A quick, pseudo-unprofessional note: this review is filled with spoilers. If you haven’t read the book, you should definitely read it and then read this review. Under no circumstances should you watch the movie before reading the book.

Okay. Now that that’s over: Ender’s Game is a classic young adult science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. Although arguably fairly basic, for many it has been an introduction to the world of science fiction and to many basic philosophical ideals. It details the circumstances of a young boy by the name of Andrew “Ender” Wiggin as he goes through a special military school for child prodigies, whose purpose is to train the best possible generals for the defense of earth against the Formics – an aggressive alien race colloquially referred to as the “buggers”.

But since since you’ve chosen to read this far, I guess you know the plot. Otherwise you have disobeyed my express instructions.

Onto the movie: the first of many terrible things was the pacing. Bad pacing ruins many films, even otherwise well-made ones, and it can ruin them both ways: too slow means you’ll fall asleep, too fast means the characters never develop past more than a collection of slimy yellow egg yolks. In Ender’s Game, the problem was the latter, and I felt this was a major problem for an interpretation of this book. The book focuses many times on Ender’s frustration and subsequent cleverness: the mind game, the battle room, etc. In the movie, however, Ender solves everything almost instantly, and in fact the battle room is only featured in two scenes, whereas it probably takes up a good third of the book. Another large part of the novel which the filmmakers seem to have forgotten completely is the extensive foiling between Peter, Valentine and Ender. Furthermore the film tragically mutilated several of the best characters, from Bean to Petra to even Bonzo.

Bean is not intelligent. He doesn’t come in late, no one seems to hate him, and generally he just seems to be a small ethnic child who happens to have a name for some reason. Petra’s character is absolutely ruined: in the book, she is a tomboy by necessity, having to survive in the battle school filled with prepubescent children. In the movie, she is oddly effeminate, and there seems to be some sort of tension between her and Ender which is at once disgusting and infuriating. There are other poor castings, and everyone is far too old, but I feel the final straw is the absolutely terrible casting of Bonzo Madrid as a strangely ugly, four foot tall fourteen year old. Never is he menacing, and always he just seems to be ridiculous.

A final fault is the movie’s delivery of many of the book’s memorable ines (“The enemy’s gate is down”, “speaker for the dead”, “As-salumu alaykum”, etc.), partially owing to bad acting and mainly owing to the aforementioned atrocious pacing. The characters are undeveloped, the lines feel stale and unmeaningful, and overall it feels like a cheap overview of the book, not a story in its own right.

There are two things they did do right, however: the visuals were almost perfect and the acting for Ender and Graff’s characters was fairly solid. The battle room, surprisingly, is actually decently represented, a fairly impressive feat, and most of the scenes in the simulation room, save some ridiculous arm movement on the part of ender, are enjoyable to watch and at least pretty-looking.

Overall, though, it’s a bad film. It’s crudely done, ruins most of the book, and doesn’t really sustain any of its admirable qualities. If you really want to experience this movie, a more pleasant and expeditious way to give yourself a headache is to hit yourself repeatedly on the forehead with a large knobbly stick (oak or maple works best).

3/10