Ender's Game Book Vs Movie Analysis

Very few good books translate successfully to a good movie adaptation and most people who both read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and watched the subsequent movie adaptation count Ender’s Game among the many rather than the few book to film adaptations. Almost every character changedt from the book to the movie in regards to either personality, physical appearance, or their given amount of screen time. The plot changed through added romances and the removal of concepts that failed to translate well on screen. While most readers appreciated the book Ender’s Game for its use of Ender’s perspective, allowing them to see what he saw, the movie shifts to a third person perspective. The movie captured the action elements of Ender’s Game using Hollywood techniques and fails to portray the unique perspective of the boy genius in favor of a more likeable protagonist.
Character development suffered due to the lack of screen time for characters, creating a need to change the role for other characters greatly affecting the viewer's interpretation of their growth and development. Personality differs greatly between the book and the movie. Ender appears less cruel
and calculating and makes more friends, Petra loses her tough nature fawning over Ender, and Sergeant Dap loses his somewhat gentle and loving nature. Physical appearance also differs as most of the characters are much older in the movie than in the book. This affects character development because the reader sees a more noticeable change in Ender as a dynamic character from the age of 6 to age 12 in the book, but in the movie the contracted timeline allows less time for Ender to develop as he begins the story at age 10. The movie cut out characters that appeared in the book creating a need to change other characters’ roles in the story. In the book character development allows the reader to feel like they know the characters well and allows the reader to watch the characters change as they move through the battle and command schools in the movie, however, they shortened the timeline, which shortened the screen time of all of our characters cuttingcharacters completely out of the movie and using others to fill their place.
The main differences between the plot of the book and the plot of the movie hinge on the shortened timeline, which cut out scenes that gave the book more depth, and the plot devices for added glamour. The shortened timeline caused a need to cut out the subplot with Ender’s siblings on Earth. When reading the book, this plotline seemed distracted, but in the movie Valentine and Peter’s decreased role left a plot hole. To make the movie more action-packed,the screenwriters cut smaller scenes. Scenes cut for that reason include Ender’s tearful goodbye to his family, his training with his launch group during free time, and the different armies he moved to every time he started to make friends. They also cut the action of Alai kissing Ender, but the scene persisted with a more manly pat on the back. The writers use Petra as a plot device in this movie adding a forced romantic element not found in the book, presumably because in the book Petra age 11 and Ender age 6 saw the ongoing war as a more pressing matter. While this fills the void left by subtracting the vaguely incestual relationship between Valentine and Ender, it ruins Petra’s tomboyish character in the effort to make Ender a more macho,less gay protagonist. Understandably, the Hollywood cut many smaller scenes to fit a shortened timeline and took out many problematic elements of the book in favor of a more traditional child romance; however, these cut plot lines took away the depth of the book, the cut scenes took away from Ender’s emotional range and strategic genius, and the added romance ruined the only major female character included in the movie adaptation.
Due to Ender’s perceptive nature, use of detail in Ender’s Game gives the reader a specific description of the setting and characters, but the movie makes changes for an added visual element in the setting and changes the physical appearance and hobbies of characters to diversify the cast and fill character tropes. The primary change in the setting is the battle room. In the book, practice battles take place in multiple small, square, windowless rooms, but in the movie all practice battles occur in one spherical room with many windows for battles, because it looks better in the cinema. Major Anderson’s physical appearance changes from the book to the movie. In the book, Major Anderson appears as an otherwise nameless white male, but in the movie, Major Anderson takes the form of a black female named Gwen. This gives the writers a believable, compassionate figure at the battle school a role filled by Sergeant Dap in the book. Peter’s hobby of playing the piano in the book translated as a hobby of playing sports in the movie. When you take that fact into consideration along with his blonde hair in the movies, he now fills the classic cartoon bully stereotype perfectly. In order to create a more cinematically friendly experience, the movie changed the details described in the book.
The Ender’s Game movie, while enjoyable, portrayed the plot as an action-packed thriller in opposition to the book’s depiction of a school narrative from the perspective of a unique student.
Character development featured in the book lacks in the movie and most of the characters display different physical and emotional traits than depicted in the book. Plot changes include forced heteronormative romance among child characters, cut scenes that make Ender seem apathetic in the book, and additional scenes that add a more human element to Ender’s character. Use of detail in the movie focuses on the action filled moments while the book focuses on Ender’s perspective. Hollywood killed the idea of Ender as a child genius with questionable morals favoring the idea of an older, more likeable protagonist for an action
film.