Jon Goff has some gripes (with spoilers) about the movie.
I haven’t read the book in a third of a century, so I wasn’t as bothered by some of those things as he was. As he notes, in retrospect, it’s probably a mistake to read the book just before seeing the movie. If you haven’t read it, it would probably be better to watch the movie first.
Adding FTL in the mix actually destroys the whole rationale for the climax of the story. The set up (major spoiler alert) is that since Ender and the fleet are in separate solar systems, Ender has no way of knowing he’s actually engaging in combat and not just playing a game. It’s that remoteness that allows Ender to be fooled. Remove that, and a smart kid like Ender would know he’s being played.
My one complaint was that they skipped the part where they told Ender to not use the “Little Doctor” on any planetoids or similar because of the worry that the reaction would not stop. The whole point (to my mind) was that Ender did not knowingly commit Genocide, and the High Command was not hoping he would so their hands would be clean. He thought he was in “training”, had gotten tired of the “no win” scenarios, and decided to resign in a flashy fashion. They saw no way to win the war, and hoped that a genius could pull off a “hat trick” that they couldn’t see, and kept him in the dark because they didn’t want him to “freeze” over the responsibility and stress. Other then that, great movie!
Lando: Hey, turning over Han to that bounty hunter along with keeping Leia and the Wookie here on the station wasn’t part of the deal!
Vader: I am altering the underlying premise of the storyline. Pray that I don’t alter it any further!
Yes, taking him out of our solar system was ridiculous.
Other minor quibbles:
– it wasn’t made clear to us that at command school Ender was told he was playing against enemy simulations controlled by Mazer. (it was implied later on)
– “The enemy’s gate is down” was utterly pointless on first seeing the battle room. It makes sense only in the context of later tactically entering the game feet first not head first or side on.
– Ender (and we) didn’t learn that Stilson died.
– Mazer’s accent is pretty jarring. OK … we’re only told his father was a Maori, not that he was himself raised in NZ, but weird aussie/sith ifrica hybrid accent is weird.
Five more minutes could easily have fixed all the problems.
Mazer told Ender when he met him that he was to be Ender’s enemy. I didn’t have a problem with Mazer’s accent. He was flying F 35 s which likely made him raised in NZ and then spending a lot of time in Australia. Or his mother may have been Australian. My wife, however did think the accent was weird. She’s from NZ but has lived in Australia most of her adult life.
I did have a problem with battle school on the space station. Not only did they have FTL they had gravity control.
They had gravity control in the books. Just very limited and the technology was controlled.