Gavin Hood's "The Last Airbender"

Rating: 6/10 (5 November 2013)

Book to film adaptations are some of the hardest films to make and that statement certainly holds true for the modern, median-dystopian Orson Scott Card classic, "Ender's Game." The epic, about genius children being humanity's last military hope for salvation, falls far short of the multi-layered emotional and psychological story and depth of the literary source.
From the very beginning of the film it becomes painfully apparent that even characters as key to the story as Peter and Valentine, Ender's older siblings, will be incredibly glossed over, getting screen time of perhaps just 3-4 minutes. Even characters like Bean (who spawns his own novel), Petra, and Ender's other friends and subordinates have, apparently, no importance in the story or apparent affect on any of the events that occur. Because of the deflation of characters the depth and backstory of the film suffers to an insurmountable degree.
It can't be denied that the visuals and CG are awesome; the acting is great, good enough that it can't even be compared to 'child-acting;' the moody soundtrack is effective; it serves as a most valiant effort.
However there is too much that's wrong to consider the film a worthy adaptation. Gavin Hood, director, has served the film on a platter, coddling the audience, grabbing their hand and tugging them along through the story with voice-overs and a dumbed down story. Hood has cut out so much character development from a story with as many psychological and emotional layers that it could be compared to a Kafkaesque Inception that it becomes increasingly obvious as the film plods along that more care was given for the appearance than for the story itself. It seems that the benefit of having original source material was taken for granted, apparently a common fault for film adaptations.
Just as an example of the thoughtless of the story, let's take a look at the set-up of the computer simulations in Command School. In the book it seems that Ender, along with his subordinates, has a control console with which to directly command ships as well as view the battle as he'd like, meaning that Ender could manually command a single carrier ship or view the battle as a whole. In the film Ender is sans console, having something that is instead more of a command podium. Ender has no manual controls, only having hand controls in real space with which to alter the view of the simulation. By necessity, because of his lack of manual control, Ender cannot directly command a single vessel, but must, by definition of this set-up, delegate to his subordinates. Unfortunately Hood has the gall to leave in a scene following a failed mission where Graff berates Ender for focusing too heavily on singular ships, instructing him to delegate more to his toon leaders, whereas this mistaken director somehow has the nerve to reduce the size of a Battleschool army from 41 to 16, a massive oversight and huge depletion of possible development.
While the film would no-doubt be a standalone film of notable entertainment and mediocre merit it utterly fails as an adaptation. The barely 110 minute film will eternally serve as Gavin Hood's "The Last Airbender."