ender's game movie vs book essay

8 Big Differences Between The Ender's Game Movie And Book

There has been a lot of controversy related to Ender’s Game and the author of the source material for the film, Orson Scott Card, over the last several months, thanks to Card’s unpopular views on gay marriage. The brouhaha surrounding the film has kept fan’s eyes and ears off of the director of Summit Entertainment’s film, Gavin Hood, who also adapted Card’s novel for the big screen. While our brains were busy formulating opinions about Card, Hood was working to take a book largely told from the perspective of a young boy named Ender with a brilliant military mind and turn it into a story that could be observed from the outside. Despite many fans’ love of seeing the cogs in Ender Wiggins’ mind churn and strive, Ender’s Game largely works as an action film.

Still, because the perspective in the novel needed to be changed to suit the needs of the film and because Card’s original novel is highly detailed and accurate in its intentions, Ender’s Game is a different but similar adventure on the big screen when compared to its novel counterpart. Hood is smart to use a lot of touchstones from the book so that the plot doesn’t stray too far from its source material, and overall, Ender’s Game feels like a newly detailed story with a familiar overarching plot.

Following are the eight biggest changes I noticed in my screening of Ender’s Game . Plenty of other details were changed, of course, and feel free to remark on any changes you feel may have been more noticeable. There are many spoilers in the Ender’s Game book to movie comparison. Do not delve in if you want the film to be a surprise .

The film begins with some historical context regarding why humanity is working to fight an alien civilization . There’s no time to let the details of the battles unfold throughout the movie, so audiences get an understanding of why humanity is preparing for a big battle right up front.

Ender Wiggin’s timeline is changed drastically in the film. In the novel, we first meet Ender at age six and he progresses into young adulthood and then adulthood by the end of the text. In the film, Ender is already an older child and Hood speeds up the urgency of the battle for humanity so that our protagonist can remain the same age throughout the film. It’s nice that they were able to keep the same actors in the roles. There is typically a disconnect when a character changes ages and actors partway through a film.

Ender’s capacity for violence is heavily toned down in the movie . In the film, it is never noted that he actually kills the bullies that prey upon him, including Stilson and Bonzo. His competence and desire to thoroughly win anything and overcome any obstacle placed in his path is understated until the final battle with the alien race. Additionally, while he has compassion in the novels, he is even more softened in the film, likely to make him more likeable.

Ender’s siblings, Valentine and Peter, are almost cut out of the movie completely . We do get the barebones facts about their personalities and Valentine does help to pump Ender up when he is feeling down. Regardless, the fascinating secondary storyline following the siblings’ alter egos Demosthenes and Locke is cut entirely from the film, which is a bit of a bummer, since it offers a political counterpoint to Ender’s military experience.

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Ender’s time in Battle School is quite short. It would have been tedious to sit through several hours of mock battles, but what viewers don’t quite get is how thoroughly Ender is put through the wringer in Battle School. In the novel, just when he gets confident with one platoon, he is put into another, and each time he makes a friend, he is transferred into a new unit. Importantly, however, we do understand the fatigue and Ender’s ability to command respect with a little work.

There are no practice sessions beyond the initial one. The practice sessions are able to help Ender to earn some loyal followers as well as work out details related to the battle games, and while they would have been fun to watch, there is a lot of filler in these segments that were thankfully streamlined for the big screen.

Bean becomes a friend early on. Bean’s character in the novel serves as a reminder of Bonzo’s folly. Ender learns early that Bonzo’s leadership tactics are faulty and when Bean presents a personality similar to Ender’s, it is up to Ender to figure out a way to earn Bean’s respect and still command adequately. In the film, Bean is simply a good-natured fighter. It works out fine, but the audience does lose the nice tie-in to Ender’s early experiences and his later ones.

In the end, the race of "buggers" are able to communicate to Ender via one remaining queen on the planet where he fought the battle. One small life form is waiting to save the race, and Ender sets out to find the race a new home, making a small amends to the destruction he caused. This is less epic than the book ending, which features Valentine and Ender escaping into space and finding the small life form elsewhere, but it makes sense, considering Valentine and Peter don’t play a large role in the movie.

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways. 

