Hey everyone hope you enjoyed the reaction! So for some reason my audio cut out for a little bit at the very end of the movie, so it cuts pretty suddenly from the end of the reaction to the end discussion, so sorry about that!! Thanks again to Tim and Cody for being on the channel! See you next for a surprise movie!!

Unless I'm mistaken, the bugs (Formics?) were a hivemind. The workers and soldiers were mindless drones, while the Queens were the ones with actual brains. To them, two Queens pitting thousands of drones against eachother was little more than a debate or argument. They had never encountered life outside themselves, so when they encountered humanity, they thought the humans were just mindless drones under control of a higher being. Their war was little more than negotiation. So when they realized that not only was each individual human a living, thinking being with the same sentience as a Queen, they were horrified at the realization they had killed millions of them! Mass murder on a scale they couldn't comprehend! Ender was a brilliant tactician, but the Queens accepted death because they couldn't live with their mistake. The last egg given to Ender was a way for both of them to start anew!

A *lot* of material got cut from the book. The book takes place over years, and if I remember correctly, Ender starts younger but ends older than he's ever depicted throughout the movie. A lot of the little questions you ended up with at the end also make more sense in the book. For example, "Why do they train in ground combat at Battle School?" Because most of the kids in Battle School aren't going to go on to be commanding space fleets, the fleets just recruit the best from the Battle School. Most kids will either command ground forces or be members of the ground forces (essentially, if they're dropouts who aren't fit to lead). A lot of the character's relationships also suffer for the movie's need to shorten the time span it takes place over. Bean, for example, has an almost entirely different relationship with Ender than in the film. They don't even come to Battle School together; Bean is a later recruit that ends up as one of the youngest members of Ender's Dragon Army (and remember, in the book Ender has been at the school for years by that point, he's significantly older than Bean). Ender and Bean's relationship mirrors Ender's relationship with the adult command structure, with Ender putting pressure on Bean the way the military put pressure on him, singling him out for greatness. As a result, the audience can begin to understand the way Ender's superiors feel guilty about how they treat Ender but do it anyway out of necessity because that's how Ender feels about Bean. This movie isn't bad, but it's just a case of the book being better, as it usually is.

in the first invasion, the buggers didn't even realize humans were sentient. they thought of us like worker ants with a comparison being like the worker buggers were no more sentient than finger nail clippings. and so they thought humans were the same and didn't know they were killing an intelligent species.

In the later books the new Hive Queen tells Ender that during the first and second invasions they assumed that Humans were hive minds like them, meaning killing one was only killing an extension of a Queen. Once they realized that each Human was an individual and killing one meant taking a life they decided to never invade Earth again as their species are not murderers. They will only kill drones in their personal wars, and killing Queens is extremely Taboo to them. (That egg he finds in the end is the new Formic Queen, all Queens adopting the memories of their past Queens. It takes him about 3000 years to find her a new home, but she talks to him from the egg when hes not in cryo sleep)

I think one of the things that made that twist hit harder in the book was that by the time that final battle happened, Ender was BEYOND done. He had been fighting for 6 years with rules that were ALWAYS against him. He had been so mentally broken that when he walked into the graduation simulation and saw the absolutely impossible odds he was up against, he said "fuck it" and blew up the planet because he decided that was the best way to get himself kicked out of the school. So basically, he wiped out an entire species on a whim.

I know everyone thinks the bug aliens are ugly, but I think they're oddly beautiful and I believe just as Ender does that they deserve to survive.

This was actually supposed to be a franchise, but because of how poorly the first one did they didn't expand on it. Leaves you wondering what they could have done after the end of this movie.

There’s something about Nick that makes him stand out from all the other reactors. It’s like he doesn’t care about making funny comments or try to put on a show for us. Just simple commentary and authentic tears. The best kind.

Okay, a lot of their concerns about the characters being kids is actually explained in the book. You see, these kids actually aren’t as young as they appear. They were each chosen at around the age of 6 and because of the travel in space, it kept them from aging while the people on Earth aged. So these kids could have actually been much older than they appeared. At the end of the book, so many years has passed that Ender’s brother back on Earth dies of old age, while Ender and his sister, who kept traveling the universe together, remained young. Also, unlike the movie, Ender’s journey from becoming a new recruit to Commander took years instead of months.

