Good sci-fi action movie, terrible book-movie

Rating: 7/10 (28 October 2013)

Let me start off by saying that I'm giving it a 7 because Ender's Game is still a decent movie, I still enjoyed it however it does not do the book justice.
Enders Game, the book was a sci-fi book but it showed an Earth put under an almost supreme dictatorial rule, we see this clearly through Ender's brother and sister, Peter and Valentine. They, especially Peter are cliffnotes in the film. In the book between them they create revolutionary ideas, writing behind the anonymous identities of Locke and Demosthenes (respectively), through them we see the complexities of war, the fact that you have a Cold War like situation, calmed only by the need for unity against the "Buggers".
The Battle School / Fleet are the only things keeping the Earth at peace, and we see in later books that as soon as the threat is gone, war does break out.
These are all things not even mentioned by the movie, however I think it would have been probably an ambitious goal, I personally think they should have released a 2 part movie like we've seen recently, with the 2 movies meant to be playing at the same time virtually but from different perspectives.
Ender also isn't explained especially well, he's thought to be the "saviour" but apart from ruthlessness we don't really see why, although the actor playing Ender (and most of the kids actually) was well selected, and could have been the major flaw of the film.
Now I know I'm sounding negative, but I did enjoy the film. The battle scenes especially were good, as were the scenes between Ender and Valentine / Petra and Graff. Graff and Anderson also worked together well.
I felt they did a disservice to one of my favourite sci-fi books, but with all honesty I never felt it was a good book to bring to the big screen, a television show which had more depth and showed the events of Ender's Shadow and after would have been a much better way to go to be honest.
Don't go into this expecting a true book to film conversion, don't go in expecting a fairly deep political / philosophical message (which OSC's books were, even if you didn't agree with the message), go in expecting an action flick and it'll be good. Go in expecting more and you'll be left wanting.