For a two-hour condensed telling of the story it does an admirable job, even at times an emotionally strong and visually imaginative one. Butterfield's performance is indicative of his emerging talent, and the supporting roles do just that - support the lead. Yet I feel this is the best one could expect of a shorthand version of the story, and it just can never fully encompass the nuance and depth of the novel. Which is not to say it doesn't serve the material well - it still contains the core ideas and the moral questions/weight, but they stream by briskly, and in so doing lose the full power of the novel's greatest quality: pathos. It is solid enough to get the ball rolling on the thematics if not able to wholly embrace them. 8/10
This is easily fixed bymattCR said:The last one is a big spoiler, so..I dislike that at the end, Ender zips on off his own without Valentine along with him.. it upsets the setup of all future books, but if this is the only one that gets made; and I'm betting so because I can't imagine a film version of any of the remaining ones, then it's OK
having Valentine zoom off to catch up with him in space. Not that big of a problem, IMO. I don't anticipate getting a sequel - it's gonna need to get to about $200+ million world wide box office to be profitable - but I would think that they would do something that would bring the Valentine/Peter aspect to the front.
Maybe have it start with Ender going back to Earth to rendezvous with Valentine but then not returning all the way because of the threat he represents to a now warring world, and especially Peter gunning for power. This would be a way to establish the concepts of how Ender refuses to continue to be used by the power-hungry of mankind, and allow the story to move forward to parts of Ender in Exile where he begins to establish his Speaker for the Dead persona (they'd have to create a new immediate conflict for Ender rather then get into the Achilles side story). It could end with him having written the Hive Queen and the Hegemon under his pseudonym while not aging due to space relativity while Earth time passes him by, with the 3rd film being an adaptation of Speaker for the Dead.
Maybe have it start with Ender going back to Earth to rendezvous with Valentine but then not returning all the way because of the threat he represents to a now warring world, and especially Peter gunning for power. This would be a way to establish the concepts of how Ender refuses to continue to be used by the power-hungry of mankind, and allow the story to move forward to parts of Ender in Exile where he begins to establish his Speaker for the Dead persona (they'd have to create a new immediate conflict for Ender rather then get into the Achilles side story). It could end with him having written the Hive Queen and the Hegemon under his pseudonym while not aging due to space relativity while Earth time passes him by, with the 3rd film being an adaptation of Speaker for the Dead.