Ender's Game

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After watching the Star Wars movies as a kid, I always thought it would be so cool to fight in an alien war and save the world. Ender's Game illustrates that in actuality, it wouldn't be so cool. Decades after the initial invasion of the Formics alien army, the genius warrior-strategist Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is sent to battle school. There, he and dozens of other kids and teens are trained from an early age to be the force of resistance should another wave of Formics attack.

Battle school proves no easy task for Ender. Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) blocks his e-mail, Sergeant Dap limits his words only to "legitimate questions," and fellow students Bonzo and Bernard are attempt to hinder Ender's successes. Though socially out of place, Ender proves to be fit for whatever task he is assigned to, outsmarting all of his colleagues and higher-ranking officers and skillfully beating the school's other teams in a strategic mock-battle game.

Ender's wisdom and instincts see him promoted just as the Formics are about to return to Earth. Ender is is given a team to train with during a final string of simulations before being sent out to stop the Formics forever.

Ender's Game was, in my eyes, a bell curve of a movie. The beginning was shaky, to say the least, but things really picked towards the middle, and as time progressed, I became more and more immersed in Ender's story. As the ending neared, it wasn't as entertaining, and the way writer-director Gavin Hood went about the ending was weak and abrupt.

For the better part of the movie, Ender's Game had a highly entertaining atmosphere, and the movie was a lot of fun. There was amazing acting from its pool of Oscar nominees (see Ford, Hailee Steinfeld,  Abigail Breslin and Ben Kingsley), and from the child actors. Asa Butterfield has such an undeniable talent, while the kids who become Ender's friends (Steinfeld, Aramis Knight, Suraj Parthasarathy) light up the screen. The not-so-good acting came from Viola Davis, who was very stale in the delivery of her lines and whose character seemed totally unnecessary.

Throughout Ender's Game, I wasn't sure if it'd be a 4 or a 4.5 out of 5. It kept wavering back and forth, as it was very good most of the time. The reason it got a 4 was because in my eyes, a sci-fi movie needs to be truly amazing to grab a 5 or a 4.5, and at its weakest moments, Ender's Game wasn't there. If there was any doubt by the last scene, the ending solidified a 4.

Rating: 4/5