It has been a good year for science fiction movies. Super hero epics such as Man of Steel, Iron Man 3 and the Wolverine were all good plus other science fiction flicks such as Elysium, Star Trek Into Darkness and Gravity all seriously impressed me. Does Ender's Game face up to it's stiff competition?..
Ender's Game, directed by Gavin Hood, stars Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley in a science-fiction adventure inspired by Orson Scott Card, the man who wrote the beloved Ender's Game novel back in 1985. Does this movie do the book justice?
I wouldn't know because I haven't read it.. However as a film on it's own Ender's Game isn't that bad. My low expectations seemed to benefit my Ender's Game viewing experience and as a result I had a fairly good time watching it.
The basic premise of this movie is that the earth was once invaded by a force of insect-like creatures from outer space called Formics. The result of the attack was a human victory but at a great cost. The danger of the Formics must be avoided at all cost so an attack on their home world is being coordinated by, of all people, children. Early on, Ender's Game explains that it must be children who coordinate the attack because their minds are more intuitive than those of adult's. Yay for children!! Ender (played by Asa Butterfield) is believed to be the one who will lead the attack against the Formics.
There you have it. It is an interesting premise in all honesty, so how was the movie?
The movie did not impress me much at the beginning as I thought that the screenplay was lazy and things did seem to happen too quickly for my liking. There is one story arc mentioned early on in the movie (revolving around Ender's brother Peter) which would have made for some good viewing, but was simply glossed over.
But Ender's Game does recover through a strong middle-act. This is where characters developed well and the actors began to shine through their performances.
In particular, I was impressed by Asa Butterfield. As far as kid actors go I think he is one of the best because I don't feel like he over-acts his lines at all, plus portrays good human emotion through his performances.
As for the rest of the children, I thought that the rest of the children were very much likeable characters who were played well by the rest of the young actors.
Harrison Ford, as Graff, did a good job in my opinion playing the seemingly emotionless Colonel who expresses his personal feelings towards Ender towards the end of the movie. He played the development of his character well, good to see a solid Ford performance nowadays.
Viola Davis is sufficient with her role and Ben Kingsley, who appears an hour in to the movie, did a good job with the allocated time he had on the screen.
As I said previously, the movie picks up during it's middle act and not just because of Ender's Game's good pacing and excellent character work, but because some of the CGI elements of the movie were very well handled.
Most of the film is set around "boot camp" for these children and I thought that was the movie's strongest point. The training and simulation scenes were all well filmed and blended in some terrific special effects and sound editing.
Admit it, it was a good looking movie. It sounded well too, with a good soundtrack backing up the tense action towards the finale.
I was really getting into Ender's Game but left confused by it's ending? It just didn't seem that cohesive in comparison to the rest of the story. I wasn't really a fan. Also, I thought that the narration in this movie was kind of unnecessary, it was rather a failsafe for the film to help clearly explain the story. It wasn't needed unfortunately!
But, Ender's Game is a good sci-fi movie in general, despite it's ending. I would rate it like this:
Rating - B
1 sentence summary - A smart science fiction film with some very good elements, even if a few plot elements aren't quite as cohesive as they should be!
It is a good movie, it does a good job at sucking you in to the story and it is one you should probably check out.
Thanks for reading,
Matt
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