Ender's Game was a pretty bad movie
Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 2:56 pm
I will start off by saying that the CGI was awesome, and I think they did a good job on the visuals overall. The Formic fleet looked seriously badass. But they absolutely butchered the plot, and they left out a lot of things that were pretty important, and really changed the feel of the story. I think everyone here's familiar with Ender's Game, as it's a pretty well-known story, but for what it's worth, major spoilers are ahead.
They gave very little time to Ender's relationship with his family, even though that's a major point in the book. This is a story that's largely about Ender's psychology, and the importance of Peter and Valentine's influence on his childhood can scarcely be overstated. There are a couple of lines like "I'm becoming like Peter", and that's it. I think he gets one scene in the entire movie. On a similar note, they completely omitted the Locke and Demosthenes thing, and the entire political situation on Earth, including the Fleet War after the final battle. They mention the Strategos, but that's as close as they come to talking about that.
Ender was supposed to be one of the smallest, youngest kids in Battle School. They talk *a lot* about that in the book. In the movie, he's as tall as Mazer Rackham, and a foot taller than Bonzo Madrid. That makes the fight scene feel a little different. The big guy killing the little guy by knocking him down and letting his head hit a corner is not even remotely the same as the little guy killing the big guy by punching his nose into his brain. They're also careful not to say whether Bonzo actually dies, and they have Ender going to see him while he's comatose, while in the book he was shipped back to Earth without anyone but Ender being told he'd been killed.
Bean, Petra, Alai, and all the rest are much less important in the movie. Fly Molo is briefly mentioned but is not one of the five (down from twelve) who are with Ender in the final battle.
I've gotten this far and realized how many more things I could list and decided it's not worth it. There are pages more of these examples. Battle School didn't look like it was described in the book, which isn't a big deal for Ender's Game but seriously screws with parts of Ender's Shadow. Armies are 16 people rather than 40, and the scale of the school generally seems much smaller. In the book there was a mess hall just for the commanders, and in the movie there clearly aren't enough people to justify that. They go to a planet that was captured from the Formics instead of to Eros. The MD Device is a giant ship rather than a bomb every fighter carries. They say the Formics were communicating with Ender by planting images in the Mind Game, and don't even get me started on that. The visuals are the only even vaguely redeeming feature the movie has.
They gave very little time to Ender's relationship with his family, even though that's a major point in the book. This is a story that's largely about Ender's psychology, and the importance of Peter and Valentine's influence on his childhood can scarcely be overstated. There are a couple of lines like "I'm becoming like Peter", and that's it. I think he gets one scene in the entire movie. On a similar note, they completely omitted the Locke and Demosthenes thing, and the entire political situation on Earth, including the Fleet War after the final battle. They mention the Strategos, but that's as close as they come to talking about that.
Ender was supposed to be one of the smallest, youngest kids in Battle School. They talk *a lot* about that in the book. In the movie, he's as tall as Mazer Rackham, and a foot taller than Bonzo Madrid. That makes the fight scene feel a little different. The big guy killing the little guy by knocking him down and letting his head hit a corner is not even remotely the same as the little guy killing the big guy by punching his nose into his brain. They're also careful not to say whether Bonzo actually dies, and they have Ender going to see him while he's comatose, while in the book he was shipped back to Earth without anyone but Ender being told he'd been killed.
Bean, Petra, Alai, and all the rest are much less important in the movie. Fly Molo is briefly mentioned but is not one of the five (down from twelve) who are with Ender in the final battle.
I've gotten this far and realized how many more things I could list and decided it's not worth it. There are pages more of these examples. Battle School didn't look like it was described in the book, which isn't a big deal for Ender's Game but seriously screws with parts of Ender's Shadow. Armies are 16 people rather than 40, and the scale of the school generally seems much smaller. In the book there was a mess hall just for the commanders, and in the movie there clearly aren't enough people to justify that. They go to a planet that was captured from the Formics instead of to Eros. The MD Device is a giant ship rather than a bomb every fighter carries. They say the Formics were communicating with Ender by planting images in the Mind Game, and don't even get me started on that. The visuals are the only even vaguely redeeming feature the movie has.
