The Sword and Laser discussion

First off this thread isn't about Orson Card, it's about the movie, which I didn't see a thread for.

First off I really I loved the book, but the movie felt like it was going through a checklist and heavy handed emphasis of certain themes. Also not only were a huge number of scenes condensed together into mashups which sometimes felt really unnatural, the dialog cutoff a certain parts a few times in a way very reminiscent of "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not."

I'm fine with the fact they cutout the Peter Val political portion. It was isolated and time constraints made sense for cutting it.

Also there were parts that just felt like they were being cheap to me. The CGI on the fantasy game, and the drastic reduction in battle school "army" size, and the number of reused scenes.

Also who the hell decided to cast a Bonzo Madrid a foot shorter and even skinnier than Ender?


I also saw Cloud Atlas for the first time last week and loved it. I read it much longer ago and found it slow paced, often boring, and difficult to follow, but I still thought the movie hit the highlights and stayed true without inserting themes over the source material.
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What did you guys think?
Am I nitpicking on a good film, not accounting for the target audience, or were the these real problems?

Put this behind spoiler tags, but I'm curious... the trailer implies that Ender knew when he was with Mazer that he was commanding real armies. True?

To me, so much of the appeal of the book was that Ender had spend his entire life being a tool of others and apart because of his brilliance and his nature.

Rick wrote: "Put this behind spoiler tags, but I'm curious... the trailer implies that Ender knew when he was with Mazer that he was commanding real armies. True?

To me, so much of the appeal of the book was ..."

To answer your question…
(view spoiler)[ no Ender does not know that he is doing anything more than simulation, but the context of the movie makes it seem as though he is much more prepared to do so, to the point his breakdown upon learning the truth seem out of place (to me) (hide spoiler)]

Thanks Alex.

like many book to movie adaptations i've been in denial that this even happened..just leave the good books alone! anyways, i obvs haven't seen it because i was afraid it would be like you said, alex, and i would be a jerk in the theater telling the movie why it should be ashamed of itself.

I love the book but I also thought the movie was excellent. I guess I don't expect a book and movie to be exactly the same so I'm not as disappointed as others are when they're not.
I even got a little emotional before the last battle knowing what Ender was about to go through.

I really liked the movie, but it did feel rushed. If they had just given it an extra half hour to stick in a few more scenes I think it would have been even better.

All the acting was very good, but yes the kid who played Bonzo did look a little ridiculous glaring up at Ender. And after all that training Ender should have been more muscular.

Overall I liked it and will watch it again, but not in the theater.

Let me just say... my views on the movie were probably clouded by the fact that I had just reread Ender's Game the week before I saw the movie. Rereading just reminded me of just how much I enjoyed the book. And that's probably why I hated the movie. There were times where I just wanted to get up and walk out.

I guess my biggest complaint was that they did rush it a bit. Which made them mash up characters in a way that disappointed me. (Bean took the place of Alai, Alai took the place of another child... can't remember the name, and Bean, well he just wasn't Bean. I might be nitpicking but I thought he smiled way too much. In my opinion Petra became to Ender what Valentine was in the book. For what they did with the movie, Valentine was just an added character that didn't need to be there). I didn't like the casting of Bonzo either, not because the acting was bad, I merely thought he was scripted wrong. He wasn't at all what I imagined. (This happens to me a lot with movie adaptations.)

Again, the pacing is what really annoyed me with the movie. It needed to be longer. Or maybe it might have been a better movie to me, if it wasn't called Ender's Game. To me it wasn't the book and I don't think they captured the essence of what it was to me.

OK, I saw it Sunday.

It has the same problem as the 1984 Dune movie with Sting and Patrick Stewart. The movie is too short for the book. Too much was left out or glossed over.

The first Harry Potter movie was 30 minutes longer. That would have helped this movie a lot. I read the first Harry Potter book for comparison. Even though I noticed stuff missing, like lots of details about the dragon, I consider that HP movie to be a good interpretation of the book. I am significantly disappointed with Ender's Game. I just have no interest in HP.

I just caught it today. It was a lot better than I thought it would be. I was apprehensive going into it because so much of the book takes place in Ender's own head. However I felt that they handled the large majority of that correctly and managed to make the audience empathize with Ender and his crap situation.

The movie did feel very accelerated but you have to do that in Movies and I don't think anybody who hadn't read the book would have noticed the acceleration of the timeline. I think the CGI portions for the "mind game" sequences were made to look like that on purpose. The audience needed to identify that it was in fact a game and in order to do that they cartoonified it up on purpose.

