What was the Editor's Game?

Rating: 5/10 (27 October 2013)

Unfilmable, he said. OSC said that his "Pre-teen Sociopath Commits Genocide On Unfortunately Named Space Ants In Space" novel was unable to be filmed simply because the majority of the content takes place in Ender's head. His feelings, the complexity of dealing with his siblings, his resentment and burden of duty. So what best way to apply this cerebral sci-fi to celluloid?
Just ignore the thinky bits.
Ender's Game, The Movie certainly cracks along at quite a pace, you're not left looking at your watching and wondering how long before things wrap up. And the acting is solid enough, complaints there. What doesn't work is the adaptation itself, and the editing.
Anyone who's read the books before going into the cinema will recognise the framework of the story, but will wonder where all of the plot went. Peter appears for all of one scene, solely to show that, yes, he's a violent dick. Valentine appears more often, but mostly as a plot device more than anything character driven. Valentine is nice, Ender likes Valentine, Ender misses Valentine. Locke and Demosthenes? Never heard of them, they don't exist in this version of events. The Mind Game, the one that Ender plays throughout EGTB and mirrors his mental state and thought process? Reduced to a two minute Flash game on an iPad and a sequence of foreshadowing for later in the movie. The series of battle games between the armies that slowly erode Ender's resolve as Graff systematically changes the rules to break Ender down? One 2 v 1 match. Characters are blurred together and virtually written out (notably, neither of the kids Ender beats the hell out of die, assumedly to garner audience empathy - and all the characters are at about twice the age of the ones in the novels, maybe to stop people having to see a 6 year old boy murder another kid in the showers...) and the end result is very different to the novels.
And the editing. It's all over the place - when watching this movie you will feel that it's an edited for TV version and that someone cut out the wrong scenes. The first battle room scene ends abruptly, with not even a discussion of what happened in it. Ender goes from being in Salamander army to being given the name of a new army, to having a whole new army who almost instantly respect him. Worst of all is Ender wanting to quit the program, whereas in EGTB it took place over time and was caused by Graff's increasingly gruelling changing of rules, in EGTM it happens after one game, and the sudden jumps in narrative make Ender look at best like a petulant child and at worst like a schizophrenic:
Graff: "Wake them up early for a game!" Ender: "It's 3am, we're playing a game!" Ender's Army: "It's 2 v 1!" Ender: "Graff's changing the rules! We can still do this, follow my instructions." Ender's Army: "We won using a combination of sacrifice and improbable formations that probably won't foreshadow anything later in the movie at all, hooray!" Ender: "Everything is awesome!" Bonzo: "I am named after a dog and therefore hate you, let me beat you up." Ender: "Oh no, I fought back and hurt him, but he is DEFINITELY still alive. I hate you, Graff, everything is terrible and I'm running away to Earth!"
Although the film as a whole moves quickly, the story itself lurches in patches of ten minute sequences, followed by jumps to the next patch. Perhaps due to the nature of the novel, if you take out the internal narrative and subplots this is what you get, but it seems strange that on one hand the movie would take such liberties with the source material, but on the other hand follow the set pieces so slavishly that it would disrupt the flow of the story.
As a sci-fi film in a vacuum, it's competent - for some reason it reminded me of Stargate, with elements of The Hunger Games - but flawed in places and has a very uneven and badly edited narrative flow. As an adaptation of EGTB... it's a bit of a Bugger.