I did not hold out much hope for this movie. Short version of this review is I was not disappointed. There have been worse adaptations of beloved scifi books (iRobot I am looking at you) but Ender does a lot to give them a run for their money. That said, what I hope to provide here is an inkling of what was lost. Granted that is hard to do with this story. The story of ender is one that speaks to a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. Thus what was lost for me may not be what was lost for others. Be that as it may, here goes....
Disclaimers:
I am not going to get to deep into the thorny subject that is Orson Scott Card. Google his name and controversy and you will be provided more results than you would likely care to read on the subject. All in all I personally tend to separate the artist from the results of their labor. Thus I in no way support the mans personal views in loving some of his books.
The Good:
I know it is a cliche to say the visual effects of present movies are astounding... but they are. Ender's Game presented two primary challenges to any movie making attempt. The visual concepts presented and the almost continual inner monologue of Ender due to his multi faceted isolation from other characters. Thankfully they largely nailed the visuals... 1 out of 2 ain't bad in some things. I won't bother to nitpick the battle school layout. The book clearly indicates multiple battle rooms as opposed to the single one depicted in the movie but it wasn't a super critical element. However, dropping that kind of detail is a pretty common theme. Another minor issue introduced by this is the logical disconnect regarding how in the world Petra and Ender would ever have been in that battle room alone if it was the only place to practice for a whole station crammed full of type A over achieving wunderkids looking to one up each other.
Harrison Ford as Graf. This was a great selection in casting. And unlike the insurmountable challenge handed Asa Butterfield and the script writers in depicting Ender, the character of Graf translates well to screen. Mostly because he is a relatively thin character steeped in authority figure cliches, But Ford brings the needed gravitas and sensitivity to the role of the hard line 'do what it takes to survive' character without being utterly detestable in the process. Something that is largely lost in the transition to screen is how Graf was deliberately sacrificing the Battle School program in order to forge Ender as the weapon that was needed. Some of the lines are there... but not the exposition needed to put them in context. Part of the clean up in the book at the end was the fact Graf was put on trial (think Nuremberg tribunal) for his part in the war.
Asa Butterfield as Ender. As deplorable as I found the overall package, I think he did a great job with what he had. It isn't his fault nobody has figured out how to credibly do in depth inner monologue in a movie. It is a fundamental reason why a lot of books fail as movie translations. Books work great for inner strife. Movies have no real good way to portray it in a sensible manner. A good case in point here is the 'mind game'. Enders interaction with the game is a central salient point to the story, and to future stories in the series but it is largely chopped in favor of the battle sequences.... but without understanding how Ender is thinking in the mind game, his decisions in the battle room and in the Formic battles have very little context. In other words... in the book you understand what and why Ender does what he does. In the Movie all you have is the observation of what he does in one (albeit key) circumstance without the inner 'why'. Trying to parse the part where Ender goes through the eye of the giant from the movie without the benefit of the book you would probably just think he was a one hell of a cold fish calculating his options. In the book the sequence of events shows him to be anything but.
The So So:
Both of Enders primary physical confrontations with Bullies are oddly manipulated and they avoid having Ender kill them as he does in the book. They also leave out two other more minor skirmishes from the book, the breaking of Bernard's arm in the shuttle and injuring of some kids trying to gang up on him and other launchies while practicing in the battle room. I think the manipulations amount to the same absurdity as the re-release of ET where the men in black had their shotguns replaced with walkie talkies. At least in ET it was a meaningless change to be more PC, it isn't like the guns were used in the original. Here it is a pretty critical change in how Ender perceives his own actions. Of the two depicted scenes, the interaction with Stilson (opening school bully) was more true to the book but it was tamed down. In the book Ender goes after more than just kicking him in the ribs when he is down. The fight with Bonzo was another story. In the book Ender thinks Bonzo is sent home. The odd thing is deciding to have Ender know Bonzo is possibly a vegetable. I assume the problem was they couldn't really figure out a way to have them go down without the audience either knowing they are definitely dead (the book does not reveal it until a bit after the fight with Bonzo) or not believe they died. People are clued to 'movie death'. It also would affect their perception of Ender as they would assume he knows he killed them if they 'dropped dead'. Thus if you clue the audience in during the fight they will think Ender knows, if you don't they will not like the 'bait and switch' of later being told they died. Again this was a story telling mechanism that worked in the book, but not on film. In the book Ender knows he hurt them both very badly (and possibly more...) but the response of the adults is to tell Ender he just hurt them instead of the fact they are both dead. Ender finds out at the end of the book when he is able to review testimony from Graf's trial after they made him an Admiral for his defeat of the Buggers (Formics).
The focus on the kids as the answer. Battle school is the start of training for the space fleet in the Book, not the end of training. Regardless of the 'master plan' to 'simulate' the encounters with the Formics, the kids do not go to the Battle school expecting to fight. They go thinking it is the first step. At least two other levels of training are listed in the book before they would expect to be in actual command in combat. And the ages line up more with typical expectations of military action (18+), if not with the expectation of command positions. From Ender's perspective in the book he is forced forward by circumstance, not by design. I put this in So So because this was something of a weak point in Cards story. After all they knew how long it would take the ships to get there. By all reasonable logic they would have gone with the best commander well before that time rather than continuing with trying to pluck the genius from the ranks of boys at battle school and risk having them not ready by the time they knew confrontation had to start. It was a thin plot device to have a young person get there at just the right time. The feel I get from the book is that they always intended to do the real battle as a simulation. But that the range of candidates was very wide. It was just that they didn't get the results they were looking for until the very end, and it still took Graf forcing the issue to get Ender to the battle in time.
