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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 6211223" data-attributes="member: 5868">So, what did you think?As we walked out, my wife turned to me and said "I don't think that would have made sense to me if I hadn't read the book first."  Since I can't unread the book, I'm particularly interested in the impressions of folks who have not read the book.Overall, I have to say I'm kind of lukewarm at best about the movie.  It was pretty visually, but emotionally flat.Details (spoilers): [spoiler]OK, I admit you can't expect to get the depth in a 2-hour film that you'd get from a novel.  While they made some smart decisions to shorten the film, like cutting most of the Peter-Valentine story line, even with the remaining material they can't do enough justice to the characters.  Since so much of the book takes place in Ender's head, they need to increase his interactions with the other characters to demonstrate character and personality, and for most of the film's characters that doesn't happen.  Admittedly, even the majority of characters in the book are cardboard cutouts, but still, losing the Ender-Bean relationship was a significant loss.  The actor playing Ender comes across as pretty Vulcan; we need more insight into his soul to sympathize.Given that the best part of the film are the Battle Room scenes, it's unfortunate that we didn't actually see many examples of Ender using superior tactics to win battles.  We fail to see his superiority anywhere but on the scoreboard, and the sense of tiredness, despair, and intense hatred of the adults that builds as the rules are changed against him multiple times fails to come through.Also, I think the filmmakers made decisions to soften the emotional impact that weaken the film.  Not revealing that Ender killed the boys he fought with is once decision, but the largest one is telegraphing the real situation throughout the film.  The reveal of what is actually going on would in my opinion have been stronger had we learned it with Ender (and also had the Command School battles been real battles like in the book, and not just the final battle).Also, I think the denouement was short-shrifted.  We don't get to dwell enough on events before Ender runs off to redeem himself.  Nor do we get the insight into Bugger (excuse me, Formic -- frankly, keeping the epithets would have been more powerful.  Enemies in existential wars learn to hate) psychology -- their lack of understanding of humans as uniquely sentient is just as important a point of view as the human's view of the hive mind, and not revealing it actually weakens the message of "if you understand your enemy you might not fight" that the ending conveys.Ender's Game is a good but not (in my personal view) great science fiction novel, but the film lets it down.[I also have some issues with Card's promoted morality system, but that has been explored better by other critics and needs no discussion here.][/spoiler]</blockquote>

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