Enders Game (2012)

A film adaptation of Orson Scott Card's beloved, 1985 science fiction novel is a project that has long languished in "development hell", well it's finally been completed and turns out it was actually worth waiting for. Ender's Game tells the story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) a highly intelligent and rare 3rd child in mid-22nd century Earth. "Ender" like his two older and also gifted siblings is sent to an elite military training school to see if he could be of use in an expected future conflict with the race or bug-like aliens who almost wiped out humanity 50 years prior. Unlike his older sibling the director of the training program Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) see's something unequally special in Ender and promotes him from the terrestrial campus to a special  "Battle School" located on a space station orbiting the Earth. There Ender makes both friends and enemies and demonstrates himself to have a unequally talented strategic mind. This results, after a brief crises in confidence, with Ender being sent to an off-world staging area where this roughly 12 year old boy is put in charge of planning the International Fleets battle strategy against the coming "Bugger" invasion that appears to be fast approaching.

Now I don't want to spoil too much more, and if you've read the book you know what's coming. I myself read the novel over a decade ago and while of course I don't remember many of the details I felt this film got the essence of the book pretty spot on, the only thing that was really missing is a rather involved political sub-plot concerning Ender's siblings that would have been extremely difficult to render in a film of this type. The cast is fairly impressive, and includes in addition to those named above, Viola Davis, Ben Kingsley, and Hailee Steinfeld, who was so impressive in the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit.

Ender's Game is smarter then the typical sci-fi action flick, it asks it audience to consider a number of philosophical/moral questions, not as well as the book did but still well, and does a decent enough job of setting the stage for what follows in Card's further Ender books; though cinematic adaptions of those seem unlikely not least because of this films unfortunately doing only so-so business theatrically. I heartily recommend this Ender's Game, I know of "purists" who were not satisfied though its not likely they ever could be. I felt this movie communicated that heart of Ender's story about as well as any two hour movie ever could, and left the theater quite satisfied.. ***1/2