Ender’s Game shouldn’t work as a movie. The Orson Scott Card book has a repetitive plot with overly complicated character arcs. The space battle sequences are unfathomably mammoth. And it has an ending that overshadows the rest of the story. Yet somehow, Ender’s Game works as a movie in all the ways it struggled as a book.
In 2136, the International Fleet operates in space and trains young children to be warriors. Fifty years earlier, an alien species called Formics attacked the Earth but were fought off. The International Fleet is relying on the quick…