I recently had the good pleasure of some free time on my project, so I picked up my hard drive and decided to while away my time. I scanned through my existing repertoire of movies and finally selected Ender’s Game. Now I had no idea about this movie apart from that fact that it had Harrison Ford and was science fiction. You know the types, human race on the edge of extinction and our hero fights off the entire species saying some iconic line like, “Get off my plane” and socks the creepy ant/lizard/moose type creature off the plane into the deep dark abyss.
Now if the faith of humanity rests on Harrison Ford, then I say “BRING IT ON”. I mean at this stage you want Indiana-friggin-Jones on your side. This guy outwits the entire Nazi forces and beat Amrish Puri!! And he’ll be dammed if someone steps on HIS plane and if you think THAT was a joke, he took on Darth Vader with just a gorilla for company. CASE CLOSED!
So if you want your future secure, you hand him a whip, a plane, a light saber and a gorilla and go to bed peacefully.
BUT, if my future rests on snot nosed, 4 feet 4 inches, pigeon chested, tooth-pick sized, sneeze and he breaks a rib, probably asthmatic, two bit nerd who is Vitamin D deficient and who’s only credence is his ability to play “video games”….uuuhh…we might as well bend over and wait chanting LONG LIVE OH ANT-MAN!
Anyway, trying to stay on track, I will attempt to tell you what this ‘movie’ is about. (Sigh!)
A few years from now, when all is lost and mankind is now averaging in single digit IQs, our good ‘ol planet Earth is ravaged by the Formics (Code for Big Ants). The first time these Formics try to take over, some dumb jock runs his plane into the mother ship (Independence Day reloaded) and saves the day. Hooray right?
But wait, it’s not the end. Decade’s years later, some brain dead politician/stoner/Twilight fan (??) decides “Let’s kill them all off before they try to destroy us again!” So now, they come up with a plan which would make the cast of Pacific Rim say “DUDE!! THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!!”
So the premise is that kids have faster reflexes than adults …uuhh…and thus they are trained from the age of 12 (or maybe 11) to become combat specialists and the best among them will be given control of our Planet’s complete Defense systems, which allows them to quite literally send an army of planes anywhere they want, by just flicking their wrist. Now for a kid who has just hit puberty, it’s not the brightest idea, no? They tend to ‘flick their wrists’ quite often I would imagine. Anyway, enter our hero, Ender Wiggin, (Asa Butterfield) a quiet but brilliant boy, who obviously is a loner (read loser). It is already established that he is the special one who will save us all (the movie does try to explain why, but frankly they fail so miserably that its really not worth getting into). Ender Wiggin is taken from his family and put in training center, in space where he experiences zero gravity for the first time and his training is based on him wining some game which I think is the ‘Unreal Tournament’ PG10 version. (For those less informed, it’s a computer game from the late 90’s and early 2000’s). Anyway he completes his entire training in like 18 minutes or something and is then sent straight to the border, where he sees the ant planet.
Will he save us? Will he be able to defend humanity? Or will he wet his bed and suck on his thumb while lying in the fetal position? (Smart money would be on fetal position)
The only reason I think the movie did half as well was due to the cast. I honestly feel Asa Butterfield has some potential. He already has two pretty decent hits under his belt (Hugo and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; do watch the second one first). But after seeing him here, I could think of anything other than flushing his face in a toilet. There are FOUR, count ‘em FOUR Oscar winners/nominees in this cast. Starting with, Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff (no relation to Steffi Graff), the battle hardened, win at all costs army man who in this role quite frankly is a sad let down, then there is Oscar Winner Ben Kingsley and God knows what they promised him to sign up for this. The female cast too is filled with Oscar nominees. There is Abigail Breslin (as Valentine Wiggin the loving caring sister of Ender; or as I remember her, the dorky girl from Little Miss Sunshine) and Hailee Steinfeld (as Ender’s love interest, Petra Arkanian). With 4 Oscar nominated/winning actors you really would expect something better wouldn’t you?
The rest of the cast is neither here nor there kind of bunch and they ensure they are…neither here, nor there!
Now I’m definitely a fan of sci-fi though it does take a lot to impress me, Star Wars…yes, Matrix …hell yea…but, After Earth or Oblivion…boooo. So it is a risky business. Thus, if you are taking up the challenge to make a movie on a genre which most definitely depends upon the graphics AND the story, you better bring your ‘A’ Game to the table. Sadly, on a scale of ‘Inception’ to ‘Santa Claus Conquers The Martians’ (yes this is a movie) Enders Game rates somewhere around “I wanna claw my eyes out” to “AAAaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggh”
The movie is something of a love child between Gamer and Starship Troopers, with the wardrobe from Daft Punk’s closet and Uday Chopra’s dialogue delivery.
DO NOT waste your time on this movie.
Read a book people, read a book!
Thoughts! 