"Ender’s Game” is thoughtful science fiction with a complex central character. Movies like it are rare. At a time when most films of its kind aim only to wow audiences with dazzling action, it’s more concerned with its ideas and tracking the growth of its titular hero. Sadly, it’s poorly staged and at times awkwardly acted, which reduces it to a failed attempt at greatness.
“Ender’s Game” is set on a future Earth that barely survived an alien attack. Although mankind successfully defended its home, the losses were devastating and the threat of another invasion still exists. To find a leader capable of understanding and defeating an enemy who doesn’t think like a human, the military looks to the younger generation.
Enter Ender, a walking anomaly. The youngest of three children, he looks like the runt of the litter. He’s short, scrawny, and walks with his shoulders hunched over, like he’s afraid someone might see him if he stands upright. With the exception of a bullying older brother, his family loves and encourages him, and his teachers respect his intelligence, so this is simply who he is.
However, hidden within that gaunt exterior is the mind of a strategist, if not a leader. In an early scene, military recruiter Colonel Gaff (Harrison Ford) watches as Ender successfully defends himself in a school fight and then pummels his persecutor into permanent submission. When Gaff asks Ender why he took the fight as far as he did, the young man replies, “Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too, so they’d leave me alone.”
The film follows Ender as he enters a special program in which young recruits are trained to be Earth’s military elite. But Gaff is looking for “the one,” and believes he’s found him in Ender, so he begins to mold him into a leader. In an interesting scene, he praises his prized recruit while collectively insulting the others. “Sir, you made them hate me,” Ender complains. “So?” Gaff replies. “What will you do about it? Crawl into a corner? There’s only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that’s being so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you.”
Slowly, Ender not only overcomes adversity but also makes friends and allies of nearly everyone, becoming a true leader in the process.
But can he win the war? When he severely injures a fellow student who attacks him, he decides to quit the program. Gaff views Ender’s moral dilemma as a weakness. “Ender’s Game” isn’t content with turning over only a few thematic stones, but wants to expose the belly of every rock in the forest.
Ender’s coming of age story is well-written, but it also bogs down the film, which runs out of steam before the big battle at the end. There’s a big twist, but it oddly lets the rest of the air out of the movie. Essentially, the climax in “Ender’s Game” comes and goes without the viewer realizing it.
While the script by director Gavin Hood, based on an ‘80s novel of the same name, deserves praise, and the visuals during the end battle are spectacular, there’s too much here that doesn’t work. Some of the acting is awkward, and many scenes come across as stagey. Asa Butterfield makes a good Ender, but his performance is uneven due in large part to poor directing; in some scenes, he’s powerful and effective, while in others, he stumbles through his lines. Also, a subplot involving a video game that telepathically connects Ender to the alien queen is never fully explained, which left me confused.
Still, I admire enough about the movie to give it a mild recommendation. I rather like the ending, which is nothing less than brave. Hood earned my respect for pushing it past the suits at the studio, who must have pulled for a happier coda. But to do so would have undermined the movie’s bigger themes: the consequences of fear on a national scale and the ethics of genocide as an act of preservation.
Good science fiction deals with themes that are relevant today in a fantastic setting. “Ender’s Game” does this well. What it does not do well is layer its thoughtfulness with cinematically engaging filmmaking. The more I think about this, the more disappointed I am. This could have been a great movie.
Two-and-a-half stars out of four. Rated PG-13 for violence, sci-fi action and thematic material.