Ender’s Game, written by Orson Scott Card and published as a book in 1985, is a military science fiction story featuring a young man named Ender Wiggins. Prior to hearing about this movie being in production, I had never heard of the author or this series and went into watching the movie blind about the story.

Set in the not to distant future, Earth is invaded by an alien race named the “Formics”. They closely resemble bugs in appearance and nearly succeeded in taking over the world. Every military resources on Earth was put to use and in the end it was a man named Mazer Rockham who was able to take down the main ship, ending the war. Tens of millions of people died in the attack and for the next 50 years, Earth has prepared itself for the return of the Formics.

The invasion scared the remaining populace to death. Caught completely off guard, many felt that it was luck that the human race survived. Such an attack could never happen again (hmm, that sounds familiar). With the fear of a seemingly guaranteed second invasion attack to come, the International Military is formed and tasked with making a defense plan. Seeing the youth of the world as it’s best chance, they comb every nation to find the best and brightest, training them to be the military and tactical force that will shut down the Formics for good. Ender Wiggin is the youngest of his siblings and the last to go through training. His sister is let out of the program because she is seen as too compassionate and his brother was let go because he resorted to violence too quickly. Ender is quickly noticed by Colonel Graff as the perfect mix of the two personalities, but he must be groomed and tested to be Earth’s best chance for victory.

I really enjoyed Ender’s Game. A terrific and interesting look into the future of our society, of military life and methodology. Asa Butterfield plays Ender beautifully and Harrison Ford gets a great role as Colonel Graff. Ender’s journey is a fascinating one, as we see a very smart young kid change as he learns from the experiences in this extreme space boot camp. Ender and the other cadets go through rigorous classroom and physical training, learning large scale war tactics and battlefield skills. Seeing Ender testing his superiors and subtlety maneuvering himself into a position of leadership consciously and sub-consciously is a lot of fun. There’s always a layer of mystery surrounding this operation and Ender slowly picks away at it as he feels himself being squeezed by the hand of his superiors. There are cracks in what he is told and the constant stress of being a completely dominating force exhausts his senses and humanity. He doesn’t like what he’s becoming and it scares him that he’s so good at it.

Ender’s Game was released at just about the same time as Gravity, which completely overshadowed it. It’s a very compelling story, much like Gravity and it also has special effects that rival the work in Gravity as well. The zero-G training room is brilliantly executed, the whole aesthetic of the world is really well visualized. It all looks very well thought out and real, making this future scenario seem that much more plausible.

I don’t know what was omitted or change from the book, but I really liked the movie I saw. It kept me engaged the whole time, it’s a smart story and the acting is great from newcomers and veterans alike. I was pleasantly surprised with this one.