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Screen Rant

10 ways the ender's game movie differed from the book.

The 2013 adaptation of Ender's Game changed a lot of things from the original book. Some of these changes hurt the film more than others.

The process of adapting books to film is probably one of the hardest things to do in the industry. A book often reveals a character's interior life and journey, while films are all about the old adage "show, don't tell". Ultimately, a lot of adaptations are not as good as the book because they are missing those key components of what made the book so engaging for readers.  Ender's Game   is one of those book-to-film adaptations that suffered for it with some baffling changes made.

RELATED: 10 Exciting Book To Movie Adaptations Coming Out In 2022

While  Ender's Game had the benefit of a star-studded cast and fantastic visuals, it failed to reach audiences the same way the book did. By looking at some of the differences between the book and movie, fans can get an understanding of just why this film didn't reach its potential.

Eliminating The Risk Of War On Earth

A subplot of  Ender's Game focuses on Ender's siblings realizing that the end of the war in space will likely mean the start of war on Earth. They become political commentators, taking opposing positions on issues to gain attention and then pushing their ideas for what the governments should do next.

While it made sense to cut this plotline for the sake of time and a more focused narrative, it would have been nice to see some discussion of tensions at home. The threat of war on Earth is what leads Ender to have to abandon Earth forever in the books, which would have been a stronger way to introduce the Formic queen after the film.

Making Colonel Graff Unsympathetic To Ender's Suffering

One thing that the movie kept the same as the book was the occasional shifting to the commanders' points of view, rather than Ender's, to give the audience a better sense of the greater world and the manipulations the commanders were going to put Ender through.

However, where Colonel Graff feels bad for putting Ender through so many trials in the book, the film's version seems indifferent to Ender's suffering. While this strengthens the theme of adults vs children, it does it by telling, not showing. It would be more successful to show that the adults were pulling strings, rather than having them talk about how they don't feel bad about doing so.

Changing Ender's Age

While it would have been impractical to include Ender at every age he was in the book, the decision to keep Ender one age weakened the impact of the child soldiers. In the book, Ender begins Battle School at only six years old, growing and developing over the next five years before completing his mission at eleven.

In the movie, however, Ender was played by Asa Butterfield , who was sixteen at the time. Because Ender does not age in the movie, the pacing is sped up considerably, and audiences lose some of the tragedy of a war that uses children as its best commanders.

Giving Ender A Love Interest

One of the consequences of aging up Ender is that it set him up to have a love interest. Nobody expected Ender to need one in the books, but by making him sixteen and marketing the film as a young adult adaptation, a love interest was introduced  in the form of Petra (Hailee Steinfeld) .

Petra, who is a friend and mentor to Ender in the books, very quickly becomes a love interest in the film, which feels out of place while Ender trains to be the youngest commander in history. It also required the writers to shove Petra into many scenes she wasn't in, which takes away strong moments for other side characters.

Making Ender's Home Life Militaristic

A change that significantly changed the audience's perception of Battle School was that life on Earth was militarized. In the book, life on Earth includes parents that loved him, easy school work, and relaxing on a lake where Ender could imagine the fate of the world didn't rest on his shoulders.

In the film, Ender's father is distant and critical of Ender, and his school is a military academy. By making the homeworld militaristic, it's unclear what has changed about Ender's world, other than being in space. This minimizes the stage of the hero's journey where they have to become familiar with a new way of life and makes his time at Battle School largely seem like more of the same.

Using the Word "Formic" Instead of "Buggers"

A significant change the film makes is the language characters use to describe the alien threat. While the books define the aliens as Formics, everybody calls them Buggers, a slur that infiltrated casual conversation.

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In the film, almost everybody uses the word Formics unless they want to make a point of using a slur, which takes away from the amount of propaganda that takes place about the war. The battle Ender wins was not necessary, but everyone cheers it on in the books because they have depersonalized the aliens so much. Without this propaganda, it's unclear why Ender is the only one who cares that he committed genocide.

Introducing Too Many Characters At The Beginning

For the sake of time, characters in the film were introduced in batches instead of being woven throughout Ender's time at Battle School. The most obvious of these is Bean, who was introduced in Ender's launch group. By introducing Bean in the beginning, Alai gets pushed to the side, which makes his emotional goodbye to Ender less meaningful.

