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Saw Ender's game with the usual suspects- amusingly enough, I don't think any of them but K were interested, but since ND came from out of town and was all, "Let's go watch Ender's Game!" But then he went and saw M instead, even though it was his suggestion!
Anyways, it was a decent effort, but ultimately felt short. For one thing, I think they condensed things too much. We didn't really get to see Ender prove himself. Like one match in the battle room under Bonzo, then he all of a sudden gets Dragon Army, and they just show a little stat screen showing how Dragon rose through the ranks, and next thin you know, its the big match that becomes relevant to the ending of the movie. Like I don't need to see all those matches, but give us like little snippets of flashes of brilliant strategy or something.
They also don't capture how harrowing "command school" was- like they showed one failed battle, which fails to capture how ragged they were running these kids. Petra falling asleep from sleep deprivation, some of the other kids flipping out and just doing the equivalent of rage quitting a scenario by playing recklessly. Which I think was important to show how big the stakes were and how effed up that they thought it was just a game- I mean, it wasn't just that they genocided the formics, they also didn't know actual people were dying. So I don't think the movie really captured the gravity of the situation, how burned out they were throughout and how guilty everyone felt after.
I also don't like that they half-assed things. Like Ender is supposed to be kinda a sociopath- not as sociopathic as Peter, but you have to be pretty ruthless to win. His name is friggin "Ender" for a reason! But I guess they didn't want that in a protagonist? So he ends up accidentally only crippling Bonzo rather than having instinctively gone for the kill like in the book. Which, they already showed he's got that killer instinct from the video game where he killed the giant by clawing through his eye. So its not like they haven't established he's kinda scary like that! The way things went down in the book, Bonzo just got paralyzed by accidentally slipping when Ender hit him, rather than Ender not holding back. Which I think takes away from the character and his path.
Also, since if they did another movie in the series I didn't think they'd do Ender's Shadow since it would be a lot of the same movie but from a different person's perspective, I was hoping they'd just combine the two books for this movie. But nope, we hardly get the importance of Bean, other than a throwaway line when Razer was telling Ender to rely on his jeesh more, and not do things like micromanage Bean. Because Ender was the overall strategist, and Bean was the one who knew how to get Ender's ideas done.
TV commentary:
Legend of Korra- Hmm, it seems like after last ep's "history lesson", Korra has become infinitely more tolerable. Who knows how long that will last though. I hate how Lin is being snowed by those two jerk detectives. It makes her look dumb and kind craps on both her and Toph. But OMG, I swear if Asami actually thinks Mako took her on the sting operation to distract her, and not believe that he's being framed by Varrick, I'm gonna be so pissed!
ME blather- Completed solo mastery again. So I'm confident I can solo gold consistently with the krogan battlemaster, though its a bit of a slobber-knocker. I arm him with a reegar carbine X w/spare thermal clip V and shredder mod V, incendiary ammo IV, shotgun rail amp III, cyclonic modulator IV, and the berserk package V. Its pretty straightforward, just get into the thick of it, melting enemies with the reegar, and if they're still up/your shields are about to go down, biotic charge to refill your shields/hopefully cause a fire explosion. But play smart, its easy to get caught up in the mix and just stand there and try and hammer it out, but you got to just do moving fracases. If there starts being too many, run to thin the crowd into something more manageable.
Amusingly enough, just getting in the face of two primes at once is no big deal- its the bombers/hunters/pyros/rocket troopers that are the problem. Obviously, alone those guys are meat. But pyros can get your shields down fast, and the hunters plasma shotgun blasts/bomber shocks can stun lock you, preventing you from charging to replenish shields, or even reloading, leaving you vulnerable to a possible one or two shot from the rocket troopers rockets or the bomber bombs.
Anyways, it was a decent effort, but ultimately felt short. For one thing, I think they condensed things too much. We didn't really get to see Ender prove himself. Like one match in the battle room under Bonzo, then he all of a sudden gets Dragon Army, and they just show a little stat screen showing how Dragon rose through the ranks, and next thin you know, its the big match that becomes relevant to the ending of the movie. Like I don't need to see all those matches, but give us like little snippets of flashes of brilliant strategy or something.
They also don't capture how harrowing "command school" was- like they showed one failed battle, which fails to capture how ragged they were running these kids. Petra falling asleep from sleep deprivation, some of the other kids flipping out and just doing the equivalent of rage quitting a scenario by playing recklessly. Which I think was important to show how big the stakes were and how effed up that they thought it was just a game- I mean, it wasn't just that they genocided the formics, they also didn't know actual people were dying. So I don't think the movie really captured the gravity of the situation, how burned out they were throughout and how guilty everyone felt after.
I also don't like that they half-assed things. Like Ender is supposed to be kinda a sociopath- not as sociopathic as Peter, but you have to be pretty ruthless to win. His name is friggin "Ender" for a reason! But I guess they didn't want that in a protagonist? So he ends up accidentally only crippling Bonzo rather than having instinctively gone for the kill like in the book. Which, they already showed he's got that killer instinct from the video game where he killed the giant by clawing through his eye. So its not like they haven't established he's kinda scary like that! The way things went down in the book, Bonzo just got paralyzed by accidentally slipping when Ender hit him, rather than Ender not holding back. Which I think takes away from the character and his path.
Also, since if they did another movie in the series I didn't think they'd do Ender's Shadow since it would be a lot of the same movie but from a different person's perspective, I was hoping they'd just combine the two books for this movie. But nope, we hardly get the importance of Bean, other than a throwaway line when Razer was telling Ender to rely on his jeesh more, and not do things like micromanage Bean. Because Ender was the overall strategist, and Bean was the one who knew how to get Ender's ideas done.
TV commentary:
Legend of Korra- Hmm, it seems like after last ep's "history lesson", Korra has become infinitely more tolerable. Who knows how long that will last though. I hate how Lin is being snowed by those two jerk detectives. It makes her look dumb and kind craps on both her and Toph. But OMG, I swear if Asami actually thinks Mako took her on the sting operation to distract her, and not believe that he's being framed by Varrick, I'm gonna be so pissed!
ME blather- Completed solo mastery again. So I'm confident I can solo gold consistently with the krogan battlemaster, though its a bit of a slobber-knocker. I arm him with a reegar carbine X w/spare thermal clip V and shredder mod V, incendiary ammo IV, shotgun rail amp III, cyclonic modulator IV, and the berserk package V. Its pretty straightforward, just get into the thick of it, melting enemies with the reegar, and if they're still up/your shields are about to go down, biotic charge to refill your shields/hopefully cause a fire explosion. But play smart, its easy to get caught up in the mix and just stand there and try and hammer it out, but you got to just do moving fracases. If there starts being too many, run to thin the crowd into something more manageable.
Amusingly enough, just getting in the face of two primes at once is no big deal- its the bombers/hunters/pyros/rocket troopers that are the problem. Obviously, alone those guys are meat. But pyros can get your shields down fast, and the hunters plasma shotgun blasts/bomber shocks can stun lock you, preventing you from charging to replenish shields, or even reloading, leaving you vulnerable to a possible one or two shot from the rocket troopers rockets or the bomber bombs.