I am a little torn on the battle school / war portion of the movie. On one hand I wanted to see more of the battles both in the school and in space. On the other hand I am happy that they didn't make it into one big action movie and kept it to what I would consider largely character rather than action driven. Still trying to decide if I wanted more action or not but I am leaning towards thinking that they hit the right balance.

Overall I would say it was a great adaptation of a book that I did not think would/should ever be made into a movie and felt they did the original material justice.

Note to Jennifer: That is why I personally never re-read the book right before a movie comes out. :) If I had done that I am almost sure I would have felt the same as you about a lot of things. I try to distance the book from the movie and only re-read a book after the I have seen the movie to then compare the two. If not I would be nitpicking the entire time I sat there watching the film.

You're right I probably shouldn't reread something before watching the movie... Perhaps one of these times I'll actually take that advice. Ugh, I would probably enjoy movies a whole lot better.

Jennifer wrote: "You're right I probably shouldn't reread something before watching the movie... Perhaps one of these times I'll actually take that advice. Ugh, I would probably enjoy movies a whole lot better."

I found out through trial and error myself. I love books. And movies. However for me adaptations of movies have to be taken as their own story and I found that if I reread the book before I saw the film then I spent time nitpicking instead of enjoying the movie that I paid to watch. So now I only reread a story a few weeks/months after watching the movie. Helps me to seperate the two different works and not find fault with either while I am in the middle of consuming them.

For instance The Hobbit. I hadn't reread it since highschool before watching the movie last winter. Then I read it again in Jan/Feb to remember what I liked about the original. And now that it has been almost a year since then I should be able to watch part 2 of the film and enjoy it as much as I did the first one. It's just a habit I've adopted to help me keep my sanity in this Internet world of over analyzation.

Good words, Micah, good words.

Re-reading shortly before seeing the movie is asking for disappointment. Personally, I feel that a book(audio in particular) is the best form of storytelling. Better to see the film, then re-read and you get the best that both have to offer. It's been since 2010 that I listened to the audiobook, so a lot of detail was pleasantly fuzzy. The story compression was a bit painful, but unavoidable. I liked the CGI a lot, I'm looking forward to the blu-ray. Asa Butterfield's performance was awesome, he really nailed it. I thought Bonzo's combination of shortness and muscularity encapsulated his character quite well.

Overall, I had tempered expectations going on. I didn't think this film adaptation would completely live up to the novel. For me, it came really close at times. The final simulation was enthralling, I was really sucked in emotionally. (view spoiler)[ I felt the crowd of dignitaries' reaction to the victory was weak and under stated. They acted like he'd just won a simulation, not saved their planet from impending annihilation. The clapping was as if they'd just seen a nice school play, and the way they turned and spoke to one another was in keeping with the idea it was not the real battle and there was still more to be done in the war. I thought the visualization of the Bugger world's destruction was interesting, but a poor substitute for the crowd reaction as the big reveal. We never really had empathy for the Buggers established, it was all about the human race's perspective that we have to destroy them before they return to Earth and finish what they started, wiping out the human race. If they had succeeded in having those actors convey an overwhelming sense of staggering relief, mental & emotional exhaustion, gratitude, and just complete sensory overload- that would have blown me away and instantly made this one of my favorite films, ever. (hide spoiler)]

As it is, I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Well done, Movie.

I saw the movie yesterday, and I felt everything was rushed.

Philip wrote:"Overall, I had tempered expectations going on. I didn't think this film adaptation would completely live up to the novel. For me, it came really close at times. The final simulation was enthralling, I was really sucked in emotionally"

What you said in your spoiler comments matches up with what I was thinking too. That was where the film really had a chance to punch it home and the moment came off just a little weak. I was also impressed with Asa's performance as Ender. I also really liked how they made Petra be a hardcore girl and did not turn her into Ender's girlfriend.

@kevin: it was noticeable for me too. But they did take a story arc from a few years between school, battle school, and officer training, and condense it down into a two hour movie. Any book that is of decent depth would always do better as a mini-series IMO. More time to explore characters and get that crucial development. However I felt that this adaptation was a good one.

Yup, Petra was handled good, too. I really like platonic relationships, they're so rare. It reminds me of Raleigh and Mako in Pacific Rim.

I thought they managed a $110 million production budget extremely well. It sure looked like it would have cost more, and they also had some big name actors attached to the film. I hope that an extended version comes out someday that fleshes out the characters more and shows more of the stuff that happened at Battle School.

Micah wrote: "Philip wrote:"Overall, I had tempered expectations going on. I didn't think this film adaptation would completely live up to the novel. For me, it came really close at times. The final simulation w..."

I think they at least cut out 40% of the book.