Ender's Game was a pretty bad movie

[҉]

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.

[MrTargareyan]

I disagree, even if it wasn't a great representation of the book, it was an enjoyable film. I haven't read the book, and went into the film without any clue what it would be like, I imagine you might enjoy it more if you viewed it separately to the book, rather than expecting it to completely adhere to its details. There is also a limit to how much of the family relationship stuff you can fit in the space of a 2 hour film.

[ACH0225]

For one thing, it was a lot of thoughts in the book rather than actions, which are hard to translate to a movie.

[Prototype]

The movie was never going to be as good as the book, but the movie wasn't bad compared to other movies.

[Tau]

Still beats Oblivion.

[ACH0225]

So how bout that Eragon movie?

[CMA]

So how bout that Eragon movie?

Oh lord don't remind me.

[҉]

So how bout that Eragon movie?

Oh lord don't remind me.

Gods no. That remains the single worst book-to-movie adaptation I have ever experienced.

[cats]

So how bout that Eragon movie?

Eeugh. I wanted to stab a lot of things after I saw that movie.

[CMA]

So how bout that Eragon movie?

Oh lord don't remind me.

Gods no. That remains the single worst book-to-movie adaptation I have ever experienced.

Did you see the Percy Jackson movie? I literally could not tell it was based on the book. Eragon is still second-worst, though.

[҉]

Did you see the Percy Jackson movie? I literally could not tell it was based on the book. Eragon is still second-worst, though.

Hrrr. I'd forgotten about that. Suppressed the memories, perhaps. That was also truly, truly awful. They didn't even really pretend to be following the plot.

Movie adaptations that were done well:
Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
Starship Troopers (lost some stuff, but pretty good)
Watchmen
The recent Marvel stuff

And that's about it, as far as I'm aware (or at least can think of right now).

[Vinyl]

Movie adaptations that were done well:
Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
Starship Troopers (lost some stuff, but pretty good)
Watchmen
The recent Marvel stuff

Agreed. Far too agreed. So much agreed here, that we have too much agreement. Need some overflow vents for all this agree, and even then there'd be spills. Gonna need a whole sewer system for this agreement here. Though even with all that, we'd still be swimming in agrees. Even if we start destroying the agree, we won't be losing more than we're gaining and would surely drown. Therefore, I propose that we abandon Earth and let everything else die due to the unblocked agree floods. Earth would be covered in layers of agree in the hundreds of thousands of leagues. We'd have to build a grand starship, capable of propelling us to the tip of the Sagittarius arm and further if necessary, as the agree will continue to grow after it has consumed Earth, the torrent will move through the Sol system unmitigated and proceed on to Alpha Centaur, then Barnard's Star, until it has filled the Universe. We may never escape, but we may delay the inevitable.

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

Movie adaptations that were done well:
Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
Starship Troopers (lost some stuff, but pretty good)
Watchmen
The recent Marvel stuff

Agreed. Far too agreed. So much agreed here, that we have too much agreement. Need some overflow vents for all this agree, and even then there'd be spills. Gonna need a whole sewer system for this agreement here. Though even with all that, we'd still be swimming in agrees. Even if we start destroying the agree, we won't be losing more than we're gaining and would surely drown. Therefore, I propose that we abandon Earth and let everything else die due to the unblocked agree floods. Earth would be covered in layers of agree in the hundreds of thousands of leagues. We'd have to build a grand starship, capable of propelling us to the tip of the Sagittarius arm and further if necessary, as the agree will continue to grow after it has consumed Earth, the torrent will move through the Sol system unmitigated and proceed on to Alpha Centaur, then Barnard's Star, until it has filled the Universe. We may never escape, but we may delay the inevitable.

Yeah, I agree too.

[CMA]

Movie adaptations that were done well:
Starship Troopers

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Spoiler:

NO

Other than that I agree, though. Although LOTR wasn't that good, they made it too light hearted, should have been more Wagnerian.

[Prototype]

Movie adaptations that were done well:
Starship Troopers

What are you smoking? I mean they cut out the whole ultimate badasses in mech suits thing, literally missed the entire point of it.