movie the more likely more of our favorite books will become movies. Ringworld, please.
Acting wise: Butterfield was Great, pretty much carried the film. (which is good because he had to) Ford and Davis were Good. Kingsley and the rest of the cast were OK. There was not much room for character development outside of Ender, and even he felt rushed.
Plot wise: It was too fast. They easily could have spend another 15 minutes or so developing relationships or showing more Battle Room scenes. Spend time in Salamander showing how Ender thinks outside the box. Spend time in Rat showing how effective Ender's ideas are. Spend time in Dragon showing his command superiority. And there was no reason to tip their hand several times about the ending.
Visuals: They were Great, as expected. However, they were confusing in the Battle Room scenes as you clearly see kids getting "flashed" several times but it wasn't freezing them. You really could not tell if someone was "frozen" until they told you they were. If we have to be told, why have the special effects for it at all? The special effects teams should have done better there.
Direction: Hood messed-up the ending. Here, less subtlety was needed. We need to hear Ender and Bean say what they are thinking. And the observers were just standing there having discussions like it was half-time when they should have been going crazy like they just won the Super Bowl. And Ender should not have spiked the football and done a touchdown dance because Hood never had Ender doing those things before. It was out of character. Also out of character was when Ender became the dual-weilding, Battle Room Bad-A** after just one shooting lesson from Petra. Instead of that, Hood should have had Ender just talk to Petra while observing the battle, pointing out where Bonzo was tactically inept.
Shawshank Redemption moves to number 2. Matrix Trilogy moves to number 3. The BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, without an iota of doubt is Ender's Game. Must watch on the big screen or on Blu Ray with a 50 inch screen. Life is a game. Play it well. Play to win but love your enemy even when you vanquish him. Gamers will absolutely devour every millisecond of this Epic Story, but even if you are not a gamer you will understand the message of the movie - Play Well. No improvements required, every thing was perfect, except maybe more intercut images in the final battle. Salute Gavin Hood the Writer AND Director. Best most epic opening scene evar. Hints of #EveOnline in the battle. Whew. Paisa Vasool. Will buy the Blu Ray. Gamers MUST watch this movie Based on the Ender Universe books by Orson Scott Card, a talented and hence controversial author. Will read as many of his books as possible. Hunger Games, that despicable vile piece of trash in the name of entertainment is the complete opposite of this epic movie. There kids were chopping down kids and everything was grim and shit. Here children are projected as the best hope and the messages of the movie touch the good subjects of sportsmanship, leadership, soldiers and doing your best.
Reviewer wrote: As a book, Ender's Game is not terribly long The book is nearly 400 pages....not sure what you are getting at or if we read the same version.
They did a reasonable job in making a movie just under 2 hours. Those who have read the book know how it has been reduced - as it would take about 20 hours to do a good job in a movie.
That said, those that have read the book can see the film in an understandable manner. Those who have not read the book will have large gaps in their comprehension.
Twas ever thus, in making films from books. If you have ever read a James Bond text only movie script, you will see a 30-40 page book, while the source novels are a lot larger - but not huge.
I think the problem is film is limited to a pace of human scale and time frames, books are not.
thought this review was mostly spot on. I enjoyed the film but love the book. The film should have been films! Ender pre -battle school into battle school first. Part 2 battle school from dragon army into command school. Part three: Ender in exile. That way they could develop some of the characters better, especially bean and peter. I pictured battle school much more minimal and dark. I loved Dapp's casting. They dropped the ball on Bean...he really deserved a flashback to his journey into battle school. He was all happy and cute in the movie, in the books he's kind of a dick-genius-loaner I read all the books so i'm that guy i know...
The mental backflips that the story pulls you through to justify those killings is just kind of fluff. It can be extended to the whole humanity vs bug overplot as well. Taken that way, at least Ender feels bad about it in the end.
That's sort of the point though. The killings weren't ever really justified, at least I don't recall the book stating such. Various characters tried to justify it (as others tried to vilify it), but card never jumps in as the narrator and says "yeah, Ender did the right thing". Ender never went into it with the attitude of "I'm mad at this guy for being mean to me so I'm going to kill him", he simply perceived a threat and applied as much force as he thought was necessary to end the threat (and was rather upset to find out that he'd killed the person).
That theme stays throughout the books. It was basically one of the central questions that's debated about amongst the characters but never really answered: how much force is justified for removing a threat, whether it be personal or all of humanity? If you read the later books, they all have a similar dilemma. What to do about the aliens that apparently murdered the scientist (people want to kill them all), what to do about the descolada virus (people want to glass the planet), what to do about Jane, what to do with the new alien race they later find, etc.
Overall, great movie with just enough suspense and great twists. Ending could have been longer and more descriptive but I'd give it 4.5 thumbs up.