This also happens when Dink and Petra are both introduced in Salamander Army.  Having all of the characters introduced at one of two times makes it hard for audiences to understand that Ender has meaningful relationships with each of them, and might have been better served by cutting the overshadowed characters altogether.

Making Ender's Best Ideas Collaborative

To translate Ender's thought processes into the film media, many of his ideas emerged during conversations with or for the sake of other people. This happened frequently with Ender's best ideas, like the enemy's gate being down. This idea was developed collectively with Bean in the film, and his decision to enter the battle last is changed from a strategic move to a rescue of a love interest.

By giving away Ender's best ideas or changing their motivations, Ender becomes a weaker character. This was done to combine introducing new characters with major plot moments, but it takes away from the fact that Ender is supposed to be a military genius. His best ideas come down to chance and collaboration, rather than strategic thinking, which makes it less believable that this child is the Earth's best chance.

Not Showing Ender As A Teacher

One part of the book that was greatly missed was the role of Ender as a teacher. The books set up his strength as a military leader in conjunction with his natural skill at teaching, showing Ender leading extra practice sections and placing a lot of trust in his soldiers. These opportunities both strengthen the other characters he is around and show his strength in leadership.

RELATED: 6 Harry Potter Characters Who Would Make Great Hogwarts Teachers (& 4 Who Wouldn’t)

These scenes were cut to include some of the more famous moments from the books, but it seems like including them might capture the themes of the book more effectively. No individual battle shows Ender being a genius, so they aren't necessarily as important as less action-based scenes that help the audience understand that Ender is the best and brightest in the world.

Minimizing The Impact of Ender's Genocide

Finally, the film seems to ignore one of the biggest messages of the book, which is that the genocide never needed to happen. The books establish that the Formics were repeatedly trying to communicate with Ender and show him that they weren't a threat to humanity, which makes it that much more tragic when Ender is manipulated into massacring them. Ender ends up nearly suicidal after realizing what he did, much like The Hunger Games 's Katniss Everdeen .

The film stripped this down, only briefly showing that Ender is upset. The quote played at the beginning of the film is about how Ender understanding his enemy makes him love them, but that theme doesn't land in the film as a whole. The adults cheer that the war was won. Ender's friends cheer that they succeeded. Ender is briefly upset but then quickly moves on from it after realizing there is one queen still alive. The deaths of billions get largely overshadowed.

NEXT:  10 Exciting Book To Movie Adaptations Coming Out In 2022

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From Inspiration to Ink…

Review: Ender’s Game (Movie vs. Book)

written by David Steffen

Recently I went to see the Ender’s Game movie, based on the 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card (who I interviewed here some time ago) . They take place in a future decades after an invasion of insect-like aliens attacked Earth and nearly wiped out the human race. The last invasion was only repelled by the last-ditch effort of a master strategist which turned the tide of the war. Earth needs a new leader, a new master strategist, to lead this war effort, but no ideal candidate has stepped forward. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the orbital Battle School plucks the most promising children to train them in strategy, to see who will come out to be the best of the best and become the new master strategist that Earth needs. Ender is a third child, a rare on this planet with reproductive legislation that limits parents to two children to limit population growth–his parents were allowed to have a third because their first two children were very promising candidates but his older brother Peter was often uncontrollably violent and his older sister Valentine too empathetic to allow them to be viable candidates. Can Ender become the master strategist that Earth is hoping for? Will he be capable of doing what needs to be done to save humanity? Will his training break him?

I read the book for the first time about five years ago, so it wasn’t very fresh when I went to see the movie. After seeing the movie, I re-read the book to refresh it in my mind before writing the review. I’ll give an overview and general impression of each of them in a non-spoiler way, but will follow that up with a spoiler section where I compare/contrast them in more detail without concern for ruining major plot points.

In the book, Ender is recruited at the tender age of six years old, and the main events of the book take until he is about eleven. So by the end he has spent about half of his life in military training. The book follows relationships that he develops with the other students, starting off on a bad note when the head administrator of the school sets out to isolate him from the others on the launch. Most of the school (and thus most of the book) is based around the game which can be most concisely described as zero-gravity laser tag with teams of forty facing off against each other.

