Movie Review: Ender's Game

Movie Review: Ender's Game

Rated PG-13

114 minutes

Directed by Gavin Hood

Ender's Game is a story about a teenage boy named Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) who is gifted in the art of war. He is recruited to join Battle School by Colonel Hyram Graff (Harrison Ford), who sees Ender as being the one to end the war between the humans and the main alien species, who are called buggers. Ender goes to battle school, and training ensues.

Ender's Game is very entertaining. It flies by, and you get swept up into this universe quickly. There are some great bouts of dialogue between the actors, and it has a thought-provoking message about how far people will go in order to win. The actors are mostly very good, with Asa Butterfield being able to capture all of Ender's emotions very well, Viola Davis as Major Anderson is able to elevate her character beyond what the script dictates she should do, and Harrison Ford strikes a balance between being unsympathetic and having motive behind being that way. The cinematography does sometimes feel a bit standard, but there are some beautiful shots within there. And the visuals do convince you, especially in the zero-gravity battle scenes between some of the armies within the school.

There are definitely some problems with the movie. There is one scene in the zero-gravity room where Ender is in his first battle with an army, and he strikes a bunch of generic action hero poses. It feels incredibly out of place with the rest of the movie, and it damages some of the other battle sequences, because you wonder whether or not it will rear its ugly head up. There is one scene that has some over-abundant acting from Ender's original general, named Dap. It just is so over zealous and is just terrible.

Another main gripe in this movie is with the script, and how these kids are depicted. They don't really act like kids at all. They are consistently over-serious, and don't come off as authentic at all. Also, we never learn how Ender is so special and different than everybody else. All the kids seem to be on an equal playing field, so what makes Ender so different? We never find out.

In the end, Ender's Game is a very thrilling and interesting movie that continues to be quite enjoyable throughout the entire run time, despite some major issues.

3/5

B-