In the not-so-distant future, Earth meets up with an alien race called the Formics, who fights in a battle the Earth was not ready for. The battle is barely won by commander Mazer Rackham, but tens of millions of people died in the process.
Afterwards, Earth continues to live in fear of their return. 50 years later, Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) of the International Military, searches and trains young people in hopes to find another Mazer and be ready to face the aliens, hoping to end the fighting for good.
He turns to kids with intellect and are good at strategy, namely kids who can play video games. He comes across Ender Whiggins (Asa Butterfield) as one who can think and lead. He puts him through rigorous testing and training, utilizing the now-older Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) to help Ender to be the best, or even the last great hope.
There are several twists and turns that I will not reveal in this writing, which is part of what makes this film rather enjoyable. Having never read the book by Orson Scott Card, I cannot make a comparison. But as a film, it was definitely well acted by the cast, including the supporting cast. Ender was obviously a difficult role because there was not only the pressure of playing a smart kid, but the pressure of playing someone under pressure (that's a lot of pressure). He did well.
Even though Kingsley's characterization was good, I felt the relationship between him and Ender was a little cliche, feeling like I was watching The Karate Kid being trained by Mr. Miyagi. Other then that, Harrison Ford was believeable. It is difficult to watch him in anything because as far as I am concerned, he is Indiana Jones... sorry. But the secret he carries you can see it in his face.
The only other concern I have is the times Graff was watching Ender on monitors. It is almost that "doesn't-the-crew-of-the-Enterprise-ever-go-to-the-bathroom" dillema. He, and the other female officer, seem to only spend their entire time watching Ender on monitors, with no real thought of the commanders being human. It's a small concern, so it doesn't detract from the mission at hand.
On a reality note, there have been groups of people who have worked hard to ban or boycott this film due to comments the books author, Orson Scott Card, has made about the homosexual community. The best thing for me to say is... get over it! There have been PLENTY of things stars and directors and producers and writers have said that have offended many other types of groups and they learn to separate the artist from the art. The homosexual community is fairly prevalent in Hollywood, and so they feel they are continually picked on, thus any preview event or press conference of this film was done exclusively without participation of the author.
It is not my objective to speak for Orson Scott Card, he is entitled to his opinion, just as any other artist has slammed religious or family value oriented people who still buy their movies, but my sources who know Card say that he has no hate for the homosexual community, he simply might disagree with their lifestyle. Enough of that.
Overall, "Ender's Game" is a good film that the family can watch, though the younger ones might get lost in the story a little bit.
- POSTED BY SUPERMOM TESTED
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