The International Military seek out a leader who can save the human race from an alien attack. Ender Wiggin, a brilliant young mind, is recruited and trained to lead his fellow soldiers into a battle that will determine the future of Earth.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Ender Wiggin is the youngest and most gifted of his family, in a world living in constant fear of invasion by Giant Bug people known as the Ferricks …. Fernics … Formics (thank you Wikipedia because they only mention their name once in the film)
He must pass through a rigorous mental training consisting of Zero G paintball, mentally taxing iPad games and “Photo Realistic” space battle simulations. (So any gamers perfect weekend minus the Mountain Dew and Internet Porn.)
So Ender Wiggins is played by Asa Butterfield, at 16 years of age I never expected his acting skill to be incredible but I have to say that after watching him for the best part of two hours he … wasn’t … at all. Now I’m not sure if this was intentional by the actor appearing out of place throughout the majority of the movie, only really feeling like he fits in the film after Ender gets promoted to the rank of Commander. If this is intentional then it’s a commendable performance and one that really makes you feel as out of place as Ender does, but then I think back to Asa’s performance in the 2011 film Hugo where his performance was very similar and honestly kind of annoying.
Ender’s character was by no means the worst in the film Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff was more disheartening due to the fact that Ford just looked like he was picking up a paycheck for the whole film. This is Harrison Fucking Ford, a man that the entire planet knows can act he just shows little to know enthusiasm throughout the entire film.
A trait that thankfully the other heavy hitter in the film Ben Kingsley has managed to avoid, Kingsley plays Mazer Rackham the war hero that drove the Formics away after their first invasion, and is now charged with training Ender so that he is able to save humanity. Kingsley plays Rackham as a mysterious yet open character making him about the only character in the film I actually cared about.
Never having read the book I was left with the feeling that allot of the character development was chopped out of the film.
The leader of the Salamanders, Bonzo (Moises Arias), is the My way or the high way kind of leader that clashes with Ender on multiple encounters finally culminating in a fist fight in the showers that ultimately leaves Bonzo horribly crippled and I felt nothing. I didn’t care if he was going to die or if he’d just never walk again, my main concern was hopefully the idiot who put a step in the middle of a shower room was fired.
I came away from the film with the urge to read the book purely to see if it built up on these characters and actually made me care about them.
Anyway let’s get away from the bad, Enders game is visually beautiful both the CG visuals and the stylised set pieces are incredible. Everything gives of this very Mass Effecty vibe from the IF uniforms to the massive planet destroyer MMD ship. The visuals were crisp and vibrant, really it was the main reason why I wanted to see the movie in the first place and it’s well worth it just to see.
The Formics themselves were a race that I wanted to know more about, but I think the directors decision to limit what the viewer knows/can learn about this threat to humanity really helped you to empathise with Ender and the rest of the IF’s fear and lack of understanding about these creatures. Even know I’m sat trawling through Wikipedia articles on them just to try and gleam some more information on this mysterious race. I wanted to learn about them in the same way that Ender did, and to be honest I felt his frustration at the end of the film regarding the hefty decisions that the IF made for him.
All things said and done I’d say that Ender’s Game is worth a watch even if it’s just for the visuals. I felt it could have benefited from some heavier character development or conversely a greater focus on the actual strategy and tactics behind the epic space battles, each of which is over in less than two minutes.
Enders Game gets my rating of:
Meh!
