Ender’s Game question

For me, the film completely missed the tragedy of what happens to Ender, as much of it in the book is shown by internal dialogue and Ender's interactions with a computer game. But they could have at least tried.
As for "The enemy's gate is down" being reduced to a throw away line by Bean right near the end of the film - did the screenwriters actually read the book?

I've been reading the series w/my son. We are currently in the beginning of Xenocide. We were so excited when the movie came out. It wasn't a big disappointment but it wasn't great either. We loved all the graphics and how they portrayed practices and such. But we agree, that it felt rushed and incomplete. My husband, who has not read the book, liked the movie but not for the same reasons my son and I love the series. It was more than apparent, Hollywood totally missed the mark. They should have done better with introducing the characters and in showing the intense pressure of being a student in battle school. They should have spent more time in making a bigger impact with the main idea of the story. It should have packed a bigger punch.

This book should never have been made into a movie. Some books make great movies. Others don't, with no reflection on the book. The book was great because of its depth, and movies rarely (might as well say "never") capture depth when converting from books. The book was amazing. The movie was mediocre if you'd read the book, and abominable if you hadn't.

I enjoyed the movie, I thought that it compressed the story into the essentials and gave you a feel for the characters. True that the book was better ( they always are ). But to squeeze everything into the movie would have taken an entire mini-series, which probably would have been fantastic on the Sy-fy channel. If you havent read the book, i encourage you to do so before seeing the movie. It will be well worth your while to have more of the back story on all the characters.

I feel that the people who made the movie took the bare minimum from the book to make a movie, but they didn't take any of the important detail to give the movie the depth that the book had. For example, in the book Ender's relationship with his brother is extremely bad ( to the point they want to kill each other), I feel that in the movie they missed that. They also didn't show Ender's relationship to the Buggers in the slightest. Having said that, I feel that if you didn't read the book you would enjoy the movie.

Yeah...I was super stoked for Ender's Game being a movie...but I should have thought that through. Usually you can TELL what books are the type of books that can potentially become great movies.

Other types of books are just NOT meant to be movies. They are meant to be read.
Ender's Game is most definitely one of those books.

The film did its best, it really did. It was VISUALLY beautiful, the actors were pretty damn solid, the effects super cool, beautiful music, and the battle scenes were crazy cool. And we had an awesome Ender.

However yeah. We all agree that the film was just...LACKING what made us all fall in love with the book.

For me, my favorite parts of the book was just reading Ender's THOUGHTS. I hated how the film BARELY touched on that Battle School was for GENIUS children throughout the world. Like these kids aren't NORMAL kids. They are super uber genius smart, and it's fascinating to see from his point of view. How calculating his mind is. In the film, we don't really get to follow his steps at all -and that's all films. They just can't reveal a character's thought processes as well as books.

They didn't have time for it, and for that it lacked a lot. Most of the fun in Ender's Game was seeing the cool dynamics and the competitiveness between the kids at Battle School. Them climbing the ranks, showing off, mouthing off to each other, being snotty Battle School brats. We all love to see this smart kids banter and just interact with each other, and the film BARELY had any of that. Like practically none. So it was pretty boring most of the time.

The movie focused too much on the technicality of the games and the whole "Buggers r coming", which sounds pretty dumb if you make that the ENTIRE plotline, which it isn't in the book.

Asa was a really good actor, but for people who've never read the book, they have no idea what the hell he's thinking or what the hell he's going through. But the movie had some emotion, especially towards the end. Which was great :) I liked all the battle scenes and the ending sequence. Those were great. But overall, the film was lacking a lot.

UGH MOST ANGRY OVER THE PETER/VALENTINE SCENES. They were all pretty badly acted and rushed. Oh well.
Just gonna rely on the books to make me satisfied haha. :P

I love the book. However my wife has not read it, and we want to go see the movie.

Should I first get her to read the book, or is it fine to watch the movie first.

I know some movies will absolutely ruin the book for those that have not read it.

I have not seen the movie, but the whole reason why i picked up the book was because i saw a trailer for the movie. Not that the trailer looked good by any means, it looked a little ridiculous honestly (no offence to any who found it awesome) but while the movie looked like it would not be too good the story seemed fascinating. I was right i am so happy i read it before watching it. all the reviews i have read have said terrible things but nothing short of what i imagined.
At least the book has not been ruined for me.



*****UPDATE!*****

OK i watched it... totally take it back.
While i still l am glad i read it first i could see it for the good movie it is as a stand alone.
the book left me feeling like it was not really over. I know that was the point and blahh blahh but still it left stuff unresolved.

I couldn't truly feel for Ender, in the book i was in his head and knew why he did the things he did, while in the movie i could see why people would be upset with his constant crying.
I would recommend it tho, and i would definitely not write it off as a bad movie.

I may be in a very small minority, but I actually enjoyed the movie more than the book. The book included a lot of trivial details that weren't necessary to the story and certainly not in the movie. Honestly, given the complexity of the story, the amount of time covered in the book, the movie really does a great job of condensing the story in a coherent manner. I think movie stands on its own quite well, and would be enjoyable without having read th ebook first.