Ender's Game (2013)

★★★

I can never view a movie based on a book except through the lens of the book itself. Probably that's not fair, but here goes...

The movie is sufficiently different from the book that I think the modifications changed the nature of Ender's struggle and development, which basically defined the book. Key themes were undermined by the liberties taken in the movie. For example, Ender's confrontations all fit a pattern of fighting to win "all future fights" against a given adversary, not just the one fight at hand. But his face-off with Bonzo didn't fit this profile, and the way it did unfold took away from Ender's character development as intended in the book. Also, it was critical that Ender be isolated so he would not grow to rely on anyone else nor form any emotional attachments. That internal struggle of his, always feeling alone, was lost in the movie, particularly when his friends were put in the same simulation room with him at Commander School. In the movie, he lost the sense of separation and loneliness that was supposed to define him in the book.

I went into the movie assuming that maybe one thing a big screen version of Ender's Game could offer over the book might be a really action-packed and suspenseful final battle scene. Somehow, though, I didn't find that scene - and the revelation that followed - nearly as dramatic as it was in the book.