Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (1985) was one of the first novels I fell in love with. The story, whose cast consisted almost entirely of children, was full of action, fun and emotions that children were able to identify with. Around ten years after I read the novel a film adaptation was scheduled to come out and I was terribly excited. It took some time to finally watch the film and I’m not entirely sure that it lived up to the standards I set because of the book. The film follows Card’s story, as well as I can remember, very closely. It still follows the struggles of main protagonist, Ender Wiggins, on his journey to ensure that the Formics (an alien race) cannot wreak havoc on Earth again. From beginning to end, Ender is shown struggling to come to terms with his place in the world and the world itself and he struggles with authority and power that it holds. The film, like the novel, relies heavily on strategy and intellect to help propel the story forward. The idea that it’s intellect and one’s ability to properly navigate through difficult and intense situations makes the story endearing to adults. Each of the aforementioned qualities make the film, like the novel, incredibly interesting. What lacked in the film was the acting ability of Asa Butterfield. As a whole, the sixteen year old Butterfield portrayed Ender very emotionally and in a fashion that was enough to make the audience understand his hardships. There were times, however, that Butterfield approached situations too intensely and ultimately took away from the emotion that some scenes were meant to project. The story, the visuals and the morals that Card wrote into his novel that were so amazingly carried over onto the big screen by writer and director Gavin Hood made this film quite the spectacle. It is hard to believe that, aesthetically, there is any other young actor that was better suited for the part of Ender than Butterfield; it was simply his intense approach towards emotional situations that would have made the audience question his credibility as the film’s lead. It was this, and this alone, that separated the novel from the film. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1
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