Ender’s Game
Bred to kill, Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is the youngest and smallest of the Wiggin children; luckily, he’s the Goldilocks of the family as well, not too violent and not too empathetic. Walking the line of moderation this brilliant militaristic mind might just be the key to the survival of the human race; it’s only a matter of time before Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford), Major Anderson (Viola Davis), and Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) take notice of Ender’s traits and abilities. Naturally, with great power comes great responsibility, as Ender is groomed to destroy an alien race known as the Formics, his journey will cause him to question his raison d’etre, what does it all mean?
Based on Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Game, Director Gavin Hood has condensed the overall storyline into a 114 minute stock pot soup sci-fi youth coming of age adventure. That is to say, for an adventure, there seems to be a general lack of freshness or originality. Even though the source material was penned years before J.K. Rowling hatched the idea for Harry Potter, the parallels are mind numbing and anti-climactic. While the film attempts to raise the subject of creating a warring society and the ethics of battle, it’s not done with tact, grace, or poetic beauty to the point the viewer is left to shrug things off. While acting and production values remain high, the word is still milquetoast. Ender’s Game is rated PG-13.