Movie Review: Ender's Game

Ender's Game (2013)

Young Ender Wiggin is recruited by the International Military to lead the fight against the Formics, a genocidal alien race which nearly annihilated the human race in a previous invasion.  Short synopsis of Ender's Game taken from IMDb.com  

My reviews lately are pretty short.  Much of that probably has to do with the fact that I write them, but have not polished and uploaded to the blog in quite some time.  I ask myself, why do I still write?  But for whatever reason, I still do.

Having prefaced by saying that, I will keep this review short too.  I liked Ender's Game.  I liked the way the book was translated to the film.  In many ways, it remained faithful to the book, which was good.  However, that wasn't completely a good thing either.  Card's novel is pretty good "hard" sci-fi with some different approaches to the old wheeze about alien invasion and human response.  This I liked.  But I do not know if some of the follow-up books made their way into the plot, or if it has just been too long since I read Ender's Game itself.  Some things I just didn't recall being there popped up.  Like the character Mazer, the pilot who supposedly defeated the Formics when they first invaded.  And of course there were additions from tech that was not even imagined when the book was first out (though Card's ability to predict certain technologies like highly interactive video games was pretty cool).

I was given a copy of the novel written by Orson Scott Card some years back, and remember enjoying it.  But there is definitely some stuff in this film that either wasn't in the book or has totally slipped my memory. / Source: goodreads.com

Oh, and things didn't quite jive at one point, due to one of those addition pop-ups.  There was a give-away statement near the middle of the movie when Ender says in an email to his sister that he is going to another planet to learn to fight the aliens and defeat them that throws the whole surprise ending out, I thought.  Not to spoil it, but the last "simulation" Ender Wiggin thinks he is playing against the computer is actually a battle being fought on a massive scale against the enemy in real-time.  Wiggin uses both strategy and weapons of mass destruction to wipe out the alien race, and then finds himself plagued with the pains of having committed a massive genocide.  Personally, I liked the ideas being worked here.  But then having the alien queen on the world Ender is based at, as well as the whole "going off to kick-start the species all over again" was...  well maybe that is part of the other books, or maybe I just don't recall the novel well enough, but it was a bit jarring in execution.  Or maybe it is just that the idea doesn't sit well with someone who was raised on Aliens and Independence Day and too often sees things in the light of "the only good alien is a dead alien."  But that's just me.

OK, back on track, I thought Ender's Game was good for the most part.  It dealt with themes that many movies these days with the alien invasion plot as their driving mechanic just wouldn't touch  And this was refreshing.  As well, the many ideas being juggled are handled pretty well.  All in all, it was worth the cheap seats price of admission, I think. 

The parting comment:

Source: mashable.com

Ender Wiggin.  Ralph Wiggum.  Coincidence in names?  You decide.  I can see Ralph saving the Earth someday.  No really.  Maybe little Ralphy is just a really late bloomer.  Like that one kid in the Harry Potter series who chopped the head off of Voldemort's serpent in that last book/movie.  It could happen.