So, this movie got pre-panned by being associated with the vile homophobe Orson Scott Card. And I confess that I was too lazy to do the moral thing and torrent it, so y’know, I guess I’m part of the problem that way.

But leaving that aside… this is a really good movie, actually. I mean, I don’t know how it would work for someone who’d never read the book; but if you have, the movie is a more faithful translation than you’d think. It has the battle school of course, and the war; but it also has the videogame in it, and it shares the moral core of the book, undercutting its apparent militarism.

The casting works really well; they aged the kids up to a plausible point, so that it seems roughly on par with a standard YA movie in terms of the characters’ ages (though I think more diverse than most of them), and it didn’t seem weird that kids were doing things, although they never explained why a certain key character couldn’t have done things themselves.

I think this is worth seeing, and I think if it weren’t tied to Card — and to a certain Ayn Randian kind of attitude in nerds who focus more on the “super-genius who nobody understands” part than the anti-militaristic part — it would’ve gotten much better reviews.