A great adaption of the original novel, but needs a bit of a fairy touch

Rating: 9/10 (3 November 2013)

Hood's execution of adapting Ender's Game is ambitious, however, there is still room for perfection. The CGI work looked amazing in the film, and provided a visual organism to the audiences. The original novel is not a very long piece, however, it is detailed with descriptions of Ender's inner struggles, and Hood was smart to use Ender's narration of his emails to Valentine to deliver his emotions, but the result was not as dynamic as the original book. Hood's version of the screenplay changed the original book here and there, so that the development of the story could be fit into about a year comparing to roughly 6 years in the original book, which really made the film less enjoyable and jumpy. Ford's portrayal of Col. Graff was a little stiff, and there was simply too little of how he was trying to be a "jerk" so that Ender could be pushed to be ready. Major Anderson played by Viola Davis was a pain in the ass to understand why she even matters to the story. I appreciated how Hood casted Viola to be Major Anderson who is supposed to be a white male in the book. However, in the novel, Major Anderson can be seen as the good cop comparing to Col. Graff, but in the film, Viola's Anderson seemed like she ,as a shrink, had no idea of what was going on. The development of the relationship between Ender and Petra was a bit coming-out-of-nowhere, and with whatever reason, Hood decided to make the start of the relationship like: "Hi, I'm Petra." Said by Petra. "Hi, I'm Ender." Said by Ender "Let's have a date in the battle-room." Said by Petra " Do you guys want pizza delivery?" Said by me. Asa Butterfield is an absolutely amazing and talented young actor, and to be honest, I am a big fan. His performances in Martin Scorsese's Hugo, and the tear-dropping the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas are solid evidence. However, his lanky British figure looked quite odd to the strong personality Ender had. But in the original book series, Card has described kids becoming kind of dis-proportioned (long arms, long legs, and thin bodies) as they grew older. Asa's last 20 minutes were marvelous. He executed really well on how Ender was strong and smart while he was not invincible. Ender's idol, the legendary Mazer Rackham, looked like he just took off his Mandarin's costume and got on all those WTF fake facial tattoos. I like Sir Ben Kingsley, and his portrayal of Mazer was pretty OK. Overall, I will say that I am not disappointed. I have concerns regarding Hood's talents of being a director (He used to be a lawyer!), and he approved himself from this film. Hood was really smart to showcase all the violence from the novel without ditching its PG13 rating, such as the shaky camera work when Ender beat the bully up and that Bonzo was not revealed to be dead.His interpretation of the Mind Game and translation of the battle-room from words to the screen shocked me in a really good way and really made me happy, although, he was way too enthusiastic and confident when he was promoting Ender's Game. He used silence in the film really well, and there were some amazing shots, but the lack of emotions, suspense, and drama made the film merely a good exhibition of how Digital Domain (who did all those amazing graphic effects) is a great company and someone should save it from its bankruptcy, and there was something missing to make this film even better.