Movie Review: Ender's Game (2013)

I know i'm a little late to the band wagon, but i feel i really needed to get on here and post something new and this movie sticks vividly in my mind since my last post about it last may. The movie has come and gone, it is now available on all the mediums we've come to know and love/hate depending on how comfortable you are with the internet (if you know what i mean). The first thing i've got to reiterate from my last post is the fact that i am in the process of reading the Ender's Saga in chronological order according to the canon. now keep in mind that there is a lot of time travel involved in this series which shows itself in the form of light speed ships ( going off Einstein's theory that the closer to the speed of light you get the slower time goes) so it's a little hard for me to really sink my teeth into the chronological later books a little since it jumps around a bit. None the less, the 2013 movie adaptation of the most popular "middle-of-the-canon" book and also the first one in the saga to ever be published (and even that started out as a short story in a magazine before it became a book) was without a doubt one of the best movie adaptations of a book i have ever seen. Please understand me, did they mutilate the book beyond recognition? yes. Did the brutally dismantle the original literature for the movies so that i would be extraordinarily difficult to make any of the other books aside from the original three(Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide)? Absolutely. But did they convey the messages they needed to convey in the time they had? Most definitely. Ender's Game is a movie adaptation of a book where you walk in knowing it's not going to be the same as the books because the trailers show that and once you start watching you really just can't will yourself to care. The characters are all there, they all do their inevitable job, they show the critical points in the plot, and at the climax you'll cry like the little bitch that you refuse to acknowledge that you are because even with all the extra information cut out and even with a lot of the build-up that leads to some of the key points missing, they still manage to give you that emotional connection to Ender and his merry men and you still feel just as betrayed as him when you know what happens. All in all, i would highly recommend Ender's Game for those who have and have not read the book, it's a fantastic movie that's full of fun, action and emotion. Really good job converting this iconic text to film.