Yes! I am still not sure if I've decided to hate it, but I think I hate it.
There were some parts that would have translated beautifully from book to movie that got cut. Valentine having any meaningful lines, for example.
Meanwhile, other things that were not necessary got a whole lot of attention: Major Andersen didn't get to do anything except explain the mind game, when she could've been the perfect person to explain exactly why Battle School exists in the first place. But her part ended up being a waste of time. Another really huge waste was Bernard; he was a petty bully and then he gets one compliment from Ender. End of character arc. Bullshit.
Also there are some serious problems with Rackham and their re-write of the location of Eros station.
On the other hand, I've been dying to see the battle room for most of my life. Peter was cast perfectly, the dad's accent was correct, and the Stilson fight went so perfectly that I might have peed a little. Ender is competent, compassionate, and seems far more human in the movie than in the book. It makes some of the personal relationships seem much more organic. It was fun to watch. Pretty. Good perspective on the Buggers.
It was actually better than I anticipated, not as good as I had hoped. I thought the kid did ok. My main fear was he was going to externalize everything, and just RUIN my idea of ender. By making all of his choices to be so small, it left you feeling like everything was calculated and internalized with ender, which was very important.
(to answer another question from a few pages back: I don't feel like the many hours i've spent here has made me a better person at all, just another way to waste time. Neither negative or positive. )
As someone who never read the book, the movie didn't do much to make me either A.) interested in reading the book, or B.) understand/care what was happening. It's a beautiful movie, and I think the filmmakers got a little too caught up in displaying their effects and visual styles to make the movie's character and story elements just as good.
Most of the dialogue that didn't come from Harrison Ford felt corny, stilted, or cliched. I've heard the Valentine character sucked in the movie, but given that her total screentime was about 4 minutes, and her (and the psychopath older brother's) relationship to Ender was horrendously underdeveloped, I don't think it mattered in the end. I was tempted at one point to start counting off all the tropes and cliches, but figured it would detract from the FX.
Ender was Anakin/Neo/Master Chief: super awesome at being the Chosen Messiah who will save us all, if only he can balance his emotions, ready his mind, and overcome that one bully/screaming drill sergeant who will eventually come to respect him. And in the end, he just may realize that he has what it takes to be a good leader with the all the cunning master strategy of Julius Alexander Bonaparte, and all the love and empathy of Jesus Buddha Gandhi. God forbid they don't beat us over the head with anything.
Subtlety was not this movie's catchword.
Originally posted by truejediI've heard that. Every source other than the film has made the book sound good. I knew nothing going in to see it, so I figured I'd watch the lesser quality visual medium first, and be wowed by the comparatively superior book later. Turns out the "twist" ending that didn't really happen in the film was one of the best moments.
It's an incredible book. You should read it. The reveal is wasted for you already though, so that's unfortunate. Ender's shadow (the one about Bean, right?) is better though.
Damn it.
That's probably only because you knew the ending was coming and caught all the hints. In the book it's pretty much just as obvious.
Originally posted by truejedi
It's an incredible book. You should read it. The reveal is wasted for you already though, so that's unfortunate. Ender's shadow (the one about Bean, right?) is better though.
Meh, was never a fan of Bean so I prefer Game to Shadow. Both were vastly superior to Speaker for the Dead though.
If you go in having a gist of the running time, and see that at the 3/4 mark the big battle still hasn't happened... and you've been able to predict/eye roll at every bit of cliched, hackneyed writing the whole time, then the big reveal is more of a confirmation of easy guesswork than it is a sudden shocking twist. The whole time I'm watching the final battle I was thinking "But it was real, wasn't it? C'mon, just say it, you sonofa..."
See, in the book, it really did feel like just another training mission, because it felt like the book was about ENDER, and his growth, and not nearly so much about some war that seemed like it was light years away. I mean, it was all about defending themselves from an attack, the WHOLE book, and they hadn't so much as set a time-table for when that attack was expected. I was shocked by it anyway.
Originally posted by truejediThat sounds familiar. The Hobbit films have done the same thing by taking the focus away from the actual Hobbit and spreading it out with everything else. Doesn't leave enough room and time to develop a strong connection to what should otherwise be the point--in both these cases, the main character that the work is named after.
See, in the book, it really did feel like just another training mission, because it felt like the book was about ENDER, and his growth, and not nearly so much about some war that seemed like it was light years away. I mean, it was all about defending themselves from an attack, the WHOLE book, and they hadn't so much as set a time-table for when that attack was expected. I was shocked by it anyway.
The films have suffered for it.
Originally posted by Zampanó
Plus the entire conflict in the book is between Ender and Rackham; the line is "I beat you, Sir" (emphasis mine). Using the MD Device on a planet was a deliberate attempt to be seen as psychologically unfit for command.I really wanted that to be in the movie.
The absolute shock from the adults when he blew up the planet was something I remembered from the book too that they glossed over.
Also, the movie made it seem like there was only one REAL battle against the buggers, when I believe the point of the book was that they had really been fighting the buggers all along, right?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BYZP0rrCQAA3RWo.jpg:large
The audition description for the two Episode 7 leads.
You should try out for the audition Neph. I think you'd make a decent Rachel.
edit- I wonder why they went out of their way to specify that any ethnicity will do for "Rachel", but did not do so for "Thomas". That says to me that they want a white dude to play Thomas, but I guess there might be some kind of discrimination law against flat out stating "X race only plz"?
Originally posted by truejedi
It's an incredible book. You should read it. The reveal is wasted for you already though, so that's unfortunate. Ender's shadow (the one about Bean, right?) is better though.
On the flip side, the author is a tremendous ******* who's advocated the violent overthrow of the US government if gay marriage passes, and says that gay marriage laws should be kept on the books as an excuse to harass them.
So, a lot of people find that a good reason to avoid his stuff.
