Ender’s Game, a movie I thought was sure to thrill, kept me leaning back in my seat, finding a mediocre watered-down sci-fi movie. As a huge fan of the “Ender-verse,” hearing this movie was going to be made was so exciting. While the movie wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good either. Much of what made the book awesome was totally lost in the “adaption to screen.”

In the movie, Ender Wiggin is the kid that gets bullied and pushed around at school. Wiggin is invited to join the military training program. This program is preparing Earth’s smartest youths to fight aliens in space. Wiggin is thrust into a leadership position and is propelled through the ranks because of his talent and ability level.

For those of you who have read the book, you know that the book is very different. Just like so many other book-to-movie franchises, it’s hard to enjoy both. The movie is a classic sci-fi space-alien-battle movie. That’s really all there is to it. The book had so much more depth and breadth; it made me feel something. Book-Ender and Movie-Ender were both very different characters. Book-Ender obviously had to be changed because the movie was an adaptation, but the two characters were way too different for me. The movie felt watered down, an attempt by film industry to create a blockbuster franchise.

My advice? Use the money you would have spent on a movie ticket to buy the used book at Hastings.