In Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Game, Ender is continually set up against impossible odds by the International Fleet, which is part of a plan to train Ender to fight in the Third Invasion and end the bugger wars forever. Ender’s trials are portrayed more convincingly in the book, as the book shows him struggling with the expectations placed upon him more so than in the movie. An important theme in Ender’s Game is that Ender is continually kept in the dark about the events happening around him. This theme is prevalent throughout the book, and sets the stage for the book’s climax, the Third Invasion. Even in the epilogue following the final battle, this theme is sustained with Ender discovering that he unintentionally murdered both Stilson …show more content…
This lessens the scope of how much the International Fleet has been lying to Ender, leading to the reveal being less dramatic. The movie also completely erases the Locke and Demosthenes subplot, removes the epilogue of Ender moving to a colony with Valentine, and then replaces it with Ender finding the queen bugger’s egg on the same planet as the Command School and leaving to find a safe home for it. This also gets rid of the parallel between Ender and Peter at the end of the book, where it’s pointed out that in spite of Peter being portrayed as exceedingly cruel, he prevents the war on Earth which saves millions of lives. Ender kills billions of buggers in the Third Invasion, almost wiping out their race completely, despite being described as gentle and not wanting to hurt anyone. The movie’s tendency to cut anything not deemed an important event also makes it seem that Ender is unaffected by most of the events that occur. In the book, it is made completely clear that the system of both the Battle School and Command School are breaking Ender down, ultimately demonstrated by Ender being completely bedridden after the Third Invasion due to everything he’s endured. This also happens with the movie’s presentation of the characters, with more characters being sympathetic to Ender. This completely overrides a plot point in the book,