Robert Horn
Professor Ball
Children’s Literature
10 December 2013
The Mysterious Disappearance of Locke and Demosthenes Ender’s Game is a well known science-fiction genre book that is most popular with the young-adult reader demographic. The novel was published in 1985 and written by the American author Orson Scott Card (Card). The official website of Orson Scott Card states that Ender’s Game was the winner of both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel in 1985 and 1986, respectively (OSC). In November of 2013 the movie adaption was released to the public with a runtime of one hour and fifty-four minutes and was met with mixed reviews garnishing only a “74% fresh” on the movie critics site rottentomatoes.com (Rotten). Like many books that are adapted into movies, fans and critics usually side with the book being a better portrayal of the story than the movie version. Dennis Schwartz, a movie critic from Ozus' World Movie Reviews, expresses his views on the comparison between the movie and book by writing, “Might have worked as a clever thought-provoking read, on film it's a drag” (Schwartz). This common occurrence of the book being better than the movie can be easily explained by remembering that a movie should usually stay around the two hour time mark and that money is a big factor in adapting a book. The major differences between the book and the movie are that Ender’s timeline is completely changed, Ender is portrayed to be a more likable character, and that the cutaways back to Earth with Ender’s siblings Peter and Valentine are completely cut from the movie. These can all be explained through the logic that Lionsgate Films was trying to make a watchable picture that was closest to the book without breaking the bank in the process. The first major difference that I noticed when watching the film was Ender’s age throughout the movie was much different