Formics have No Mouths but still must Scream

Rating: 10/10 (11 April 2014)

Basically, you can't make some of these books into Movies. Lord of the Rings? At roughly 12 and a half hours running time for all three extended versions, there is STILL so much left out. And so much changed, but despite that so much of it is exactly as I imagined it when I first read it. Lord of the Rings, that is, I have never read "Ender's Game" and I'm glad I never have.
The same goes for Ender's Game. We know we are getting a simplified story, so I choose just to accept it as it is. Even Orson Scott Card says they stuck to the basic book - So if the Author thinks that, then I can deal with it as well.
So - Asa Butterfield, aka "Hugo" is in another film with his Hugo Co- Star Gandhi, aka Ben Kingsley. And Harry Ford is looking OK just shy of what, 70? And ready for another Star Wars adventure, I think.
What I liked about this film was the mixing of Child Actors and the older actors, who we've seen over and over, so there is a lot to anchor on here- We see these kids, in "Battle School" and we see their Teacher Colonel Graff, so I can handle the Unknown Kids factor much better.
Most astonishing is the appearance of Abigail Breslin as "Valentine" being the exact same little girl she was in "Signs" - She becomes the way the "Buggers"/"Formics" can get into Ender's Mind.
The other total standout here is Hailee Steinfeld, who I thought was a better Mattie Ross for True Grit than the original actress in the John Wayne version. Her Petra is perfect for this film, I don't think anyone else could have done it as well.
And this is the big MacGuffin of the film and of the book - Ender thinks he has stumbled into a Game loaded into his school "iPad" - But his "Game" is more related to what is really happening in his universe than what Graff and later "Mazer Rackham" (Kingsley) are telling him.
And he has to figure this out, but he is being tricked, as we are being tricked by the clever underlying story of the book.
In fact, during the first battle with the Formics, Mazer had learned something important, something which Ender is learning through his Game. In fact, Mazer is tricking Ender into playing His game, while Ender is being shown the Real Game in his device.
When it comes down to it, we can either blow up our enemies into molecule sized chunks and obliterate them forever, or we can find a way to talk to them, even if they do not have Mouths and cannot Scream.