Ender's Game

[Tom Foolery]

Saw the movie last week. It was...adequate. It perfunctorily condensed the book down to two hours. As with all adaptations, it has to drop a lot of stuff. But a mediocre director just hits all the necessary story beats in order. A great director can find the "soul" of a book and get the message across without having to hit the beats. Gavin Hood is NOT that director. So the film looks impressive enough and the few Battle Room scenes we do get look awesome. (There's 4 in the film, there's 15 to 20 in the book) but there's no joy or excitement seeing them. We get just enough of the mind game to pay off the end. The emotionally weighty scene of Ender and Valentine on the raft is in the film, but it's missing the gravity of the book's scene. I didn't like the pseudo-romance between Ender and Petra in the training room (the score during that scene reminded me of the Game of Thrones theme).
Maybe I just built it up too much to be satisfied. Except I've seen movies adapted from books that are awesome like LOTR so that isn't it. In the end, the film is just decent and nothing more. Quickly forgotten. It makes me just want to go reread the book. A

I give it a B- or 3 out of 5 or 6.5 out of 10 or whatever describes passable and does not suck, but nothing more.

[Jargo]

It's on my list of movies to acquire. And it's sci-fi, so it'll pass a while away. Brain fluff.

Is it After Earth meh, or does it fall deeper into meh-dom? I've noticed a trend with modern movies that has them sitting in the 'zero depth to characters and completely devoid of atmosphere and mood cadences' camp. Or the 'characters so awful I don't care for any of them and hope they die by the end of the movie' camp. Either way so many movies now are all flash and no bang.

[Tom Foolery]

I didn't see After Earth but I'm gonna say its better than that. Ender tries to be a little deeper than that with its "moral ambiguity" of training children as soldiers. But the book is so much better.

[Jargo]

Yeah, don't bother seeing After Earth. It's a whole movie of absolutely nothing. It made Oblivion look highbrow.