Ender’s Game Review
Comparing the Book to the Movie


Recently a new movie has come out in the theaters and it is called Ender’s Game. The movie is based on the book written by Orson Scott Card. It is about a 12-year-old boy named Ender Wiggin. Ender is the chosen one to lead us in the next alien invasion. Aliens in the book are called buggers, but in the movie they are called “formics”. The formics are the foot tall ants. They are all under the control of their one and only queen. In the beginning of the story Ender gets his monitor taken out. The monitor is a device in the back of the neck, used by the government to see who is worthy enough to be in their program. When ender gets his monitor taken out every one made fun of him, because he was a third. A third is a third child that was paid to be born. Then Ender gets into a fight with one of the school bullies named Stilson. In the end Ender ends up beating him down to the ground. Stilson ended up in the hospital because Ender beat him up really bad.


Later on Colonel Hyrum Graff came to his house and offered him a spot in the program. At first Ender didn’t want to go because he would miss his family too much, but Colonel Graff persuaded him to go because they need him. So he went with him. Ender boarded the shuttle with other “launchies” that were chosen to be in the program too. When he got to battle school he went with his launch group to their dormitory. At battle school he learned a lot about maneuvers and strategies in a battle. Ender was a quick learner. So he was promoted to Salamander Army, where he met a girl named Petra. She was the best sharp shooter in the whole program. Ender and Petra trained together in the battle room on free time, and Ender learned how to shoot very accurate. Later Colonel Graff calls him in to have a talk. They want him learn what it’s like to be the leader of an army. They give him a job as commander of Dragon Army. Dragon army hasn’t been in the program for a while because they would never win. But Ender got people he could work with, odd balls like him. Dragon army had a battle against two armies at once, Rat army and Salamander Army. Dragon army ended up win the battle because of Ender’s strategies and great ideas.

Bonzo the leader of the Salamander army was really mad that Ender defeated him. When the battle was over Ender headed to the bathroom to take a shower. Bonzo showed up with some of his friends. Ender got into a fight with Bonzo and he ended up almost killing Bonzo. Ender kicked him and Bonzo slipped and his head landed right on the corner of the bathroom stall. Bonzo ended up needing brain surgery and was sent back to earth to recover.



Ender wanted to go back to earth with Bonzo because he didn’t like what the battle school was doing to him. He ends up going back to earth where he gets to see his sister again. She ends up talking him back into going back to battle school, so he says good-bye and gets on the shuttle with Colonel Graff. They end up going past battle school and go much further closer to the formics planet. They land at Command School where he will no longer be learning about formations and strategies. He will now learn about how to command a real army for the real war. He’s not there alone. He finds that his closest friends from battle school are there, Bernard, Alai, Bean, and Petra. The four of them will command sections of the army, while Ender commands them. One morning when Ender wakes up he finds an old man sitting on the floor in his dorm. He thinks that it’s a test. So he leaves the old man alone, but the old man trips him. Ender later finds out that the old man is Mazer Rackham, the leader of the second wave of the alien invasion. Mazer Rackham was the one who set to victory in the war.

Ender and his friends have a “graduation game” one day, where they will fight against “computerized aliens”. But what Ender doesn’t know is that the whole game isn’t actually a game. It is actually real drones that he is commanding. So if he were to loose the game he would actually be loosing the real life war. Ender and his friends get ready for battle. Hit after hit, shot after shot. Than finally Petra, using “the little doctor” gets an open shot at the formics’ planet. The little doctor shoots a beam that send a chain reactions of shots. So if there is a group of formics, and you shoot one of them, then they all will get hit. So Petra shot at the planet, it hit and the whole planet was killed by the shot.

Later after the war was over everyone praised him and finally told him that the game was actually real. He was sad to find that out, that was his soft side that he got from his sister Valentine. Later he remembers the images he seen in the Giant’s Drink game. Then he notices that the place that the game was showing him was the planet that he was on. He notices that it was the Queen Formic that was trying to communicate with him through the game. Then he runs out side with his air tank, and Petra tries to stop him. But he says that he has to do this and so he went. He went to where the game showed him where to go. He finds the place. He meets the Queen Formic, and he thinks that she will kill him but she spares his life. He ends up figuring out that the Queen formic was peaceful. Ender made a very important promise to the queen that he will find a new planet for her to repopulate her kind.

I highly recommend anybody and everybody to read the book and see the movie. It is now my favorite book that I have read and the best movie I have ever seen. Overall I think that the book was just a little more better, because there was more plots and scenes that were very important that the movie didn’t have.