The reason for the zero gravity room was so they could learn to think in 3 dimensions

One of 2 books I read in middle school that I finished in 1 sitting instead of the 20 pages a day I was supposed to read. The movie's NEVER AS GOOD, but this one was damn decent.

The source book is really good. Its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, is even better (in my opinion).

Such an underrated movie

Nick: It's just simulations Me: >_> Yeah... simulations. That's it. *laughs nervously*

The sequel takes place 3000 years later with Ender being a Speaker of the Dead, sort of a priest like job and the egg snake queen that can speak with ender telepathically

31:02, "He ain't gonna get better, he cracked his head open."

Ender is supposed to be much younger and smaller than the others after he is promoted. But Asa is so tall, Bonzo doesn't seem to be as menacing as he should be. The final fight between them is supposed to be more David vs. Goliath

"I'm picking up an abusive father vibes from him..." Father proceeds to reassure his son of his quality and does his best to reduce his guilt and embarrassment

The man, the myth and the legend all watching this absolute gem!

In the book, it is explained that the aliens only communicate by thinking to each other. So when they came to colonize earth and found no one thinking to them, they assumed there was no intelligent life. However, oncer mazer rackem killed the queen, they realized that humans were intelligent and decided to stay away. Then, when ender began killing them, they realized that, lkke them, he was killing without realizing what he was doing, so they forgave him and left a message the only way they knew how. They recreated the structures of his dreams and left the queen larvae where he saw his sister, the thing he loved most. The timelines dont work in the movie but in the book, ender finds the larvae years later when he is governor of humanity's first colony planet that they took from the aliens.

So excited to see all three of you react together!!

watched this film again a couple of days ago, and went to order door dash, and legit, the door dasher's name was Ender

What a great group! Definitely do more reactions like this.

Tim: "Don't mind me, I'm just eating." 🤣🤣🤣

I love seeing you guys together! Yes, please give us more. 🤩🥰

I'm always happy when I see a movie before I read the book. Because that's how I can judge THE FILM without comparing it to the book. And I just really liked this movie. Having worked as a critic myself, I know how difficult it is to simply enjoy films afterwards.

Western culture (especially white English-speaking western culture, and American most of all) children are caught in a bizarre vice of being infantilized and simultaneously being required to function mature beyond their age and experience. "Ender's Game" more than other stories demonstrate this crushing dichotomy. To be clear, a lot of fantasy and fiction for younger readers present worlds or circumstances where children/adolescents are demanded to provide structure usually provided by adults, whether by design or by abandonment. Narnia, Ender's Game, The Wizard of Oz, the Lemony Snicket books, A Wrinkle in Time, The City of Ember, Harry Potter, etc; all are kids having to work out how to extricate themselves (or all of us) from the mess left in place by adult mismanagement or by circumstance. The Victorian romanticization of childhood as a time of 'innocence', ignorance, and purity, which served mainly to extend childhood into adulthood, ignoring the reality of physical maturity is what is at work in this attitude. (It is said the Victorians invented the concept of 'childhood'. Along with the modern cultural form of Santa Claus and St Valentine.) It is true that some children (as is true with adults) innately or through education/training are rendered more mature in their governance of their own lives and groups generally. In large families, necessity and family dynamics hasten maturity in the oldest children, causing them to be a parental understudy able to step in when one or both parents are unavailable. But by design and with cultural expectation children today are not being moved as they become ready into mature responsibilities; if anything, they are discouraged in tiny imperceptible ways by western culture. When the time comes for the taking on of responsibilities, it is jarringly sudden and immersive. The goal posts of expectation are suddenly thrown wide and very deep, and some individuals end up with a kind of PTSD that extinguishes any hope of growth while establishing an enduring self-doubt capping off that hope. Still, the desire to grow and to extend one's capability and power is innate in children. Their ambition is strong and they push to take on more than may be possible to handle. Their literature is FULL of successful scenarios of children being more mature and more suitable to adult roles than other adults. And, point of fact, there are similar documentations of children working sub rosa as adults without adults/authorities being aware. In other words, children managing themselves and even other children not just successfully without adult involvement, but while avoiding adult notice or interference. So the aspirational fiction so readily devoured by the youth literature/media market provides a template and encouragement for maturing children hungry for that encouragement. It's innate. The dichotomy still exists, however. Our culture seeks to isolate our children from the harsh realities of life, rather than inoculate them through training, experience, and encouragement. We should be preparing them, but parents and authorities can only mirror their own upbringing, which has been just as poor. Regardless of history, children will always be able to figure it out, so long as discouragement or jarring change doesn't break their spirits or their belief in themselves. Separate issue: Adults recruiting children as 'robots' to do immoral/unethical tasks due to the innate trust children have for their caregivers. Taking advantage of others, the abuse of trust and weaponizing natural tendencies against the person, that's reprehensible. To paraphrase Ender: Success is not as important as how you go about succeeding.