The reason that I thought the book was so phenomenal is that it convinced me very thoroughly that Ender is a strategic genius. He is set playing the game that others have been playing for years and years, passing down the most common strategies to their successors for decades, and in relatively little time Ender can see through all of these routine maneuvers and see the flaws in them, see ways to exploit them. For a book based around combat strategy, Card couldn’t get by on just telling us how great Ender is at strategy. He has to convince me of that through Ender’s actions, and Card succeeds at this with flying colors. That is what makes this book so great. There were moments when I first read the book that some of these moments just made my jaw drop at the unexpectedness of a new strategy–something which totally makes sense in retrospect, but which I never would’ve thought of. Even on the re-read, these moments hadn’t lost their luster. And the ending of the book was especially effective, and still gives me chills when I think of it.

In some ways, Ender’s Game has left a mark on the way that I think about everything, and how I interact with people, much in the same way that the concepts of Game Theory have affected me. The thing about the Game Theory kind of mindset that most people don’t realize is that it applies to everything. It’s all about trying to predict outcomes and choose ways to behave and act in situations with other people involved, trying to understand their motivations and what those motivations will push people to do. I’ve used this kind of mindset in recent discussions with Human Resources at my company to point out that certain policies might encourage undesirable behavior and to suggest alterations to policies that might do better. I didn’t always think of things in such terms, but I think that reading Ender’s Game did a lot to make me think in that way which has been very useful.

And then there’s the movie. It’s been a long time in the coming, even though Card had opportunities to make it into a film in the 80s and 90s, because Card insisted on a certain level of creative control. And good for him in sticking to his guns on that. This was the story that put him on the map, and I’ve seen way too many film adaptations that just mangled the original so badly that they didn’t only not do justice to the original, they were an insult to the original.

The film wasn’t bad. The core of the book is there, though there are many significant changes. The casting was good all around, the dialog writing portrayed well the parts that they reflected in the book. The special effects served the movie well.

But the movie is a pale shadow of the book.

I think the reason for that is that it’s just so compressed, both in the time available for the film to convey its story, and in the actual timeline of the story. I don’t know exactly the timeline of the movie, but I’d guess that Ender went to battle school when he was maybe… eleven years old? And he hasn’t aged noticeably by the end, so I’d guess it ended within a year. As opposed to the book where Ender spent literally half his life at Battle school, including those years where he went from a naive child to basically being a man. The ending really depends on this school being his whole life, and the timeline of the movie just doesn’t work with that, so the ending didn’t work like it should have even though it was pretty similar.

And the plot of movie had to compress so much to fit in the allotted time that there was no point at which I was convinced that Ender was a master strategist. A couple of the big strategies of the book are in the movie, but in some cases they are given to him by other characters for free, in other cases they just come to mind without the extreme stress that the book clearly made as a necessary step to being able to push to such strategies. Sure, he was sharp for a grade-schooler, but the book’s Ender Wiggin wasn’t just smart for a grade schooler, he could out-strategize anyone else who was available for the job, which is why he’s their hope to save humanity. The movie just doesn’t convince me of that and so, for me, it fails.

The one thing that I thought the movie improved on was cutting out a subplot that involved Ender’s brother and sister back on Earth–I felt like that was a waste of space.

The Ending (Herein Be Spoilers)

Okay, now that we’re being the cloak of a spoiler warning shield, let’s talk about the ending.

The ending is one of the things that really makes the book worthwhile. For most of the book, he’s in battle school with all the other kids, much of that time being spent in the battle room. As he’s learning to combat other strategies, he’s also constantly revising his personal relationships with the other children as he rises in the ranks to commander. By the time he leaves Battle School he’s proven that he is the beset of anyone there, at a younger age than most, even though the school at the end is intentionally weighing the game situations against him. Finally they graduate him and send him to Command School where he starts running complex simulations where he has control of a fleet of ships facing off against alien ships as he is in command of commanders who each control a subset of the fleet. These simulations are grueling, always against overwhelming odds, often several times a day, and are meant to be a simulation of what the attack on the aliens actually will be like.

