It looks like Ender's Game, kind of, but really isn't.

Rating: 3/10 (18 January 2014)

Every time a beloved novel makes its way to the silver screen, there will be accompanying moans and grumbling from fans of the book. The adaptation lacks the soul, the wit, the weight of the novel, some will fret, while others will yearn for more details or complain about the way in which certain elements and/or characters have been excised/altered for cinematic purposes.
Sometimes, those criticisms feel unfair. After all, nuance and subtlety will almost always be lost in the process of adaptation. Novels have an unlimited budget bound only by the imagination; movies must fit roughly the same narrative into a couple of hours, with monetary concerns dictating the ebb and flow of plot and special effects. Nevertheless, despite extensive changes to the author's text, there have been literary adaptations that have enjoyed great success on both the critical and commercial fronts - The Lord Of The Rings, for example, and more recently, The Hunger Games.
So there's room for hope yet with the apparently resolutely unadaptable Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic about the rage and ruin of war. Even if some of its depth and profundity must be sacrificed in changing the medium of story-telling, surely there's a way to do justice to the heartbreaking brutality and rich political dynamics of Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin's rise through the ranks of Battle School.
Sadly, Gavin Hood's over-rushed effort is not the film that will do that. On its own merits, this incarnation of Ender's Game feels simultaneously bloated and loose, the plot tumbling desperately over itself as it tells a story almost completely severed from its philosophical moorings. As an adaptation, it is mostly abysmal: it hits some of the right marks, but is almost completely lacking in the novel's spirit and depth.
Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is a preternaturally gifted young man who, like the rest of the children in his post-space-war Earth, has been monitored all his life to determine if he is eligible to attend the prestigious Battle School. Unlike most of his peers, including his violent brother Peter (Jimmy Pinchak) and empathetic sister Valentine (Abigail Breslin), Ender makes the cut, and he is swiftly drafted into the military academy under the gruff tutelage of Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford). Once there, Ender must figure out the system of internal battles that pass for training, gaining enemies and allies even as he's groomed to lead an army that might prove to be humanity's last hope.
Taken purely as a film, Ender's Game can't help but feel hollow and clumsily rushed. Without the benefit of narration from Ender's point of view, the character lurches purposefully through Battle School with very little of his unique brilliance or insight into warfare on display. His rise through the ranks seems almost too easy, before it dissolves into a final-act twist that seems preposterous in the cinema but was hard-won, inevitable and shatteringly brilliant in the novel.
In moving from page to screen, Ender's Game has altered in ways big and small - some of these changes are arguably necessary, like the aging-up of the characters. In the novel, Ender is six years old when he starts climbing the ranks of the army; there's no practical way this would work on screen or on set, and approximately 8-10 years have been added to the characters' ages. It's possible, too, to mourn the excision of an entire subplot in the book - it involved Peter and Valentine establishing online personas who wind up dominating political discourse back on Earth - while understanding that it would genuinely be too much for the movie to feasibly handle.
But many of the other changes add up to a hugely disappointing adaptation. The weight and wear of Ender's time at Battle School hardly seem to affect him at all, largely because everything is compressed. In the novel, Ender's crushingly lonely journey unfolds over a few years; it seems to take place in a few weeks in the film. Relationships and characters are sliced and diced, then re-assembled, to frustrating effect: Bean (Aramis Knight), for example, is no longer Ender's successor but his compatriot. Petra (Hailee Steinfeld) has her role in the film beefed up at the expense of the tragic, dramatic heart of the same character in the book.
Of course, it would be foolish to expect a film to delve into and portray Ender's inner thoughts and concerns as effectively as can be done in the novel. But the shiny gravity-defying space battles that unfold on screen in Ender's Game look great but come off as silly, rushed and cheap without the undercurrent of loneliness, self-doubt and misery that runs so clearly through Ender's mind and soul.
Casting-wise, Ender's Game does well enough. Butterfield is a curiously blank presence in the film, which is appropriate as an interpretation of the character in the book, but makes for an occasionally frustrating lead in a feature film. Ford is suitably dour and determined, with only a hint of Graff's depths shining through his grim façade. Adding Viola Davis to the cast as Major Anderson - a disembodied voice in the novel who's clearly male - adds a welcome (if slightly stereotypical) feminine touch to Battle School.
If you've read the book and treasured its words, ideas and characters (whatever you might think of Card's reprehensible politics and beliefs), it's probably a good idea for you to steer clear of Ender's Game. Ostensibly, it's the same story; actually, it's not. Those who've never read the book might find something to enjoy in the rush and tumble of Battle School, but don't be surprised if you, too, feel that something is missing in the film. It hints at big, important ideas - certainly more so than your generic sci-fi epic might - but, ultimately, fails to really get them across.