Disappointing movie adaptation of the book

Rating: 6/10 (30 May 2016)

Ender's Game is a movie adaptation of science fiction novel with same name by Orson Scott Card.
The movie takes the main storyline from the book with the young boy Ender who goes to battle against the extraterrestrial species the formics which look like ants. They have attacked the earth 100 years before the story takes place and the international fleet selects specially gifted children to educate them in the future battle against the formics to prevent the formics attacking the earth again.
In the book we follow Ender from his 6 year until he is a young adult around 12 years of age. He departs from his family when he is 6 and travels to a space station called the battle school. At the school he is leading an army of fellow students as their commander. The book describes his obsession with each and every game. These games are simulations of battles in space. The battles take place in the battle room where they fight mock battles in weightless condition.
The movie does something similar except that Ender looks like he is around 13 instead of 6. So in the movie it seems he is up in the school for some months instead of many years. For me this makes it unrealistic that he learns all his skills and strategy in that short time. But that is just nitpicking
Orson Scott Card has also written a parallel novel Ender's Shadow where one of Ender's fellow students, Bean is the main character. In an afterward to Ender's Game Orson Scott Card comments that the film would be an combination of these two novels. In the book he is the second in command in Ender's army. In addition Bean is small prodigy and even more smarter than Ender. As Bean was a very interesting character in Ender's Shadow, but also in Ender's Game, it was a great disappointment that Bean has a very small part in the film.
In the movie a girl in battle school Petra takes the place of Bean (even though he is in the movie). Apparently the movie makers wants to make a love story between Petra and Ender. The trouble with this is that there is no such love story in the book. In actual fact, in the afterward of the book Orson Scott Card was totally against such a love story as it would be against the spirit of the book. That the film makers still tried to have the love story in the movie was a great disappointment.
Except for these two negative points the film is worth seeing as long as you don't expect something out of the ordinary.
What I liked the most about the movie was the good visual effects and the battle scenes. I really liked the computer game where Ender plays against the giant. I also thought that Asa Butterfield did descent job as Ender and Ben Kingsley as his instructor. Harisson Ford was OK as Colonel Graff.
Ender's Game didn't do the book the justice, but it was entertaining.