On Saturday night Barb and watched the movie Enders Game. We had both read the book and enjoyed it but had a minor conflict about watching the movie.
I kind of wanted to watch it. I had skimmed through a lot of the physical description of the zero-G games and was never really able to visualize the setting very well. If nothing else I wanted to see what that was like.
Barb was concerned the movie would spoil the book.
I agreed that movies are seldom as good as the book but they can be good even if they aren’t as good as the book. We agreed to see it anyway.
I enjoyed it. Barb was disappointed because a lot of the team building was left out but she thought they did a great job on the special effects.
Update: After reading this post last night Barb mildly protested that we didn’t really have a conflict about going to the movie. It was a very short polite discussion about whether we wanted to see this movie or something else. And we came to the same conclusion without any flaring of emotions. I agree with this but I didn’t, and don’t, have a single word or short phrase to describe that conversation. “Minor conflict” is prone to misinterpretation of the reality of discussion but with a strong emphasis on “minor” it does describe it.
Somewhat of a spoiler alert, if you haven’t read the book already…. Look away now….
Really? They give the whole shocking conclusion away dead center in the movie poster??!? Boy, that sucks, if this is your first experience with the story.
To be done *right*, the movie would have to have been a whole lot longer, and the battle room given a lot more prominence. That said, given a single movie, they did well getting the bulk of it across, and yeah, the FX was fantastic. I was glad to see they left the opening for the.sequels, the movie did a good job of presenting the moral conflict Ender faced, which leads directly to Speaker for the Dead. Plus, Card makes Libs Haz A Sad, so that,s reason enough to support him if nothing else! His Empire books are a good read, and a possible future of our near term future. Don’t think we get off easy with a benevolent dictator though.
I’m not sure it could have been done better.
I’ve been reading that book every few years since my brother gave me his old copy when I was 8 or 9. It was like seeing a piece of my childhood come to life on the screen…
That flick would have had to be 5 or 6 hours long, and heavily narrated, to encompass everything the book covers.
Yup, pretty much my thoughts. Given the time restrictions, and the expectations of modern audiences, it was well done, and about as good as could be expected.
So you mean it would have to be like, The Lord of the Rings, Special Extended ‘One Movie to Rule Them All’ Edition? 😉
So you had a mild conflict about the definition of “mild conflict”?
I’m mildly conflicted about how I feel about that.
So am I. 😉
Kind of funny how little comment I’ve seen about this movie given that most of the blogs I follow have authors that read science-fiction. I nearly cried at the end of this movie because it was so damn well made. Was it perfect? No. But it got the major themes of the book across in an intelligent fashion.
Sad to say…I don’t think Enders Game did well enough to encourage others to make thoughtful science-fiction movies.
Likely because a lot of libs boycotted it because of Card’s move to unabashed Mormonism, and strong conservative themes in his books, so some of the normal major market demographic stayed home for political reasons. Be interesting to see how it does on the DVD market.