Review: ENDER'S GAME

ENDER'S GAME  (SCI-FI)
2.5 out of 4 stars
Directed by Gavin Hood
Starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, Aramis Knight, Moises Arias, Abigail Breslin, Ben Kingsley
PG-13 for some violence, sci-fi action and thematic material.
Verdict: Although I have no comparisons to offer to the source material, ENDER'S GAME is an intriguing meditation on ethics in warfare, but shaky and unimpressive in areas of character and plot progression, and a little cheesy besides.
YOU MAY ENJOY ENDER'S GAME IF YOU LIKED:

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS  (2013)
HUGO  (2011)
ELYSIUM  (2013)
TITAN A.E.  (2000)
SILENT RUNNING  (1972) 

Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME is one of the most revered works of science fiction literature of the last 50 years, but before the film neared its release, I had been scantily informed about any details of its characters or story.  As such, I went into ENDER'S GAME without assumptions or anticipations beyond the film's marketing campaign, which apparently is pretty vague about the workings of the story, not to spoil anything.
The film is set about 120 years into the future, where it has been 50 years since Earth suffered a devastating attack by an alien race called the "Formics" (prudently adopting the aliens' name from later books in the series, rather than the original book's "Buggers"), and emerged victorious thanks to the heroic sacrifice of the legendary Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley).  Now, humanity's International Fleet is preparing for the next invasion by training youth soldiers recruited from the most brilliant strategists, most brilliant of them being Andrew "Ender" Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), who Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) is convinced is the child to lead the fleet's forces into battle.  Ender is sent to the Command School, a space station where the best candidates train for battle against the Formics in grueling competitions, and where Ender must also contend with the nastier competition outside of the battle simulations, where he clashes with his spiteful classmates.
Published in 1985, Ender's Game foresaw the prevalence of issues of importance today such as the nature and effect of video game violence on the children who play said games, drone warfare, and the prominence of internet and e-mail.  But since the 1980s, Hollywood has been struggling to get a movie made of it, dealing with its author's reluctance to approve a production, due to the cerebral nature of the material making a translation to the screen difficult, and in the past 15 years, attempts at actual production development have been on and off as prominent talents have tried and failed to bring the film about.
Unlike JOHN CARTER, based on A Princess of Mars, another science fiction literary classic which faced an arduous path (a significantly more troublesome one) to the cinema screen, writer/director Gavin Hood's ENDER'S GAME makes it to the delivery stage with many of its ideas still intact and fresh.  Admittedly, judging by what I had picked up about the story, in addition to author Orson Scott Card's conservative vitriol over gay rights, I assumed that the film would have a Michael Bay-esque, jingoistic approach to warfare, about a young boy becoming a great war hero, which was refreshingly the opposite of the fact.  ENDER'S GAME is an interesting treatise on the ethics of warfare and a militaristic society.  Everyone wants security, but how we get it matters, and there are questions about virtues and vices of fighting for defense and further

preemptive measures.
Unfortunately, while the ideas are strong, the execution is not always smooth.  The biggest trouble for the film is showing the development of its characters, particularly Ender, as his emotional conflicts and authoritative developments are moved along herky-jerkily, but Butterfield's acting is deft nonetheless, within the weakness of the script.  A montage or some more efficient suggestion of the passage of time would have been desirable, as well as some earlier establishment of Ender's authoritative coolness, because when he suddenly fills the shoes of commander and successive ranks, his smooth charge of command seems so suddenly assured, it prompts me to smirk.  There's also a moment when Ender temporarily resigns, which probably would have been better left out if not given sufficient focus as is the case here, because we're left knowing only that the adolescent boy left the orbital training station and is now living like a hermit by a lake.  We don't know how he was able to leave a spacecraft where the Col. Graff so clearly wants him to stay and has proven his deftness in getting what he wants, or why he has a lake house, or how long he's been there.
Furthermore, there were several elements essential to the concept which I didn't comprehend as well as I think I should have, especially the notion of a youth-dominated military.  It is an issue that's addressed, and thankfully, it isn't condoned in the 'Narnia' sense either (seriously, what is up with those books?), but simple throw away lines about children learning and recognizing patterns more easily seems insufficient for such an integral point of the plot.  Other issues involving the manner of warfare and some of the adult characters are a little fuzzy as well, but not as big an issue.  I suppose these things are more fleshed out in the source material, but an adaptation needs to work as well for the uninitiated.
The  film thrives on ideas though, and the increasingly dark elements offer a compendium of ethical dilemmas in combat, as well as food for thought on the delicate balance between a war hero and a war criminal.  ENDER'S GAME is not the "must-see" movie of the year, nor is it the smartest, prettiest, most thoughtful or most anything of movies this years really, but it's moderately substantial and appealing entertainment.