It's so awesome to see a 3 way review with you guys!! I may not have known much about the movie, other than hearing things here and there when it came out, but glad you guys could watch it together with all your different reactions. Also kudos to you for the editing all of you together to make it work! Can't wait to see the other films with all three of you!

Honestly this movie is one of the most faithful book adoptions I've ever seen

46:58 the best shot of the movie, just a single ship surrounded by fighters as the swarm is all around them

Exploring that moral ambiguity is why there's 15 more books

So many sci-fi tropes came from this story.

Oh my god, never in my life did I expect a reaction to this, I remember loving this movie, but I also don't really remember it, excited to be revisiting it.

The battle school and the combat room was to train them to think about how to assault different 3d spatial areas and the battle stars were supposed to represent asteroid and space debris formations they might encounter and to teach them to adapt their strategy to a bunch of different scenarios. And yes - also to identify the best potential commander(s). Command school was meant to refine Ender's command/leadership skills and to look at the battlefield from the perspective of an overall leader of an entire fleet who delegates tasks quickly and efficiently and also to refine his strategic skills and thinking. They skipped a lot of battle school, background on how and why things worked the way they did and a TON of the command school portion of the story. This movie could easily have been 3 separate movies. They were always hush-hush and the specific inner workings of the artificial gravity and other stuff related to the battle room (and also the ansible tech) because they didn't want people to know they were using adapted formic technology (because that's what it actually was). They also down-played the exhaustion of the recruits and Ender in this movie quite a bit. In the book, they were falling asleep at the controls and making costly mistakes because they were all just so worn out and ragged from the ridiculously accelerated training. They went through many more unfair fights against all the other teams than the only 1 that they showed. Sometimes they were only half an hour apart or an hour apart as well. Also, the fleet that they used to attack the formic home world was the oldest because it had to be sent out first because it had to travel the furthest. So they were basically assaulting the main power center of the entire alien race with a ghetto ass, outdated versions of their ships and tech in that fleet. That's one of the things that makes Ender's victory all the more impressive. Ender just thought that they were giving him artificial limitations on his capabilities to ratchet up the difficulty as part of the training regimen. They also skipped a major part of the story toward the end of the movie where Ender passed out from all the emotional stress and shock and lack of sleep. What they didn't show was that there had been factions on earth forming that opposed the treatment of the children and the war on the formics and that one of those factions assaulted the training facility just after Ender passed out and there was man-to-man fighting just outside the corridors of his room while Petra looked after him. Oh, also the final scenes weren't supposed to take place on a planet. It was actually supposed to be a large hollowed-out asteroid that acted as a forward base for the formics, which the humans had captured and partially renovated. Also, the queen communicated a lot more with Ender through their telepathy than they showed in this movie. The queen was also quite aware of Ender's thoughts as well and realized that he held extreme remorse about wiping them out and regretted his unwitting actions and resented the other humans for how they manipulated him.

