The truest depiction of the motif of the book in a film poster I could find. |
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The first thing that they can do is cast a child actor who looks and sounds not a little unlike Edward Norton to play the lead. Seriously, Norton has the acting chops to make even Ang Lee's The Hulk bearable to watch for an evening and so anything in his sort of range will have me watching it. And in Ender Wiggin it just makes the whole thing a little more believable. I had a hard time parsing the extra tech on the film with what I remembered from the book and yet it worked just fine. So I was aware that they had changed something early on and I couldn't put my finger on it at all. Rereading the book I realised it was the situation with the Buggers, sorry, Formix and how humanity had been attacked and then retaliated. Also, having Harrison Ford reading out lines from the book verbatim did wonders. No, really, that was well played.
Edward Norton is Ender Wiggin. Played by someone else. |
With Valentine. She doesn't use Facebook and Twitter to conquer the planet with Peter, but hey, it's a short film. |
Don't get me wrong, I would have loved a longer film. If you could have a series filmed at this quality that would be even better - but unlikely to get Harrison Ford involved - and I would have to sell my soul in order to own it and thus pay royalties to the man that created the book. Also, my work rate would suffer as I would want to inhale the whole damn thing from start to finish. As it was, they had to skip over some of the other characters and fast forward some of the development (as well as make Ender even more preternaturally gifted than he is in the book). That was a sore point, but I can't fault them for making those decisions.
In short, despite the fact that Orson Scott Card is an odious individual, the film is really good and really faithful to the original (occasional asides about Mormonism that I never really spotted before the film elected not to show them aside). If you are looking for a decent film on DVD, rent this or get it on netflix or, better yet, borrow from a library so that there aren't any royalties supporting OSC from your end. Then get the book from a charity shop and read it. Read it good, and read it before watching the film, you shan't be disappointed.
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