Well, I finally got the chance to see this movie. I’ve been waiting a while to see it due to when the film was released in theaters, I was reading the book. I don’t want to create a gigantic paragraph on the book since I’m just focusing on the film, So I’ll briefly sum up my thoughts on it: It was pretty good. Anyways here’s my review of the Adaptation to film.
A long time ago, a race of aliens dubbed “Buggers” invaded Earth and they lost to Human race. Ever since the attack, the International Fleet has been starting a program to train children to grow and become perfect soldiers for their fleet.
Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is a young boy attending an academy for the International Fleet. One day, Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) arrives at his home to personally invite him to join Battle School to help the fleet stop the “Upcoming” Invasion of the Buggers.
The first thing I noticed about the film is they cut out ALOT from the book. Of course, this would normally do, but some of the more impactiful stuff was left out.
One of the more important aspects of the books that the movie left out was with a few of the character’s personalities. Ender was dumbed down incredibly and he came off as half as intelligent as he was in the book. (He was basically a Tactical Mastermind in the book, here he seemed like a generic kid.) Plus he was made a couple of years older than he was.
One of the more important characters that was cut severly from the book was Ender’s older brother, Peter. In the book, he played a part as one of Ender’s struggles throughout the book. Peter was basically a sociopath who endlessly tormented Ender before battle school and one of the struggles for Ender was not becoming a ruthless killer just like him. In the film, he’s only as five lines in the beginning and never comes back.
Another character that was cut down alot was Bonzo. He was basically one of the main antagonists in the book, and kept degrading Ender. He was cut down alot and some of his scenes were cut and he was very intimidating.
A bunch of the characters were changed throughout the film as well. (Again, many adaptations do this well.)
The actors in this seemed a bit boring and weren’t very entertaining. Ben Kingsley in it looked like he was trying to stay awake the whole time with his eyes wide open in all his scenes. Harrison Ford wasn’t very interesting as Graff and the actor who played Ender was ok, I could say the same thing for Abigail Breslin as Valentine, Ender’s Sister. (Oddly, their relationship seemed a bit incestuous. )
One of the things they had minor cuts to was the Mind Game Ender plays. The Mind Game, throughout the book, changes based on the emotions and events that Ender goes through throughout the course of the book. They did stick with it throughout the book and It looked pretty much like I imagined in the book,. (I imagined Ender playing it on an iPad.)
Since it’s a Sci-Fi film, the Special Effects are one of the more important aspects to this. The Effects seemed pretty standard to if you would compare it to stuff like Avatar or Tron Legacy. They should off the Battle School, many ships from the Fleet, and the Training Room. We do get to see one of the Buggers in the film, which did look like a cross mix of an Ant and a Moth. I’ll admit, the Special Effects looked decent, but I thought the Bugger looked really good.
Final Thoughts: I didn’t like it…at all. I didn’t really see any redeeming factors to it, aside from the Special Effects were decent. The film felt like it was a gigantic mixture of Starship Troopers, Lord of the Flies (the 1996 film), and the Last Starfighter thrown together with elements from the book. I’d recommend reading the book instead of seeing the film.
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