This is great. It would be funny if you did a reaction with DylanIsInTrouble, because you would be giving an actual review and he would just be making fun of the movie. xD

Woah! Been watching you and totally Cody for a while, this is gonna be awesome man!

Thank you so much for this video, I love it! 😊❤

AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!! I've literally been wanting a reaction with you three guys in it!!!! My body is ready!!!! NOW YOU NEED TO DO IT IN LIVE ACTION!!!

Ender Wiggin: humanity’s greatest hero and war criminal.

I love all 3 of you! You guys are amazing!!!

A great movie I grew up watching and I really wish they could continue you this were Ender makes peace with the aliens and humans once he has accomplished his mission

IM SO SO HAPPY AND EXCITED TO SEE ALL THREE OF YOU TOGETHER AHHHHHH! 😆

I literally just got done watching this like 15 min ago I love love love this movie and each of you guys thank you so much for making my evening ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

29:54, "Don't Drop The Soap! Don't Drop The Soap!" Lol!!

9:10, no he's not the guy from ETERNALS, he's from Artemis Fowl, which is WORST DISNEY MOVIE EVER!

Dude, READ THE BOOKS! I can't express that enough for this series. The book for this, and next 3 books are absolutely insane. Plus, a companion series that follows Bean's life-pretty much from his birth to his death, and heavily involves Peter. I've never read books that make aliens feel as real as this.

Great reaction! I remember really liking the movie and then reading the books and liking them even more! Also, did not expect to stumble upon this reactor crossover!

I really like this movie, just a wonderful designs and yes the book is better in some ways but thats normal, I just really wish the rest of the books held up. Also good to see you all hanging out together! Hope it was as much fun as it looked

The funniest thing is when the viewer finds out that the bugs on planet Earth have not lost the Queen. The queens realized that they were killing intelligent beings (Man) and simply after the destruction of the ship they turned off their drones to retreat and give Man a chance to exist in the world, trying to find other planets for existence. But people decided to create a fleet and destroy the former enemy. If the USA attacked Japan because Japan had not yet capitulated, then Mankind destroyed the beetles because they were afraid of a second attack, but could not get in contact with them, just like the beetles could not make contact with Man. Except for Ender. The queen knew that her planet was going to end, and so she waited for Ender near their base. To give him a valuable cargo. Thanks to telepathy and Ender, the bugs found a way to save their race.

I like the part Formic Queen shows harmless to the boy and she wants him to save her species.

Enders taken to combat school at age 6 in the books , training is meant to take about 10 years but Ender leaves for command school after 4-5. so basically in the film they compressed 4 years of training into a few months hence why it got bad reviews. For what it is its still a good enough film and the twist at the end is a little heart breaking.

Great reaction guys! 👍🏿 I saw this film in the theater. I was pleasantly surprised. Very good movie.

Nick, depending on how much you remembered, it might have been such a challenge to not spoil it for Tim and Cody. It definitely would have been very hard for me to not give them at least some hints!

There were talks of a Sequel to the movie but it bombed at the box office, making $125 million dollars against a $110-115 million dollar budget, and not only that, author Orson Scott Card got himself cancelled, saying that he didn't believe in same sex marriage, calling it "sinful and distasteful." This is the reason why we will never see another Ender's Game movie.

I watched this at high school and every time Ender and Petra are together me and my friends keep saying “Kiss her ya fool”

As for the formics, killing a worker (a non-sentient part of the hive queen's mind) is not murder, but killing a queen is unthinkable because it never happened and never will. When they arrived on earth territory they spread out their mind looking for a fellow queen and found garbled nothing thoughts. What they saw was a bunch of non-sentients, until they realized each of those thoughts was an individual mind. This came came at the cost of a baby queen. The hive queens decided not to come to earth anymore, and hoped that humans wouldn't punish them for killing single minds. In the meantime they tried over and over to communicate with the humans but formics never evolved communication because all of their thoughts were connected and humans have a poor bond with the philotic web and their thoughts are a mess and very chaotic. Contingency plans were made; the hive queen pupae was hidden on a human conquered astroid, the hive queens called a philote to interceed on their behalf (the mind game), while trying to get ender to stop the humans, (up to and including trying to take over ender's mind). Ender was the only one they came close to communicating with and he still blew them the fuck up.

ender's game is on the tablet

Guys, I really enjoyed all three of you together reacting! Each of you have a unique personality but that also melds well with one another. I was definitely entertained and had a lot of fun moments watching. Thanks, you three. 💜💚💙

30:00, "RATED R!" LOL!!

