Left me with strange mixed feelings, but definitely worth a watch

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2013)

For all potential movie goers I'll give a spoiler free synopsis for the movie. I think comparable to most of the reviews here, this is a good movie but falls short of being great. It left me feeling similar to the recent Great Gatsby adaptation, in that they manage to keep true to the events of the book and yet manage to somehow loose their impact. But I think definitely watch it for the kid playing Ender (Asa Butterfield) I was very pleasantly surprised! Being a HUGE fan of the book and the entire quartet, world etc of Ender I will admit I did not want to see the movie when I heard teenagers are cast instead of the children of the book. But I was definitely proved wrong, Asa's brilliantly nuanced performance of Ender conveyed a LOT of what was left out from the books (with a better script/dialogue/adaptation it could have been perfect). I understand why they did that, and still say that a LOT of the brutality and the sickness you feel at the pit of your stomach while reading the book is a bit lost, since it is no longer a 7 year old child being manipulated and near tortured!
**** SPOILER ALERT ****
Now for delving into the details - they've taken the events from the book and pretty faithfully inserted it in the movie. Now for whatever reasons i felt the events were hollywodized (for lack of a better word)!! They really did themselves and the movie a disservice by not staying true to the brutality and the visceral reaction to same as explored in the book. It was just tossed around in dialogues between Graf and Anderson never felt and therefore made real for me while watching the movie. And that was the main reason why to an extent as a book adaptation 'the hunger games' was more successful than this. The kept the impact of the reality of what happens when children (no matter how gifted) are the ones expected to fight to the death. This for me was a BIG omission in the telling of Ender's Game. They should have kept the brutal and messy fights which Ender had for it to have had any impact on us as a viewing audience. And that scene of children switching tables to Ender's side was just OMG! I don't know what to say! It almost ruined the somberness of the entire movie!!! What were they thinking!?? the WHOLE point of Ender's world was that this is not an ordinary high school with ordinary children!!! GAH! Somewhere along the line they forgot to make us 'feel' instead of just react to the visuals. Which were quite outstanding by the way, I think the final battle was brilliant and visually better than I imagined it to be (something I can't say for the rest of the movie). I do think some omissions should have been added - like more of the battles and some scenes to make us realize Ender's rise as a commander. How truly psychotic peter was so that we can feel much better Ender's deep rooted fear of becoming Peter, which in turn helps inform us of his true empathetic nature.
Anyway enough said, bottom line - I liked the movie, mostly because Asa Butterfield and the CGI was stunning to watch. It should have been made into a mini series instead for sure, or at least 2 parts. Part 1 focusing on the battle school and Part 2 on the actual training and the war and a more drawn out epilogue. I missed the conversation of the queen larvae with Ender! Dislike was for the sense of incompleteness and emptiness it left in me (being a massive fan of the book) the movie did not even come close to the true gravitas of the book, which was a shame, since I felt it easily could have with the same cast and 15 min more!