re: Ender's Game

So, I ended up reading the book this past week because I enjoyed the concept that much


SPOILERS-------------------







My takeaways:
1. The beginning of the movie is practically verbatim to the book. They seemed to mirror each other perfectly.

2. The story of Valentine and Peter was practically ignored in entirety. I honestly don't think it was that big of a deal - the movie focused all of its energy on developing Ender and the world he was living in and trying to build out Val/Peter and the Earth circumstances would have been both confusing and unimportant to the movie crowd.

3. I had a hunch prior to reading the book that the movie was 'rushed' and after reading the book, I think it most definitely was. The part that the movie failed to do is really show how much stress and pain that Ender went through for years to get through Battle school and Command school. There was a lot of material that was cut out that I think would have made the movie even stronger for book readers and movie watchers alike.

4. The movie does an amazing job at bringing to life the simulator at Command School and the Battle area in Battle School. I found that to be a major strength of the movie.

5. It was interesting how the movie focused on Petra so much but Alai is really the main guy in the book. I don't even remember Shen or Dink being mentioned in the movie. Basically those characters were forgotten which wasn't a big deal to me.

6. I loved the ending to the book. I think all of the pieces came together and it was terrific. I think the ending of the movie lacked a little of the emotion because it did not have all of the elements (Val writing the books, Peter aging, Ender writing the books, etc) that were found in the book.

I'm sure I could keep listing things, but those are what came to mind for now.

Overall, I loved each -- I was actually expecting even more from the book based on how much everyone said they loved it. I will say that the movie could have been over the top if they had invested another 30 minutes of screen time to really blow-out the characterization. Nonetheless, I still thought it was a very entertaining film.