A question anyone who has seen Ender's Game [SPOILERS]

[KiteNeravar]

Is Ender's final test played out as "I'm sick of this shit, I just want out so I'm going to do the one thing you explicitly told me never to do" or is it "hey here's how to win this test let's do it"?

[Lord Hosk]

According to Movie bob.

Yes

The child actors play a fairly convincing "lets pass this test" followed by "WHAT?" However again as MB said "Asa Butterfield is a great actor but no one is that good"

The adult actors were written really heavy handedly so even if you dont know whats coming, you know whats coming, because they are shown the whole movie to be intentionally misleading and being secretive.

The final test is done in such a dramatic intense edge of your seat SFX rock show that the reveal is sorta "uhh yeah we just watched the biggest battle scene ever with power cords and everything"

[NebulosDisconcertion]

I remember when I was reading the book I thought about how hard it would be to make a movie out of it, because it's just a bunch of naked kids in a space station.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Watching MovieBob's review has made me remember, regardless of execution, what a fundamentally good story Ender's Game is...

[Aydin225]

Watching MovieBob's review has made me remember, regardless of execution, what a fundamentally good story Ender's Game is...

I hold out very little hope that the movie will be any good, but I'm taking my wife to see it so she will finally want to read the book.

For those that haven't, Ender's Shadow is one of the best companion pieces i've ever read

[My pseudonym is Ix]

I read Shadow before Game and loved it, but thought the sequels were somewhat weak. They weren't really a story of the same sort.

[Keab42]

I just got back from watching this. Enjoyed it a lot. The reveal was definitely telegraphed, but I think Ender's line about how you win shows that he was deliberately being risky to pass the test rather than trying to win the war.

I think Asa Butterfield has an Oscar in his future. Damn good actor.

[ElFuzzy]

Here are some other opinions.

[Bebop Man]

Wait what they're naked?

[AlexanderDitto]

Wait what they're naked?

Like, all the time.

[AdmiralMemo]

I thought it was a bit "Paint By Numbers" like MovieBob said, but it was... Basically what I was expecting. The visuals were good and they pulled the movie off well. It wasn't Earth-shattering, but it was good. I took my mom, my dad, and one of my dad's friends. They didn't see the twist ending coming. They liked it. So, it's a good movie to watch, but I'm not going to be like "GO WATCH THIS MOVIE NOW!"

[Volafortis]

Wait what they're naked?

Like, all the time.

One of the few things book purists (hopefully) won't complain about.

The book was good (although I guess I haven't read it in years now), so I'm probably gonna have to see the movie.

Do they action-movie-ify (Prolong battle sequences, diminish character interactions, etc...) it, or do they leave the story as is?

[AdmiralMemo]

Do they action-movie-ify (Prolong battle sequences, diminish character interactions, etc...) it, or do they leave the story as is?

There is a heavy amount of movie-ification going on. There's a bunch of time spent in the set-up on Earth, and then with Ender as a launchie and in Salamander has a significant amount of time as well. However, the whole bit from being promoted to Dragon Army to the final Battle Room lasts about 5 to 10 minutes, when there's a whole bunch of book dealing with that section, and how Ender learns how to command and lead, and deal with his underlings. I was heavily disappointed about that bit. Once Ender moves off to Command School, the interactions heavily drop, except for with Petra and with Mazer (though, to be honest, they do in the book, too, but not to as much extent as the movie). The final battle was not as long as I thought they'd make it, which is actually a point in its favor. They didn't stretch it out too much.

I did like MovieBob's commentary on the movie:

"A barely-ambulatory Harrison Ford teaches Asa Butterfield how to play Eve Online for the Kinect."

[Lord Hosk]

So I saw this over the weekend and I left thinking "ok I can see a couple of those changes for time, but some of the changes were just bad."
Ender never kills anyone until the bug battles.
He isnt shown to be exhausted and pushed to the breaking point which is what makes him make the choice at the end. I guess I understand him going Salamander to Dragon for time reasons, but they really needed to show him winning winning winning, in the battle room. The final battle didnt put him on top, he had like 4 times the score of the second place team and had never lost, no matter how much they stacked it up in the opponents favor, running 3 or 4 battles a day and then the final battle when ender said "you know what if you arent going to play fair im not either, forget your stupid game.

But the thing that really pissed me off was they made Bonzo tiny when the whole point was that he was a huge dominating presence.

[DmitriW]

Late to the party, but I'll throw in my two cents:

I love the book. I love it to death.

I think this is the best possible adaptation we could have gotten. I would have loved to see more interaction with the Dragons prior to Command School -- and I'm hopeful that such footage may exist for a Director's Cut or Extended Edition -- but I don't think a perfectly-faithful adaptation would have been remotely possible.