CONTAINS SPOILERS – Ender’s Game was a highly anticipated film – directed and screenplay by Gavin Hood – by all, but especially by those who read the book the film was based off of, written by Orson Scott Card. Being one of those people who actually read the book, I would say that the movie was brilliant up until the ending. The movie is about an incredibly intelligent child, Ender (Asa Butterfield), who was chosen from amongst all of the world’s smartest children. Mainly, though, it’s about Ender’s struggle to keep his humanity during a time where everyone expects him to become inhuman, by killing an entire species.

This movie was not as disappointing as I expected it to be. Most of it was amazingly entertaining, it was so well done; if there is anything I would nitpick about the beginning of the movie is that I would have wanted the opening scene with Ender’s siblings to be a bit longer and for viewers to realize exactly how young these kids start out fighting in the book (which is age six). I think it’s safe to say that for the most part, the bulk of the movie was true to the book. The plot followed the book fairly well; the main plot points that needed to come across to the audience were there. The only “serious” change was that a choice was made to make the characters be from around ages ten and up. You couldn’t really complain, because it made things easier and moved the plot along a little faster.

There was one thing that bugged me more than anything in the entire movie was that the alien threat in the book are called “Buggers.” There is absolutely no plausible reason to call the aliens anything else. Why change their name from buggers to formics, as the film did? You could make an argument that they didn’t want the buggers to be called buggers because of the negative connotation that comes from the British slang word, “bugger.” However, these aliens are the worst possible threat to humans out there – the negative connotation  should be there. Humans don’t like these things, they despise them and they want to destroy buggers. So why bother to change the name to formics?

This movie basically destroyed all efforts of a sequel if they wanted to make another film based off the book series. It took the whole ending of the book and distorted it, making it so that Ender would never be with Valentine (Abigail Breslin), his sister, again. In the book, after the final battle with the buggers Valentine goes to see Ender and demands that he escape with her to one of the outer planets to escape their brother, Peter (Jimmy ‘Jax’ Pinchak), forever. On one of those planets, Ender finds out that there is one last bugger queen and he becomes determined to find her a home to start the bigger race again. In the movie they totally ignore that part of the book, and just have the last queen and another formic watching out for her is on the very planet that is inhabited by the human armies. Valentine never comes into pla,y and she is left stranded on Earth to live her days with Peter while Ender escapes trying to find a home for the formic queen.

Cinematically, this movie was stunning. The effects were beautiful and incredibly, disgustingly eerie. Although the cast was filled with many young actors, all of them were phenomenal. The movie was filled with big-name adult actors as well, like Ben Kingsley (playing MazerRackham), Viola Davis (Major Gwen Anderson), and Harrison Ford (Colonol Graff) as the main adult cast. Also as a pleasant surprise to any fans of “Hannah Montana” the show, Moises Arias made an appearance as Bonzo Madrid. However, I think it’s safe to say that he wasn’t all that intimidating (as the character is supposed to be). His height alone took away anything that made him intimidating, but his acting was pretty good.

All in all, the entire movie was entertaining even for those who read the book, if just a little irksome. Those who didn’t read the book probably thought the movie was amazing.