The Music by Steve Jablonsky for this movie is amazing too

They were bred to be super smart just for the war and Ender is the smartest of the smart. They never lived as children so yes many function as adults. Also Battle School is just that. Battle training to teach them basic war skills, how to function as a team and to find and train the next commander.

wow !! excited for a reaction with all 3 of you!!

I've never seen this movie before. I'll definitely add it to my watchlist.

17:28, ", This is violent, Tim? After what you've seen?" Lol!

Literally 3 of my favourite reaction channels lmao

Sorry for all the comments but I love your videos. Your reactions are so cool. And I love your enthusiasm for movies.

Ender's Game is a hidden gem. One of my favorite sci fi movies ever.

They wanted ender over peter or valentine. Because peter would kill his enemies and be a tyrant after gaining the publics love, and valentine would let her empathy stop her from killing the enemy. The movie doesn't cover ender's relationship with valentine and peter very well. Ender loves his sister and has a reciprocated respect and trust with her. Ender loves peter, and inwardly respects him and craves his affection. peter did everything the Strategos wanted but was denied because of his efficiency, and was replaced by an illegal 3rd born, and outwardly hates his brother for succeeding where he failed. Inside, peter actually respects ender and wishes his relationship with his sister and brother where different, but is incapable of rising above his ego, ambitions, and psychopathy. Peter's relationship with Val and Ender never improved until he was Hegemon of the entirety of humanity and dying of old age. Ender ended uphaving almost a split personality having empathy and using that to get into his opponent's head, as well as think in very alien ways. "The enemy's gate is down" is an example of his strange thinking.

The book is SO much better. I've read it many times. There are several sequels and also a parallel series of books that follows the character of Bean. The first book in that series is Ender's Shadow and I've probably read it more times.

Imagine playing battle ship or call of duty then being told that the events in the game happened in real life

the one thing that I will say that the book does better then the movie is show why the bugs are not evil, Ender understands that to the formex since they are a have mind losing one drone is like the equivalent of a paper cut or a sun burn, they did not understand human individuality till it was to late, once they did they left humanity alone but humanity would never forget what they did to them and would never forgive it. Also in the book they were even younger

Ender was only 6 years old when he kicked the boy at the start. You also learn that the bully died from what ender did to him. He was 11 years old when he finished command school, and yes, bonzo died as well. There was a trial for all the higher ups at the battle school, and it was said that if the world dared to, they would have put ender on trial as well.

Must be a sheltered kid if you've never seen violence as a kid.

"How have they been at Command School for months if they only had 28 days left when they were still in Battle School?" Good catch! That's the first hint (first I've caught, anyway) that Command School is not what it seems. The 28 days were counting down until the beginning of the invasion -- Ender's first "training simulation." The truth is, Ender never fought a single simulation in Command School. They were all real battles. The invasion took months to finish, so Ender and his friends thought they were training for months, but the adults and one kid knew differently: six-year-old Bean figured it out long before the final battle. As a matter of fact, back when Sergeant Dap asked Ender if he thought he was the smartest kid there, the most accurate answer Ender could have given, if he'd only known it, would have been, "No, sir. The smartest person here is Bean, sir." Major Anderson actually thought Bean should be the chosen commander, but Colonel Graff thought Ender had better leadership potential, despite not having nearly the same brain power. He had a point; most of the other kids never did take Bean seriously like they did Ender. But the adults did charge Bean with the responsibility of taking over if Ender failed, a responsibility that Ender never knew anyone, let alone little Bean, had been given. In the very last moment of the invasion, after Ender had given the final orders for the suicide run at the planet, Bean actually did press his override button, for just a moment, to tell the pilots (who were real human soldiers, and he alone of the kids knew that) their sacrifice was recognized, grieved, and honored by at least one of their commanders. He's my favorite character in the series, and that is one of my favorite moments. I wish the movie hadn't had to leave it out, but I suppose it wouldn't mean much without the knowledge Bean had at the time, which the audience can't have yet because the big reveal has to hit hard when Ender receives it -- after the destruction of the planet.

