Ender’s Game is a book about six year old Ender, who is a “third”. Ender has two older siblings. Peter, his older brother, and Valentine, his older sister. Colonel Graff invites Ender to battle school in space in order to stop the formics from attacking Earth. After agreeing, he goes up to battle school up in space. Eventually he moves up to command school. It is located in the formic planet. The movie actually had a lot differences from the book. To me, the main difference in the movie was that Ender was actually a teenager. I could tell he wasn’t a six year old because he was way over four feet tall. In both the movie and book, command school and battle school were the main settings.
At school on Earth, Ender gets bullied. A bully named Stilson always bullied him and harassed him. He did not expect it when Ender beat him up very harshly. Instead of being happy that he beat up the bully, he was upset and felt bad. In both the movie and book he felt really bad. After Colonel Graff invited Ender to battle school, he accepted. Since battle school is located in space Graff took him and other “lauchies” to a rocket. However, in the book Ender gets into a fight with Bernard and breaks his arm. In the movie, the most exciting thing that happened is when Alai puked. Gross. Ender was put into the Salamander army. When I first saw the Salamander army bunks, I didn’t really imagine it to look like it.
In both the book and movie, Ender is put in the Salamander army. There he makes only one friend. Her name is Petra. The Salamander commander’s name is Bonzo. In the book, I thought that Bonzo was a tall teenager with black long hair. I really don’t know why! Bonzo was a jerk in both book and movie. In the movie, Bonzo is really cocky and mean to Ender. But instead of being a tall teen with black hair, he’s this very short teen with black short hair. Complete opposite. When I first saw him, I laughed because I never thought Bonzo would be a jerk to Ender when he has to look up to talk to him. In both the book and movie, Bonzo and Ender fight in the bathroom. Just like Stilson, Ender beats him up pretty badly. Like the book, Bonzo suffers very bad injuries but does not die. In the book I actually thought he died but he didn’t.
Ender also became a commander in movie and book. He became the commander of his own army called the “Dragon” army. Along with him came Alai, Bean, Bernard, and others. In the movie, Petra also joins the Dragon army. In the book, she doesn’t join them. One thing that I thought that was also different was that in the movie Bernard wasn’t mean to Ender like in the book. I was surprised because I thought that the producers would want more than one of Ender’s enemies.
With Ender leading the Dragon army, he also had the newest and youngest cadets. Ender trained his army and they eventually had a battle with other armies. They always seemed to win. I was a little shocked because the reason the Dragon army stopped being an army was because they never won. I was impressed that Ender could go from a six year old (or teen) that was scared and shy, to a commander who brought back the Dragon army.



In both stories, Ender graduates battle school and goes to commander school. Commander school is different from battle school. In the movie, commander school is located on the formics’ planet. While at command school, Ender is tutored by Mazar Rackham. Rackham was an old war hero. Mazer would set up training activities for Ender. When Ender gets better and better, Rackham made the simulations harder. Ender still did well on them. Mazer Rackham didn’t look like anything like how I pictured him. He had tattoos all over his face in the movie. I pictured him to be an older man with gray hair.
After all his simulations, Rackham “gives” Ender his final test. Ender ends up sacrificing most of his fighters in order to launch a device. This device had enough power to destroy the entire formic planet. The battle was finished. Ender had beaten his final test, at least that’s what he thought. He was surprised to see commanders celebrating for his win. Mazer then comes up to him and tells him that that was no ordinary simulation. It was the real battle between the formics and humankind! While everyone was celebrating, Ender was mad and disappointed that he just wiped out the formics and their planet. And he was upset that all his fighters went on a suicide mission and he didn’t know. In both movie and book, the final battle was the “final test” without Ender knowing.
If you ask me, the book was all right. The thing that I didn’t really like/understand was that the book was that it was really long to get to the point. Some parts were exciting to me and other parts were a little dull to me. While in the movie, I really thought it was a great production. To me it was exciting, fast, and funny. I personally think the movie is better but to understand the movie, you’d have to read the book. Certain parts of the book are in the movie but not all of them. The book takes a little while to get to the main event but it was still good. I still think the movie was better because of all its action. I also think that the director changed some parts from the book because if he included everything from the book, I think that the movie would’ve been a few hours long. Read it and watch it!