By the time he gets to the end of the simulations, some of his commanders have broken beneath him and had to be retired, he has worn himself to exhaustion, and when he reaches the enemy’s planet he decides he wants to win spectacularly but in a way in which those judging him will never possibly consider him as a leader–by destroying their homeworld. And he does this, only to discover that this wasn’t a simulation after all. While directing what he thought was a simulation, he has destroyed an intelligent species. Those who have been training him chose this strategy because they knew that the only one who could beat the enemy would be one who could empathize with them to the point of thinking like them, but that person would not be able to destroy them if they thought the situation were actually real.

Holy crap, what an ending. But it depends a great deal on the timeline. The compressed timeline of the movie just makes this not work. If Ender resorts to genocide as easily as he does in the movie, even in a simulation, it’s hard to cut him any slack. There’s no mention in the movie that he’s trying to fail their test on purpose so they won’t choose him like he did in the book, and even if they did the compressed timeline of the movie likewise would make that very hard to justify. And I never got the impression that he and those beneath him had been pushed to the breaking point, either. Ender just reaches the planet and decides without warning “Oh, hey, I can blow up the planet. Therefore I will.” The end.

The movie is not a waste of time. At its core, it has much the same story, but the book is better on almost every level. If you see the movie first, you’ll be robbing yourself of the opportunity to see it play out the way it should in the book.

My advice: Read the book. Think about seeing the movie AFTER you read the book.

Published by

David Steffen

David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer. If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee ! He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder , a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots . He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things. View all posts by David Steffen

3 thoughts on “Review: Ender’s Game (Movie vs. Book)”

I absolutely agree with you.

I totally agree with you. I saw the movie before the book, a big mistake (especially in connection with the ending).. The movie captures most of the important things in the book but the book just has more information, more character development, more story.

I saw the movie years before I read the book. It was long enough that I forgot most of the events of the movie, but I started remembering the whole plot twist of it not really being a simulation at the end. So I knew what was coming because of that.

But I’ll say that the book is so epic that it still sucked me in and tugged on my emotions, even though I knew that one detail was coming. The book is definitely way better than the movie, as is usually the case.

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Ender's game Comparing The book to the movie