How come this movie didn’t get a sequel and become the biggest movie franchise so popular like other similar movie franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, and the MCU?

19:40, "You've gotta hold your breath" lol!!!

The combination of 3 of my favourite reactors

Triple whammy favourite reactors video? Not only that but to ENDERS GAME???? TODAY IS A GREAT DAY

The star wars jokes are on point😭😭😭

It took them 25 years to make this movie happen.

First like! Nice job

Tim is having a hard time thinking about a child soldier, but unfortunately, there have been children in war. My people, the Hmong, during the Vietnam War, under the US CIA direction in Laos, a vast majority of the native recruitment were mostly younger men to male children with the promises of great rewards if victorious. Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father (2017) was Loung Ung’s memoir of her recruitment into the Khmer Rouge regime when she was seven years old. Boy Soldier (2019) from Russia is the story about six years old Sergi Aleshkov, the youngest warrior to be awarded the Medal "For Battle Merit" on April 26, 1943. There are international laws prohibiting children under 18 from being conscription. However, some countries still operate outside of the rule.

I actually really liked this movie, but I haven't finished the book. That's not the guy from Eternals, though. Eternals guy is Brian Tyree Henry, this guy is Nonso Anozie, he was in Cinderella.

I was JUST looking for something to have on while I clean the room. Noice.

29:57, "What is this movie rated again?" Lol!!

MCU Spider-Verse: zzZ Reactor-Verse: 🤯😎👌

I read this as a kid, my parents has this book on their shelf. I really wished they kept it to the book more, as there are THOUSANDS OF YEARS of Enders travels and influence on this galaxy.

Awesome

The Movie Reaction Trio… UNITE!

As young as the cast seem, they actually aged the characters form the book. Ender was actually six when he left home and was around 11(or was it 10?) during the final battle. The movie cut out many of the more disturbing things form the book as well as huge chunks of the story (what Valentine and Peter did to amass power on Earth while Ender was away eg). They also change lot of things as well as speeding up the story. The changes were understandable as the book's story is nigh unfilmable had they been faithful (can you imagine 6-10 year old children beating other kids to death?) . Also there is some aspect of the book that was rather obsoletes(the internet eg) so they have to update it. Overall while the movie was at at best decent, it felt a truncated cliff notes of the book. This is jarring for book readers considering the book is a multiple award winning seminal sci fi classic.

This was a FANTASTIC Collab. Three of my fav reviewers. Tim was so funny, Cody was informative and Nick was so caring. Loved every minute and I wasn't "Petra"fied. :)

If you LISTEN, you hear that Command School is based in a planet that belonged to the Formics.

The original Nebula-winning novella was the best version. He was pressed to stretch it into a book and then a series. Not sure either worked well, but certainly not better than the original. But popularity makes money, not skill or depth.

The book is so much more brutal and way sadder - especially because they were actually 6 years old, not 15- they were 15 when it ended. 9 yesrs of that :(

7:21: That wasn't Bean who vomited. Good joke, though. 😊

24:04 so it may be because i haven't seen the movie in a while, but this never made sense to me. He says Ender made him look like a fool, yet by Ender doing what he did, he got the team the win and people thinking that it was all Bonzo's plan to have him wait back and come out as a surprise after. Unless the guy who said smart move was one of the Salamanders. But i thought it was the enemy team commander

The training was to experiment with different strategies in different situations

Not really explained in the movie. The aliens landed on earth and indiscriminately slaughtered tens of millions of people. Its called the Scouring of China in universe, and that was just a scout force. Then they came with a bigger fleet.

Greatly enjoyed this collab! I'd love to see you do a reaction with BillyBinges, I think it would be SO much fun!! Thank you for supplying us with quality content, as usual ❤