# Who was the target audience for Ender's Game (Movie)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [March 11, 2021, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668 "2021-03-11T02:53:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tilt-A-Whirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@Tilt-A-Whirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tilt-A-Whirl)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/1 "2021-03-11T02:53:27Z")
I recently watched Ender’s Game, and I couldn’t figure out who it was aimed at. Didn’t seem like a kid’s movie, but it didn’t quite seem like it was for adults either. Who was the target audience? I have not read the book. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/2 "2021-03-11T03:09:34Z")
The target audience was anyone who liked the book. It was a bog-standard moneygrab adapation. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/3 "2021-03-11T03:11:50Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > The target audience was anyone who liked the book. And for this member of the target audience, I passed on the movie. I could tell it was best avoided. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/4 "2021-03-11T03:12:40Z")
I’ve never seen the movie, but the book probably counts as “Young Adult.” I was in high school the first time that I read it around 1990. > **[8 Big Differences Between The Ender's Game Movie And Book](https://www.cinemablend.com/new/8-Big-Differences-Between-Ender-Game-Movie-Book-40120.html)** > > Still, because the perspective in the novel needed to be changed to suit the needs of the film and because Card’s original novel is highly detailed and accurate in its intentions, Ender’s ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/5 "2021-03-11T03:15:44Z")
Seemed to be the same young adult audience that The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent were targeting. Possibly a bit younger, maybe Percy Jackson like. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/6 "2021-03-11T03:17:03Z")
> [@Tilt-A-Whirl](#): > > I have not read the book. Also, [this XKCD](https://xkcd.com/635/) makes no sense to you! ---
**Author:** ![Tilt-A-Whirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@Tilt-A-Whirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tilt-A-Whirl)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/7 "2021-03-11T03:20:15Z")
Boy, does it ever not! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/8 "2021-03-11T03:34:19Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Also, [this XKCD](https://xkcd.com/635/) makes no sense to you The weird part is that the comic (and that part of the book) came true. It’s just that it wasn’t Wordpress, but rather a microblogging service designed to make it impossible to express complex thoughts, and the things posted to said blog were the stupidest bullshit imaginable. And yet that person was voted into power largely as a result. We truly are living in a sci-fi future. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/9 "2021-03-11T04:21:58Z")
> [@Tilt-A-Whirl](#): > > Boy, does it ever not! > **[635: Locke and Demosthenes - explain xkcd](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/635:_Locke_and_Demosthenes)** > > Explain xkcd is a wiki dedicated to explaining the webcomic xkcd. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/10 "2021-03-11T05:43:39Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > The target audience was anyone who liked the book. Sort of. It was a subset, of which I’m a member: _“People who liked the book so much that they’ll watch a bad movie made from it.”_ Or to be charitable call it “…pay money to see a movie that, at two hours, can’t help but be a pale shadow of the original.” ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/11 "2021-03-11T06:15:41Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > Seemed to be the same young adult audience that The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent were targeting. This. _Ender’s Game (1993)_ was released as part of the 2010s trend of book-based dystopian YA movies, and was presumably aimed at the same audience. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/12 "2021-03-11T06:37:26Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > This. _Ender’s Game (1993)_ 1. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/13 "2021-03-11T06:55:37Z")
What I had intended to write was “2013”. As usual, I forgot what decade this is. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/14 "2021-03-11T09:57:14Z")
Similarly in 2014 was the big budget movie release of “The Giver”, another movie adaptation nobody asked for aimed at the dystopian YA crowd. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2021, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/15 "2021-03-11T16:54:06Z")
I’m probably the only one out there who thought the movie was better than the book. I found the book too shallow to be novel length and the twist ending to be predictable and anti-climactic. I thought the 2-hour movie was sufficient for the story, the visuals were much better than the book explained, and the extended ending was much more interesting than the book. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/16 "2021-03-12T22:36:21Z")
It was a very popular book that people had been trying to adapt into a movie for years. It was always a challenge to do so because it’s hard to hang a big budget movie on a bunch of child actors and the effects to make the Battle Room anything like the book are non-trivial. And then they finally did it and it was… ok, I guess. I liked the book. I saw the movie, and I don’t remember anything of it. So it at least wasn’t so bad I remember how bad it was. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2021, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-target-audience-for-enders-game-movie/937668/17 "2021-03-12T22:42:21Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > Similarly in 2014 was the big budget movie release of “The Giver”, another movie adaptation nobody asked for aimed at the dystopian YA crowd. I think the studios were looking for a YA novel series to turn into films, much as The Hunger Games, Divergent and Twilight had been previously.