When I watched the Ender's Game trailer for the 1st time browsing the IMDb and I though: Here's a Sci Fi movie that I will probably see. My life went on and a few months later I saw the trailer again mentioned in a space video game called Skyjacker (Skyjacker - Starship Constructor update 20 in August). I got curious enough and decided to read the book first and watch the movie in November. Then I discover that there wasn't only one book, but a bunch of them. The Ender's Game saga!
I'm a bit lazy when it comes to reading, so I decided to listen to the audio books instead :) I got lucky, since from the author's point of view this is the ideal medium for enjoying the story. The author also had some concerns about making a movie since:
1- In the book the narrator is inside the character head. Making a movie with 3rd person speaking the thought of another one all the time would not work very well for the viewer.
2- The kids must be very young about 6 to 12 years old and it's very hard to find outstanding actor at that age that can give the required dramatic performance.
3- There should not be a love story and Hollywood tends to take advantage of the teenager feelings to do that
I was skeptical about the movie and unfortunately I was right. However they were able to do somethings right:
- Cut the Locke and Demosthenes characters from the movie, since it was impossible to develop them in a 2 hours movie, along side the main story;
- Give a plausible explanation about the bugger motive to attack Earth;
- Create some doubt about the bugger intentions.
What's wrong with the movie then?
- Almost everything happens too fast in the Battle School;
-- The training should take years, not days
-- Ender's ascension to power is not credible. He fought too few battles to be promoted to commander
- Bonzo supposed to be BIG!
They should have taken special attention to the cast. If the Bonzo character supposed to be funny, I assure you that none of the Ender's Game books fan laugh when saw him!
The movie should have been split into two parts, in order to develop the Ender Wiggin personality and make is ascension on the Battle School credible. Also since they had Bean from the beginning why not develop him too? With a 2 parts movie everybody would have won. The producer would sell 2 movies for the price of producing 1. After the 1st movie the book would sell as hell and people would still be interested to see the 2nd part of the movie.
Last, but not least, I must say that Human fleet looks good, although compared to the Skyjacker video game fleet it just feels short
Taking all into account I gave this movie a generous 7, when it had the potential to be a 9 or 10, if the had done it right!
