Review – Ender’s Game

It has been many years since the Formics, an advanced race of insectoid aliens, were beaten back after they swarmed the planet earth. Now the earth’s forces are on a wartime footing, pooling all of their resources in preparation for a much larger second-wave attack. And to lead the attack they are conscripting children from around the world to be their ultimate tacticians in the upcoming war. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is one such candidate, but the precocious cadet is not well-liked and will need to win over his peers and outwit his authorities if he is to succeed.

It’s difficult to review a film when you’ve had such a personal response to the book that inspired it. A lot of what resonated with me about the novel Ender’s Game was that it was more a less a high school story: the kids are bullies and the institution is needlessly cruel, but with a bit of ingenuity and perseverance you might make it through anyway. There is not so much of that in this film adaptation. Instead of us getting much screen time devoted to Ender interacting with his peers, we get Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) explaining the plot to his second-in-command (Viola Davis).

And this is the biggest weakness of the film: we see very little of the action play out organically, and instead we’re told about it by other characters beforehand or afterwards. In an early scene, Ender is having an operation to have an implant removed. As the doctor is about to remove it she tells him it won’t hurt a bit, and then painfully pulls it from the back of his spine. It’s a level of medical sadism which is completely over the top in trying to get across the point of the scene, which is that his minders are trying to deliberately provoke him, because we have already been told the loss of the implant is itself a form of punishment.

At its best, Ender’s Game has some gorgeous visuals that are well integrated into the story. The battle simulations, the alien architecture and the spaceship battles are all a stylistic triumph. And if Ford doesn’t strive for his performance, Butterfield gives it everything he’s got. Outside of that, though, there’s not a lot to recommend this film as a cinematic experience. And considering the outrageously homophobic statements of the author/producer Orson Scott Card, I wouldn’t blame anyone who wanted to give it a miss.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ev-nOWJH8&w=400]