Ender's Game in Theaters Now

I read the book Ender's Game in preparation for watching the movie, so with that semi-fresh in my mind (read that review here), these are my thoughts on the screen adaptation.

I'm not going to go into exactly what the story is about. For that, you can read my book review or stumble upon it just about anywhere on the Internet. This will be more of a comparison review of book to movie, with emphasis on the movie.

Overall, I thought the movie stayed very true to the book with the exception that befalls all movie adaptations: that much of the book had to be compressed. Impressively, this movie is very tight and moves the plot and the action right along, clocking in at under two hours. There's no drag. On the other hand, such speed of plot leaves little room to draw out depth of character and emotion, and that's what I found lacking in the first half of this movie. If you don't already know Ender from the books, you cannot possibly grasp what he is going through in the movie. The book takes us deeply into Ender's heart and mind, and it's extremely difficult to translate something so internal into something external and visual.

(Minor SPOILERS follow in this paragraph.) I'm not sure a true translation would have been possible in the first place without making a much longer movie that might have included more of the set-up of Ender's isolation. The movie cuts out the constant set-backs Ender faces in his quest for acceptance, and without those, you don't feel his plight nearly as strongly. The movie tells us he's purposely being isolated, but it skips the parts that show it, narrowly focusing instead on the opposite: how Ender attracts his followers. Without seeing the agony of his losses, we can't fully understand the significance of his victories. In fact, if you only had the movie to go by, you would think that Ender's superior, Colonel Graff, fails in his mission to isolate Ender, but that's not quite the case in the book. So, the first half of the movie, while true to the spirit of the book, lacks some of the soul of the book.

However, the second half picked up some of the lost emotional threads I was looking for and tied them into a fabulous ending, made all the more powerful by what I already knew from the book. This is one case where I am very glad I read the book first, though sometimes I am not so finicky about that. It is possible that I read more emotion into scenes because I knew what the book contained. Even so, Asa Butterfield, except for being taller than I thought he should be (and he's definitely older than the character in the book, but to get an actor with any depth, he'd have to be), is a fantastic Ender, and he plays the emotions beautifully.

(Very minor SPOILERS in this paragraph.) In fact, I was happy with nearly all the characters. Valentine, perhaps, didn't match up with how I envisioned her, especially in the latter half of the book, but she's in the movie so little that it doesn't matter (she and Peter's roles from later in the book were one of the sacrifices made due to time constraints). Harrison Ford as Graff and Viola Davis as Anderson seemed just right. Granted, I wasn't expecting Anderson to be a woman, and Davis brings a more motherly (though still military-tough) approach to the character that I never would have envisioned from the book, but somehow it works. At least, I liked it. The other trainees with Ender don't get a ton of screen time, but we still get to see a few of the book's key moments in which certain ones become something more to Ender. However, there's no time in the movie to deal with the complications those friendships go through in the book.

Just a note about morality since that's one of my big things. I don't have anything really bad to say about the movie, but I do want to give you the basics. It's rated PG-13 for some violence and heavy thematic material. (In short, if your kid's as young as Ender is supposed to be in the story, he's probably too young to watch this!) There's bullying, manipulation, questioning of authority, calculated violence. But the whole story is one big dialog of right and wrong. For that reason, with parental guidance, of course, I think some younger ages (middle school especially) can handle, or even should be allowed to handle, this. There's a lot to talk about.

Finally, I just enjoyed the look of the movie, the tech, the battle room, the aliens. It was all well done, and nothing seemed too amiss when compared to what I had envisioned in the book.

Though the first half of the movie leaned more toward three stars for me, the second half brought it overall to four stars. When the credits finally rolled, I had shed a few tears and just needed time to process the whole thing. There's this beauty to the story that the movie manages to capture a small part of, and it's timeless too. Several decades since the book's first publication haven't lessened its relevance and impact. I'm happy to see this story on the screen, despite being only a very recent fan, but I do highly recommend that you enjoy the book first.

Pandora's Box

I tried something new. Not young adult, memoir, or contemporary adult. How about military science fiction, for a change? Yep, I was totally out of my league...well, not totally. Though never having been through any military training, I'm not completely ignorant about it, and I've read some science fiction, though I prefer fantasy. But what kept me reading Pandora's Box, by Nathan Marchand, was his characters.

Pandora's Box stars a woman without a name, at least not one she can remember, as the sole guardian of a military base containing all the world's weapons of mass destruction in the 22nd century. She can't remember how she got there. All she knows is her job and how important it is. But a little red journal contains the key to unlocking her past with its failures and sorrows. She's a battle-hardened soldier, but does she have the courage to face what she has done and look the truth in the eyes?

Her handwritten history begins with her dad, an elite member of the American Vanguard. All she desires is to be like him, though his breed seems hardly necessary in a world of peace. So, as soon as she is able, she joins the army, a little woman in a sea of raw manpower, but she's tougher than she looks. It will take every ounce of strength and then some to prove herself, both to the Vanguard and to the world. When hell breaks loose and war and disease ravage the land, she'll be clinging to the very shreds of her sanity.

And when the journal ends and some very important surprises are revealed, one woman will have a critical choice to make.

Pandora's Box was an interesting read for me. There's just enough suspense to pull the reader through the story. Though parts of it, mainly military-related, were very technical, it was accessible to me because of its heroine. That's not to say the book is written to a female audience. It's fairly well-rounded with plenty of battle action and just enough emotional gravity to make its heroine believable and pull in the female readers.

In the spirit of realism, there is some swearing, but it's tempered from what it could be and nothing to make you cringe. There are some horrifying war elements, but nothing overly graphic. In short, it's a very tastefully-written war story. There's also a spiritual element that's not overbearing but comes into play most toward the end of the story.

In a story that could have been over the edge morally, the morality pleased me, but I would have expected nothing less, knowing the author of this book. Yes, I've reviewed another book from my circle of acquaintances, and unlike my last reviewed manuscript, this one is now published and available for purchase! So, if you need a good Christmas gift for a hard-to-buy-for man in your family, check out Pandora's Box, and support my friend Nathan Marchand.

And lest you think I was coerced into writing a good review for a friend, let me just add that when I was reading the end of this book, and my husband tried to talk to me, I shushed him and sent him away. Fortunately, he's understanding about my book-reading habits and knows that it's nothing personal, just how I react at the end of a good read.