WATCH: The long-awaited Ender's Game trailer

The trailer: Ender's Game is a modern, big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, which can only mean one thing: Aliens are threatening the human race again. "They know our strategies. They've learned our weaknesses. And the alien attack nearly destroyed us. That must never be allowed to happen again," intones Harrison Ford's Colonel Graff in the first trailer for the long-awaited adaptation of Orson Scott Card's beloved 1985 sci-fi novel. In X-Men: Origins director Gavin Hood's rendition, which is scheduled to hit theaters in November, Hugo star Asa Butterfield stars as Ender Wiggin, a child solider being trained to wage war against an insect-like alien species. Does Ender's Game stand out from from the many, many other sci-fi movies being released in 2013, or will this adaptation fall flat?

The reaction: This trailer "opens and ends with epic scenes that should make your jaw drop, " says Alex Billington at FirstShowing. "Everything about this footage looks awesome, even the CGI."

"No expense was spared in conjuring up this world for the multiplex," agrees Kevin Jagernauth at Indiewire — but can Card's novel really be translated for the big screen? "It's not necessarily the most action-driven piece of writing, and the concept is pretty ambitious," says Jagernauth.

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Still, let's not forget that Hood has spent the past four years working on Ender's Game, says Sandy Schaefer at Screen Rant, and "his passion could pay off with a blockbuster that retains the substance of its source material while bringing it to life with contemporary visual effects and style."