Movie Review: Ender’s Game

Now that Thor is out, nobody really cares about this movie anymore, but if I have to watch it, then you have the option to read a review about it…That’s the deal.

What Works: This movie is based off the enormously popular Ender’s Game books the controversial author Orson Scott Card started all the way back in 1985 (who can believe that year was almost thirty years ago? time flies), and I know the fans of those books have been beyond-eager for the adaptation. Will this satisfy their wildest expectations? From the chatter I’m picking up online, it seems to be and that’s what matters. For the non-fans (like myself), I think there’s just enough interesting touches (like Hugo’s Asa Butterfield as Ender, True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld as one of his chief allies, and Ben Kingsley’s exciting turn as a military ace) to make the movie flow by nicely. Plus, who can really complain about seeing Harrison Ford or Viola Davis in a movie?

What Doesn’t Work: Most media savvy people will be watching this with some awareness of the boycotts by different gay groups who don’t like all of Scott’s anti-gay rhetoric over the years. [Big surprise, he’s a Mormon.] But what strikes you about Ender’s Game is that there seems to be a focus on diversity and people of different backgrounds making common-cause for the salvation of Earth (Kingsley’s pilot has a Maori facial tattoo, nobody from across the globe is excluded if they’ve got the goods). That’s a great message, but a hypocritical message from someone with homophobic prejudices of their own.

Okay, okay “What about the actual movie?” Too much of Ender’s Game feels like things we’ve seen before. I know the fans of the books are screaming “BUT that’s because other movies ripped off these books!” and that’s probably true, but it doesn’t really matter. The movie doesn’t feel fresh enough, and I can’t say I really invested in any of the characters on screen. I know Ender is supposed to be icy and removed, and that’s fine, but none of the other characters (except for maybe Kingsley) really popped either. By the time the generic bully shows up, I felt the movie was getting bogged down in tired archetypes rather than really forging its own path. Plus, the ending tease for a movie that likely will never get made—-Ender’s hasn’t lit up the box office, and seems more Golden Compass than Harry Potter—-is a huge anti-climax. Somehow, the first Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Twilight films managed to contain their stories to each movie so that fans wouldn’t be too letdown if there weren’t more movies, and Ender’s really should have done the same.

What I Would Have Done Differently: Who knows? I haven’t read the books so I can’t say that changing even one scene wouldn’t have the fans shrieking sacrilege. All I know is that if you’re not a fan of the books, you probably won’t leave as one either, and that isn’t an entirely successful movie.