Ender’s Game

It was yonks and yonks ago that I read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and enjoyed the book so much that I happily continued with the sequels. It was with some trepidation however with which I approached the movie, as I had heard some indifferent reviews but also because of the following result:

Theorem: The book is always better than the movie.

(Proof: exercise left to the reader)

The movie follows exclusively the major plotline of the story. Thus it is essentially about Ender and Ender alone. It does at times skip through this storyline at a fast pace, sacrificing character development to do so which makes some of the scenes appear less meaningful or understandable when compared to the book version.

Disappointingly, the entire plot line involving Locke and Demosthenes is missing from the film. Thus if you’ve only seen the film, then you won’t get . The joke in is still understandable.

After watching the film, I felt I had to reread the book again to make a comparison between the two – as well as to test how accurate my memory of the book acually was. It felt weird reading dialogue which was inserted directly from the book into the film and thus I had just heard.

My recommendation is that the book is a must read. The movie is optional. Based on m y personal experiences with Jurassic Park and The Lost World (both of which I saw before I read), it is perhaps better to watch the movie before reading the book if you want to do both and for some reason haven’t yet read the book.

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