In this assignment what’s expected of me is to tell the audience my opinion about which I like better, the movie or the book. Although I haven’t read the book up to date I think the book was better, because it had more plots that made Ender a better character instead of a boy who beats up antagonists he dislikes. I also have a like for the movie because it was shorter than reading the book, and it had like theme songs that made the book interesting and cool to read. This book had a sci-fi genre that made it interesting also. The theme of this story was Ender learning to not beat up people he dislikes, so that’s why many of the plots were important in the book. I think Orson Scott Card did a great job at writing this book. The first plot that I thought was missing in the movie that was in the book was Ender broke Bernard’s arm. This was important because, besides Colonel Graff saying that Ender was the only person who had brains during the launch, but Bernard had no reason to hate Ender, if ender didn’t break his arm. This is one of the plots I thought was really important because also this event proved Ender as a person who wants to beat up people, so the theme was solvable. The next plot I thought was different that was in the movie was that Ender met Bean right after Colonel Graff tells everyone in the shuttle that Ender’s the only person that has brains. The difference is in the book Ender meets Bean when Ender gets to command the Dragon Army. This didn’t impact the theme or the resolution of the book, but this is more evidence why I enjoyed the book more than the movie. I felt that the movie got super exciting ever since Ender got his own army to command, and then to see his army beat salamander, and another army was very cool. I liked the part also when they tied up Alai and threw him around the barricade so he could tell the army where exactly they are. I think how they bunched up together, and made sure alai wasn’t hit was kind of like the end how the droids bunched up to guard the little doctor while recharging. Bonzo, in the book the reader sees him as a big person pushing around Ender. In the movie it’s the exact opposite, a different characteristic than expected, it also brings comedy to the audience. At this scene Bonzo is of higher rank as commander he continuously bosses Ender around, and tells him he can’t do certain things during free time. Then when Ender is his own commander of his own army, and defeats Bonzo’s army, all Bonzo wants to do is fight with Ender, to prove that he is better than him. Ender fights back and Bonzo had to have surgery because he fell on his head in the shower. Ender came back to Earth after he had a fight with Bonzo in the Bathroom in the movie, but in the book Ender uses Valentine to calm down. Since he just defeated the enemy planet, and abandoned his ships to kill the planet with the little doctor, not realizing that the game he thought was training was real. The next scene I thought was different was in the book the government put Ender in a room, and the Mazer Rackam came. In the movie Ender got locked up in his own bedroom, then Mazer Rachham came. In the book ender was in a room not his bedroom. This was another difference I noticed. There was no Locke and Demosthenes, this was a very big plot that the director and the producer missed out on, because Locke and Demosthenes were the reason Ender even came back to Earth at all. I just thought this was a big super significant event and pot that was totally missing from the movie. My favorite part was when Ender defeated the Aliens. I thought that was very fun to see, the alien world just fall apart, and turn into lava. It was also fun to see all the droids bunch up to help guard the little doctor while it was recharging to fire again at the planet, and then to see all the droids to turn red all of a sudden, from the alien shooting was very fun and interesting to see. This significant event of this movie reminded me of the first Star trek when Vulcan was destroyed. I just thought this part of the movie was the best out of all the events. The part I thought was similar was when Ender took the alien queen egg with all of his travels. This kind of resolved the movie, and tied it up since he defeated the alien planet. Overall I liked the Movie it told most of the important scenes, of how ender got from being a normal kid that went to school on earth to being the person that just save the world from an alien threat. I liked how in the end of the movie the end wasn’t changed from the book at all. I think this movie had a good theme and it was worthwhile. I also enjoyed the book more than the movie because It was original and it had more plots that made the book more suspenseful, I’m not saying the movie didn’t have suspense, but the book described the character in a way that from the book you can connect to the main character (Ender). I didn’t fell this in the movie. I thought more of Ender as a bad guy and you have to watch out for him otherwise he’s going to punch you out. My suggestion is that you take time to read this spectacular book, and then watch the movie, the movie is pretty wicked. Out of ten i would give this book a nine because it was fun to read. I thought Orson Scott Card did a good job at writing the book. I also Gavin Hood did a good job at selecting the actors for the movie. I just thought this was a very good movie with a very good book, and I thought they both had their ups and downs in their own way, but I suggest the Book over the movie.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, ender's game.

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The film omits several crucial scenes from the novel in which we see Ender grow as both a military cadet and a social animal. It also flubs a couple of pivotal moments that show Ender passing or failing major tests of character. For starters, Ender's supposed to be a target when he enters Battle School, the outer space boot camp where kids learn how to lead, follow and plan. On the way there, Graff singles Ender out as the brightest of the new recruits. "You made them hate me," Ender says to Graff. He's right, but wouldn't know it based on the way Ender instantly connects with the characters who will become his friends. He meets Bean ( Aramis Knight ) right before Graff embarrasses him, and befriends Petra (Hailee Steinfield) right after Bonzo ( Moises Arias ), a senior-ranking recruit, bullies him. 

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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Ender's Game (2013)

Rated PG-13

110 minutes

Asa Butterfield as Ender Wiggin

Hailee Steinfeld as Petra Arkanian

Harrison Ford as Colonel Hyrum Graff

Abigail Breslin as Valentine Wiggin

Aramis Knight as Bean

Moisés Arias as Bonzo

Jimmy "Jax" Pinchak as Peter Wiggin

Viola Davis as Major Gwen Anderson

Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham

Suraj Partha as Alai

Khlylin Rhambo as Dink Meeker

• Orson Scott Card

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Ender's Game

77 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Peter and Valentine Wiggin adopt online political personas—respectively, Locke and Demosthenes, who are based on historical figures. How do Locke and Demosthenes’s real-life counterparts compare and contrast with their views as described in the novel?

Ender’s Game was a major influence on the Science Fiction genre in its themes and tropes. What influences permeate the genre? Describe how these elements contribute to the genre’s purpose.

Peter and Valentine were close to taking on Ender’s role in Battle School. Using knowledge of their respective personalities and leadership styles, describe how Peter and/or Valentine would have handled Battle School differently from Ender.

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