Ender's game movie

[Nari]

Saw it last night with the wife; we're both big fans of the book and it's "sequels".

The movie adaptation was about what I expected; I went in with pretty low expectations based on the trailers. Much of the nuance and joy of the story is difficult to adapt to the screen and given the "team effort" (there were two pages of credits for both the Product and Executive Producer positions!) I was satisfied with it if not thrilled.

No complaints about the CGI; I quite enjoyed the battle room scenes and the space battles. And the bathroom scene was about as intact as you'd expect for a PG-13 release (the R-rated adaptation of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo this is not)

However I'm not sure if the director and screenwriter made a decision to assume some non-trivial ability on the part of the audience to understand the big reveal at the end or just muffed it. There was a single reference (that I heard) to the Ansible communication technology before it was used to explain what was going on at the end. Leaving the cinema I heard a lot of people trying to understand what had actually happened at the end so I can't rate it as successful.

And the ending is clearly to open it up for a Speaker For the Dead sequel which gets my two thumbs up (although the scene plays out a bit oddly in the movie; no-one in charge followed him out onto the surface? really?).

A parting thought is a reflection on my liking the book which is more like the Hunger Games (interesting story, not the greatest book) than his later work which was greatly improved. I'd have to say that my fond recollection of the original is probably greatly enhanced by the sequels, which are sequels only in that they involve some of the original characters in what for the most part could be completely difference universes. This doesn't detract from them in any way (they sequels are all great books) but I don't know if there are too many other series that I'm familiar with that I'd say the same thing about. From memory there was something in the dust jacket of Xenocide or Children of the Mind about an editor suggesting that he get some more experience before engaging on the later ambitious stories; that was some good advice!

[Ace Pace]

Well, I saw it this week.

It was a decent movie that suffered from being 15 minutes too short, and a strange decision on how to script Petra.

The former, the movie moved fast, too fast in some cases, such as the ending sequence (which was handled badly) and some of the character development stages. The latter, well, Petra, instead of being "one of the guys who just pisses sitting down" was suddenly a girl, with Hollywood girlish behavior. I didn't like that at all.

For the positive end, the battle-room sequences and Ender managing his team was well done, along with every interaction with the commanders. They did manage to convey the central story, which is Ender dealing with having so much pressure, and not get bogged down with totally ancillary plots like the whole Internet-Peter-Val thing.

[CaptainChewbacca]

So Peter-Val is just not there?

[Nari]

Peter is pretty 2 dimensional and doesn't get a lot of screen time.

Valerie gets considerably more screen time but I'd describe the handling of her character and it's importance to Ender as being a little uneven. We're sort of required to just make an assumption about a close brother/sister relationship.

[Ace Pace]

Peter is pretty 2 dimensional and doesn't get a lot of screen time.

Valerie gets considerably more screen time but I'd describe the handling of her character and it's importance to Ender as being a little uneven. We're sort of required to just make an assumption about a close brother/sister relationship.

That's the thing, we have to make many assumptions to make the movies characters (except for Ender) work, which would have been pretty much solved by another 15 minutes of screentime.

[Nari]

That's the thing, we have to make many assumptions to make the movies characters (except for Ender) work, which would have been pretty much solved by another 15 minutes of screentime.

I'd say that's pretty fair. I was a bit surprised to see it clocked in at 114 minutes; it didn't really drag for me at any point so a bit more background explanation would have helped more than hindered.

I'll be curious what's different if we see a director's cut.

[Lord Pounder]

I was considering going to see it as I did kind of like the book. I especially wanted to see it when the Guardian basically dismissed it as Harry Potter Quiditch with ray guns, and I wanted to see it to spite that lazy journalism. In the end I don't have the budget to go to the cinema a lot and Bad Grandpa seemed more value for money, so I'll wait till its on DVD.

[Temjin]

Saw it yesterday with my GF.

It's about the most faithful adaptation of the book that I could imagine them doing in a single movie. Spoiler

They even kept Ender beating the crap out of Stimson. which surprised me as I remembered OSC saying that would most likely be written out of any movie adaptation.

All of the important plot points were there. They even lifted some character lines verbatim from the book.

On the other hand, the movie felt very rushed. I was never at a loss to figure out what was happening, but then again, I've read the book several times. My girlfriend has as well. But I wonder how easy the movie would be to follow for someone who had never read the book?

Overall, I really enjoyed. But I consider it more of a companion to the book than a movie in it's own right.

[Nephtys]

Saw it with work peoples. A few observations:

Peter and Val were 'Red Conversation Choice' and 'Blue Conversation Choice'.
The movie did a pretty poor job of explaining why you need to teach kids to play paintball so that they can command battleships.
Ender isn't a very interesting character.
The way the ending was done didn't really leave me particularly 'morally confused' or anything. It was just... okay. Cool. Good job kid.
That last part felt stupid and rushed. Really, you can just walk 10 minutes and find her?
F-35s to Interstellar Space Fleet in what... 40 years? Not bad.

[SylasGaunt]

I'll second it could have used another 20 minutes or so to show the kind of tactical innovation that made Ender successful at battle school (eschewing formations, the leg freezing, etc). Maybe 10 minutes there then use the other 10 in the Command School portion to show him getting ground down more leading to his big 'fine, screw it!' moment in the finale.