Ender's Game: 6 Reasons It's Guaranteed To Suck

3. The Cast

I won€™t rant on about this too much, as a lot of it is because the characters aren€™t as myself or other readers will have imagined them in the book. And that€™s something that can€™t really be overcome. I€™m not a big fan of child characters in films, as they€™re usually irritating and unbearable to have around and you wish they€™d never been written in from the start. That can€™t be the case with Ender€™s Game as it€™s the focal point of the whole story. But crucially, in the books, their thoughts and inner struggles, challenges and emotions can be clearly conveyed to the audience, and this is what makes us warm to the characters so thoroughly. Picking a cast that will be able to deliver this charisma, with the inevitable things that will be dropped from the script due to length and so on, will be a big challenge. The young cast certainly seems to drain the current pool of young acting talent, but whether they can make us love the characters as we did when reading about them will remain to be seen, particularly for creating such brilliant but periodically ruthless characters as Ender himself. There are also a couple of big names involved, mainly Harrison Ford. And I have to say, I feel this to be a lazy choice. Cast as Colonel Graff, I really don€™t expect him to bring much to that role. Ford€™s a great actor of course, but all I can think when I picture this is him wearing the uniform from The Last Crusade when he gets Hitler€™s autograph. Colonel Graff doesn€™t wear a Nazi uniform of course, but that image of him is where my mind goes. Graff is a manipulative character, working Ender to very particular ends, and I€™m just not sure Ford€™s the right man for the job, and dare I say it, when was the last time we got a really great performance from him? The aforementioned Last Crusade? With Ford is Ben Kingsley, an excellent actor without doubt, but I can€™t say I ever pictured tough, jaded Mazer Rackham being like him. It just doesn€™t seem very fitting, and also means we€™re likely to get much more screen time for the hero of the Second Invasion than he ever got in the book, despite his importance. Like Colonel Graff, Rackham received much more coverage in later books of the series and had only a limited, very personal role with Ender in the first book.