Lacking on every level.

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2014)

I give this movie a generous 5 out of 10. To no extent should this movie ever be considered great or even good. As someone who is a fan of Scott- Cards writing, especially Enders Game, I expected nothing less than exceptional acting, and promising story conviction. The movie lacked in pretty much every aspect. The special-effects were less than impressive; seeing it was a science-fiction based novel/movie, I assumed they would bring out great(ER) effects, if not that, amazing cinematography, which they did not.
The movie failed not only visually, but on a simplistic matter of story line. First off, there was no character development what so ever and the dialog was less than stimulating. Noting that I've read the book, I knew they would trail off a bit, but I didn't suspect that they would completely rewrite the story. Not only did they portray each character wrong, or add characters in when they weren't supposed to be there (BEAN) but they also left out the complex line of events from Valentine and Peter- whom in the end of the movie should have played a BIG role. As well as taking out significant parts in Enders life (deaths, fights, conversations)so the rating would be low enough for younger children to see. Personally, I think changing anything to get a different audience to watch is wrong, specifically when it's a film adaptation.
Needless to say, I was less than impressed with the adaptation of one of the best science-fiction books I've ever read and as a student studying film and the history of film, I was let down by this sorry-excuse of a movie. It was more of a tragedy.
In all, I give it a 5, only because I could recognize the effort that went into the film, but they didn't execute it in a way where I was expecting. So, if you don't mind sitting around watching a beautiful book get torn to shreds for 2 hours, please be my guest in watching this film.