The dubiousness of its antiwar message notwithstanding, Ender’s Game functions as not-bad tween escapism and mind-expanding nourishment. This is a film that will, no doubt, cause the more thoughtful among its target audience to surprise themselves by pondering the morality of preemptive strikes for the sake of self-preservation. But it will also tantalize with the same type of vicarious heroism that is the calling card of movies and books designed to appeal to young adults. (Ender's Game is based on the YA novel by Orson Scott Card.)
Asa Butterfield stars as Alex “Ender” Wiggin, a boy who has been recruited to train as a strategist for battle against a race of bug-like creatures that attacked Earth 50 years ago. His commander, Col. Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford), sees in Ender the ability to lead troops — adults and children alike — and win a war without subjecting Earth to its horrors and devastation.
As scripted by Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Ender’s Game doesn’t make a convincing case as to why combat is so imminent. So we're left to fill in the blanks and assume that a preemptive strike has been a long time coming, and it's just been a matter of waiting for the right battle commander. The film does, however, offer up themes of aggression worth exploring. In a number of sequences, Ender gives in to his violent instincts when confronted by fellow cadets who are envious of his skills. His attitude toward the physical altercations with them — beat your enemies so soundly, you'll never have to fight them again — is meant to parallel Earth’s military stance toward the aliens. But his attitude is also born of a repulsion toward violence, one that coexists with his skill in combat.
Ender’s Game is mostly one training session after another, and after a while it becomes as exciting as watching somebody play a video game. It can be argued that the monotonous training sequences are meant to be analogous to the distance we create between ourselves and our enemies in order to destroy them. Conceptually this is interesting to ponder; but Ender's Game, admirably as it tries, fails to bring its ideas to life in a dramatically interesting and satisfying way. Like its zero-gravity training area, Ender's Game feels weightless.
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2013.