Ender’s Game (*½)

Directed by: Gavin Hood

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Stanfield, Abigail Breslin, Viola Davis, Aramis Knight, Suraj Parthasarathy, Jimmy Pinchak, Moisés Arias

Seen: December 6^th 2013

*½ Out of ****

Ender’s Game is based on the popular (young adult) science fiction novel of the same name by Orson Scott Card. The book is enjoyable and very interesting due to its themes of discipline, in-depth training and children waging war. Unfortunately for the movie the book seems to have been too full of complexity and deeply rich story ideas to be effectively translated to the big screen. Some characters even manage to come across as dumb caricatures, while others are merely faint shadows of their characters in the book. Visually the movie is impressive, with sets and digital battles impressively produced; but the acting never swept me away, as I don’t know if even the actors knew the full relevance of many of their lines, seeing that so much of significance has been completely ignored in an effort to get the story into under two hours.

Ender Wiggin (Butterfield) is the 3^rd child in a society where only 2 are allowed. He was “approved” by the powers that be however, as his siblings showed signs of what the higher ups were looking for. Peter (Pinchak), his brother, violently abuses Ender while Valentine (Breslin), his sister, is a very emotional young girl. Ender is selected for his effective and conclusive conflict resolving nature, and he starts the movie with a monitor – technology in his neck to track him. After some fights and other happenings at school, he is selected as a cadet to attend Battle School by Colonel Hyrum Gruff (Ford) and Major Gwen Anderson (Davis), from the International Fleet. He leaves earth for training, a highly coveted role. The International Fleet are up against an alien race, The Formics, and they believe the only minds capable of truly waging effective war are those of children, and they’re on a drive to find the most capable young general for all of earth’s armies.

At Battle School Ender becomes popular/infamous, he doesn’t stand back from anything despite his diminutive size. In a “training group” he meets the bombastic and arrogant Bonzo Madrid (Arias), as well as the gentle and caring Petra Arkanian (Steinfeld). Bonzo becomes an enemy, Petra a close friend. Ender doesn’t let anything hold him back though, and he learns exceptionally fast, quickly taking command of his own troupe and soon enough devastating other troupes with his effective and innovative command. The training goes on and before long Ender should be ready to face the real threat of the Formics as a leader, but until then the training will get more grueling.

Ender’s Game loses more than what is required to faithfully tell the story in the translation from page to screen. Just the arena training fights for instance, features in many chapters of the book, where in the movie it doesn’t make up much more than 5 minutes – losing a lot of the strategizing and plotting from the book – and that is but one thing. I thought Ender’s Game was a weak movie, with terrible plot development, especially taking into account the source material’s richness. Rather watch The Hunger Games: Catching Fire again.