Okay, but not Card's story.

Rating: 4/10 (12 December 2013)

I just finished watching Ender's Game, and this is my review.
If you know and love the book, you will find it disappointing on many levels. The directing by screenplay writer Gavin Hood leaves lots to be desired, although the special effects are incredible, minus a few continuity mistakes (missing colored direction lights in hallways inconsistently for instance).
The book issues are many, making me really hope someone does an animated mini-series on this someday to get it right. Bean is introduced at the same time as Ender, and is not the tiny runt he must be with his genetic condition, making much of the "Enders Shadow" series impossible as written. Also, Ender is WAY too old at the beginning of the film, which makes him a decent sized, almost tall, early teen. The idea of the tiny extra young recruit is completely lost, even though they kept some of the lines that refer to it. They even made the Salamander Commander about 8 inches SHORTER than Ender, which really defeats the purpose of the whole bully concept and looks pathetic on screen when trying to convey the pressure Ender was under. They rushed through battle school so quickly that I wanted them to divide the movie into 2, one ending with the final Battle School victory, and the second to go into the Command School war. It would have made for better film in this case. As it stands, the pressure buildup that allows the audience to understand why 2-teams was such a big deal at that point never happens, making it just another somewhat interesting event, not the overwhelming pressure event that it would be had they built it up as they did in the book. Also in the final Formic battle, they rushed it, giving the Formics only their main planet instead of battle by battle on the outpost planets, also thereby rushing and only using the Little Doctor once, and not in even a similar manor to that in the book. They even gave the line "The Enemy Gate is down" at the START of the battle, making half of "Ender's Shadow" issues useless in future films. So if, like me, you are a big fan of O.S. Card and this book and series, this film will leave you feeling like you still want to see your favorite book on film, because this was not it.
For those who are not familiar with the book, this is a somewhat good movie, not great, but not entirely bad. They build it up nicely, despite bad directing, and the end climax conveys well what happens to Ender's head and how he is as a person, which is much of what the point of the story truly is. There is, unfortunately, much that is never explained in the movie, but referred to, though, and so sadly, you must be familiar with the book to fully understand this movie, even though the movie is so very far off of the book in so many ways. An example is a mention of "using the ansible" but no explanation what the ansible is.
Altogether not worth seeing in theaters, but a nice mindless rent maybe once. I would not watch it twice except to compare notes if sequels are ever made or if the Ender's Shadow series is ever made into film.
The acting is limited by bad directing in my opinion. It is a nearly all-star cast. Harison Ford, who used to swear he would never do a movie with aliens, does an excellent job as Commander Graff, but you see very little of the necessary discipline that comes with his station and rank, which I believe is bad directing (based on the equally mediocre jobs of the other actors). Asa Butterfield, who played Ender, is just mis-casted. He is a good actor I am sure, but really did not fit this role at all, either with or without the book. I am sure he may be good in other roles with a good director. In this film, they also seem to hint at a romantic desire from Petra (Hailee Steinfeld) to Ender, which would also cause issues with the Ender's Shadow series. Abigail Breslin played an excellent Valentine Wiggin, and even though she was on for probably less than five minutes, was the best acting job I saw in this film. Of course, with the bad directing, her short screen time could be the reason she did so well. Ben Kingsley also did a decent job as Mazer Rackham, although some tech issues already brought up elsewhere on this site plagued even his screen time. Conor Carroll was a very believable Bernard, which is nice since so little else carried that well.
There was far too little development of any of the other characters enough for mention, which is sad, because the book does an excellent job of doing so. The director here just did small dabs of character development that never matured.
It is really too bad they refused to use book author Orson Scott Card's screenplay. It could not have been as bad as this.
As a big fan of both sci-fi and of the author and book, I rate this film 4 out of 10 stars.