Director: Gavin Hood
Talent: Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld
Release Date: 25th October 2013
Based on the novel of the same name by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game is the story of a gifted child, Ender (Asa Butterfield), conscripted into a global military in advance of an attack on an alien race who invaded Earth years before. The film’s oddly spiritual refrain, that in the moment of destroying one’s enemy, one also loves them, is embodied in practice by the young Ender, whose formidable skill as a soldier and leader is matched only by his capacity for empathy: indeed, we are told, it is his empathy that makes him great. This perverse logic is appropriate to its dystopian setting, in which Earth has become a fascist, intergalactic military complex, while the film struggles to reconcile its essentially liberal message with the fact that it finds the (ultimately genocidal) war machine ― and its zero-gravity satellite training station ― intrinsically appealing.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
