Ender's Game.

I saw this on Sunday, by myself, because a) it was a facebook special and b) it was airconditioned. The cinema was pretty empty though: there was one young couple, there was me, and there were maybe 6 solo men of various ages scattered around the room.

Some things about the movie were good. The actor who played Ender Wiggin was perfect (apart from being a teenager instead of a primary-aged kid). It looked great. It was succinct. But, compared to the book, it was so abbreviated. None of the kids (teenagers though) had an interesting story or a personality, there was no sense of the loneliness and cruelty Ender went through to become a military genius before puberty, the vocabulary was watered down, the time-frame was shorter, and most of all there were hardly any games in the battleroom and that was my favourite part of the book. And there is a whole side-story with Ender's brother and sister that's gone, although I wasn't satisfied with where that went in the book anyway. It's basically very very compressed.

The film is a good way to get a handle on the Themes of the book though. It's a sci fi classic because it has Themes. It's the kind of book kids would study in year 12.