Originally Posted by
Shorty
Originally Posted by
Hypoallergenic Chie
Enders game. Oh boy, here we go.
Whole post contains spoilies from the movie
As a Movie
It wasn't awful. It felt really rushed. Also, it felt like they just randomly pushed relationships together for no reason. They used that kid from Hannah Montanna as Bonzo, which I felt was one of the best castings possible. Ender's greatest battle and turning point is a fight with a midget. Which he cheats at. Seriously, the guy comes at him one on one and Ender makes himself slippery and gets away, then kills him. The biggest disappointment of the fight though was that Ender didn't just put his hand on Bonzos head and hold him away like that, with Bonzos arms flailing.
Also, why is it that by the end of the movie every black character is either saluting Ender or babying him, and none of the white guys do? I'm completely serious, at the end of the movie, Dap salutes Ender, who is now an Admiral, and then Colonel Graff has Ender sedated for no reason, and then makes Dap (played by a black guy) carry Ender around.
Ender's love(?) interest offers to give him private lessons out of the blue the first time she meets him.
Effects:
The special effects in the space battles and in the game were terrific. If there was a video game that looked that good out today, none of us would ever stop playing it. The Battle school design is pretty great. The caves that the Formics carved on the planet at the end look like a movie set from the days of bad science fiction. Santa vs the Martians anyone?
Music:
The movie literally never stops playing dramatic music. As if it knows that it has been reduced to key points of conflict in the movie and literally nothing else. It gets kind of annoying after a while.
Acting:
Petra go home. Whoever played Petra, please, you need a few more years of lessons, I felt like I was watching the Last Airbender movie again.
No one else except for Ender and Graff get enough time to warrant discussion, but I will say that I felt like the kid from Hannah Montanna was trying far to hard to get just the right amount of mean guy on his face.
Ender.... makes us feel nothing whatsoever. His emotional scenes don't make us feel anything since the only time in the movie he does anything other than disobey orders or kill teenagers is the first time he goes into the battle room.
Harrison Ford was Harrison Ford.
Pacing:
lol, next category.
Overall: I'll give it a 6/10. Pretty animation isn't enough to redeem the terrible pacing and the bad acting.
As a Movie Based on a book
Oh god. This was the best adaptation. Maybe literally.
Instead of a proper review, here is a list of wtf were they thinking.
Why the hell is everyone 14?
Why the hell is Anderson a woman now?
Why the hell is Bonzo a midget, he's supposed to tower over Ender.
Why the hell is there a relationship between Ender and Petra, Petra is supposed to be dating Dink at this point.
Why the hell is the small asteroid now an Earth sized planet.
Why the hell is Ender promoted from launchy to soldier to commander to captain after one victory each
Why the bloody rotting infested hell is Bean not a midget. Seriously, guys, when Bean shows up in the book, he is 6, 3 feet tall, and a giant asshole.
Why the bloody hell didn't they make this a two parter, Part one is from the time Ender enlists till he becomes commander, movie two could be from commander to the end of the book. Then the actor could age like he does in the book.
Why did they announce at the beginning of the movie on the news that the humans are invading, in the book this was top secret information not revealed till the very end.
adaptation points:
0/10
Bugger off.
response
aaaah you have essentially pointed out everything that I found wrong with it. And I'm surprised you gave it such a high score! Well done articulating the complaints I had to make. I have a few in particular I'd like to add or elaborate on. I didn't feel like doing this originally because I felt it would take too much effort, but it's in my head now xD
- The fact that Anderson "goes soft" and tries to tell Graff that he's pushing Ender too hard and breaks down is appalling. Anderson is supposed to be such a great secondary character in the book, he's used as a means to show what a monster Graff really is, that he's a wolf in sheep's clothing with these kids. But this female Anderson! Why did they make her execute such a compassionate protest? Because she's a woman? That was all I could think about, and I found it pretty sexist. It was possible for her to behave the same way Anderson is written in the book, only as a woman. No, instead they had to make her compassionate toward the launchies and Ender. Why? It had to have been because she was a woman. The entire point of this school is to show no compassion and to not ever let Ender believe that help will come or that the pressure will ever let up. She violated all of that with her outburst.
- Which brings me to my next point. The fight with Bonzo. Supposed to be one of Ender's defining moments in Battle School, and a trademark of Ender that he finishes his enemies and he does it for good. a) Bonzo fell and broke his neck seeminly by accident and b) Ender rushed to him, sobbing over him and apologizing. Why the smurf would they make him do that? It takes away everything about Ender and his character.
- Petra is the best and I hate her. Hated her. There was no reason whatsoever for as much involvement in the story as she had. Can we also take a moment to piece our smurfing brains back together from the fact that Petra laid the final shot with the Little Doctor on the buggers? It wasn't Ender. Petra was the one who did it. Why. smurfing why. I'd like to know.
- Hated Dap. Next to Petra, he was the second best. So awful.
- "buggers" is not used once and it freak me out. The term "formic" is referenced only in those paragraphs between chapters in which the IF are speaking, if I remember. No one actually calls them formics.
- Mazer Rackham. I so badly wanted to like Ben Kingsley, but I couldn't do it. Didn't like him one bit.
- Seconding the atrocious pacing. Additionally, the dialogue was not believable or natural.
- A two-part would probably be best, agreed.
- I thought the Freeplay was atrocious and the fact that they put the Hive Queen on smurfing Eros is a travesty. Honestly. How did any of that work? Answer: It doesn't. The whole point of Freeplay is that the buggers used it to analyze Ender and then to create a situation in which he was familiar with in order to communicate with them, and that they would do it far away from all of this on another unknown planet for Ender to find as an adult. How would they have been able to do that on Eros when it was wiped clean by marines decades before? There is no possibility that exists in which this was a logical move to make in the plot. Ridiculous.
I understand that the book is extremely internalized and many of it are writings about what's happening to Ender and what Ender is thinking. I understand it can be hard to write a script and a dialogue for situations like that. But come on. Come on.
I agree with all of this.
Additionally, they were only called formics in the Ender's shadow series, which is now no longer possible to make a movie of.
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