Good and entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (28 October 2013)

Knowing nothing about this book I was lead to believe this film was going to be action orientated. It is not but that's not a bad thing because it's a character and story focused film. It doesn't go for too long, you aren't bored, and want to see how it ends. I was satisfied.
The visuals of this film are great. I particularly enjoyed the zero G room used for the launchies' training exercises. In the future I suggest this be made available for recreation as it looks like a lot of fun. Also worth praising is how battles are shown from the holographic screens which zoom, tilt and pan to give ender the best view possible. It's almost like a video game except I asked 'how can he view battles like this'. Because surely in the heat of battle any drone cameras would be destroyed. But this is a minor grievance of how realistic viewing battles this way would be.
All the cast suited their roles except for Ben Kingsley. The could've chosen Temuera Morrison who is a Maori and looks like a soldier for example. But he was in the new star wars trilogy which is why I think he was overlooked. Furthermore his character claims to be ender's enemy during training however he is actually another mentor of Ender's. A mismatch in dialogue and execution I think.
At the end I had questions and got locked into discussion all the way home. I thought about events and occurrences not making sense or weren't explained properly. I thought about what I would do in Ender's situation. I thought about what was real and what wasn't. I lastly thought about the last scene and saying 'that isn't believable'. I thought and talking about a lot, but my friends and I agreed; this is a good but not great film yet entertaining nonetheless.
I went we read the book and the second book Speaker for the Dead. If Ender's Game was not filmable then Speaker of the Dead is as likely as pigs flying. I also read the author does not want it made into a film.