The move of Mazer Rackam from battle fleet commander in a space battle to a fighter pilot in an atmospheric battle... and still calling him the commander. Non-sense. I guess someone thought the battle would look cooler if he was in a plane. To pile on more idiocy to this when he brings up his 'HUD' image for Ender to evaluate it is absolutely ludicrous to think someone was in a fighter jet yanking and banking in the furball to end all furballs and he picked through the random Rorschach blot of sensor images to pick out the 'subtle hint of a central ship'. On the fly. Sure he was a genius and that is the hand waving unspoken answer. But it is absurd. There was no reason to change it other than that is what Hollywood does. Anyway...
The Bad:
The time limit. 2 hours was just not enough. 3 hours might have given enough room to get some of it right with still leaving out the important Valentine/Peter subplot. Really it should have been two movies minimum. The first through the end of battle school. The second dealing with Valentine/Peter, Command School and the fall out of the Command School 'graduation' battle. This would have let them deal with the mind game/Hive queen link and expanded on the battle school environment enough to actually have folks understand it. As is they were so rushed they had no way to really show the way in which Ender grew. How he was beat down by the stress they put on him. How he struggled with becoming a weapon.
Why move Ender to the Alien system? This was a breakdown of epic proportions. After the Formic (Bugger) invasion, Earth makes two major technical leaps that are not general knowledge. Especially to the kids at battle school. One is the Ansible which is mentioned only in a horrible line that makes zero sense in the context of the book or in terms of how it is used. The Ansible is a McGuffin with a thin scientific backing. The basic idea is for FTL (faster than light) communications. Or in this case instant communication across any distance via some undefined method utilizing quantum entangled pairs. Google it... and if you then think you understand it you haven't read enough. Suffice it to say the effect exists, but the thought is there is no way to actually utilize it for communication (at least for now). If the method for utilizing it is ever actually derived it has some interesting ramifications, one case of which Card was exploring in this and other books in the Ender series. The line in the movie is that they moved Ender to the alien world so that they would be in 'Ansible range' implying... well I am not sure what they were implying because it makes no sense if you understand the concept Card had for the Ansible.
The failure of properly using the Bean character. This was humped by the 2 hour deal. In the Book Bean isn't in Ender's launch class. He is in a class behind Ender... which is ultimately important to his story. What kills me is they screwed it both for the newbies and the fans of the book. Not doing Bean right is a problem in the story, doing it wrong is sacrilege for the Fans. It honestly might have been better if they had just left him out and spent a bit more time developing Alai. As is they spent more time on Petra than either of them... probably because that let them have a Boy Girl interaction for audience targeting reasons. At least they didn't have to fabricate that training sequence. In the book Petra is important, but she is definitely secondary. Bean comes in late and grows fast. In a way he is Ender looking at and interacting with himself... and if you are familiar with the concept of cycles of violence in domestic violence (ie parent beats\abuses child who becomes a parent who beats\abuses child etc...) the Bean|Ender dynamic is particularly poignant as you see Ender doing to Bean what is\was being done to him. Bean ends up being the only person other than Valentine (his sister) that Ender ever confides in.
I get that in the time allotted they ditched the Peter (aka Machiavelli's 'Prince' incarnate) takes over the world (with help from Valentine) story. But that should have been a reason to go... you know we really can't do this in one go, and damn sure can't do it in two hours. The problem is by doing so they pulled the Earth from the story and lost any sense of the bigger picture. Unforgivable.
Finally... the watering down of the complex issues. Enders Game the book was powerful because it was not black and white. Many folks read it and take different things away from it. The movie shortcuts it to a common perception instead of leaving the ugly shades of grey on the table for the audience to mull through on their own. Ender is by no means happy with what he has done. But he is not so sure it was the wrong thing to do either. That inner torment is the basis of the further stories with his character. Enders Game is just the setup to some serious Sci Fi based navel gazing on some pretty complicated issues. The movie trys to hand you a fully digested answer... again, unforgivable.
Conclusions:
The Movie is a mess both for the uninitiated and for fans of the book. For the uninitiated its like watching a movie built from every third page of the book... IE there is often no linking of materials, little to no context for some of the lines. On second thought, make that every 10th page, and every other one is a bastardized script piece trying to fix the fact they are only showing a 10th of the material. For Fans it is a constant barrage of "hey cool they nailed something" followed by several "WTF?" moments.
Suggestions?
For once I really don't think I have any ideas how they could have done this one. To tell the story from Ender's point of view properly in a movie is going to take a break through movie concept that cracks the code of inner monologue. By remaining true to the perspective of the book the movie was doomed because Ender does not get to externalize his discussions with himself. No win scenario.
However.... if you give up on trying to do the story from Ender's perspective some interesting options pop up. Harrison Ford could have carried off the role of primary lighting rod for the story. While using his perspective as the focus would alter the story presentation to the audience considerably... it would afford much better opportunity to bring the various elements of what is happening to Ender out into more traditional dialog. In the story Graf is the one who sees Ender. He understands what is driving him. He knows he is not a stone cold killer etc... But in the book he does not have to spend time justifying it because we have Enders inner monologue while Graf's dialog is often just moving things along. Take Ender's monologue out of his head and re-script it as conversations Graf has to have to get Ender through the process while others want to pull him and you might have something.
Would that idea work? I dunno. It would be a HUGE leap to pitch "Ender's Game" as a movie only to tell the story largely from Graf's point of view with non cannon characters created to provide Ender's inner voice via dialog. The delivery becomes very different, but the content could have been much more true to the story. There is some precedent for it. Amadeus was a fantastic movie that externalized the genius of Amadeus and did so primarily via the use of a third party perspective.
