Description: 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.
Director: Gavin Hood
Writers: Gavin Hood (screenplay), Orson Scott Card (based on the book Ender’s Game by)
Stars: Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld
Information from IMDB.
Julie’s Review 
I give Ender’s Game movie 4.5 stars, not quite 5 but almost there. I loved the book Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, but it has been a few years since I read it so I can’t say that I remember every detail. I was worried about the movie because I’ve read interviews with Orson Scott Card where he told us movie producers wanted to make Ender older and give him a love interest. This was unacceptable and he would refuse to sign a contract like that. I’m very happy to say this movie was excellent and fun to watch. It was one of the best book-to-movie adaptations I’ve seen this year and it exceeded my expectations (which were maybe a bit low). The visual effects were stunning and the plot line moved well so people who didn’t read the book will enjoy the movie as well.
For the book-to-movie comparison, I do think the timeline of the story was too fast. In the movie we are made to think the events take place in a matter of months, when in the book it takes a lot longer for Ender to go through the training and his growth as a character. Also, in the book Ender was more isolated and everything he went through was internalized. We learned a lot with him as Ender discovered how things work and rationalized his actions. Of course that would be hard to portray in a movie so we got a lot more interaction with other characters. Also, Petra played a major role in the movie and I was worried a few times but thankfully for this movie there was no kissing involved. It would just not be true to the book. I did like that the actor playing Ender looked young and I don’t think his age was ever really mentioned. I think that helped make it a believable portrayal of the book. The movie also cut out the Valentine and Peter story line with their political activities as Demosthenes and Locke. I was wondering how they were going to make all that make sense in the movie, so I think doing away with it altogether worked well. I remember when I read Ender’s Game I was really curious to visualize his desk and his mind game. Now we have tablets so the technology was not as sci-fi as it initially seemed to me. I really liked the mind game scenes and thought they were well done. I don’t remember all the details but I thought there was more to the game than what we saw, but again they had to fit everything into a two hour movie. There were a few other changes that didn’t really affect the story, such as the aliens were called Buggers in the book, but overall I think the adaptation was great and I recommend it to people who read the book and people who didn’t. It is, after all, a good sci-fi action flick and something everyone can enjoy.
Thanks for sharing this, I’ve been debating whether I wanted to bother seeing this or not after I read the book a few weeks ago. I think I’m going to have to make the trip some time soon!
Amanda recently posted…Review: The Pentrals by Crystal Mack