ENDER'S GAME (2013)

Ender’s Game

Written and directed by Gavin Hood, based on the book by Orson Scott Card; director of photography, Donald M. McAlpine; edited by Zach Staenberg and Lee Smith; music by Steve Jablonsky; production design by Sean Haworth and Ben Procter; costumes by Christine Bieselin Clark; visual effects supervisor, Matthew E. Butler; produced by Gigi Pritzker, Linda McDonough, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Robert Chartoff, Lynn Hendee, Mr. Card and Ed Ulbrich; released by Summit Entertainment. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes.

WITH: Harrison Ford (Colonel Graff), Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin), Hailee Steinfeld (Petra Arkanian), Viola Davis (Major Gwen Anderson), Abigail Breslin (Valentine Wiggin), Nonso Anozie (Sergeant Dap) and Ben Kingsley (Mazer Rackham).At one point in “Ender’s Game,” the boy brainiac Ender Wiggin stands on a podium waving his arms. A vast, immersive image of outer space is spread out before him, and if you didn’t know better, you might think he was playing Wii on an Imax screen. It’s an amusingly self-reflexive moment in a humorless movie about children who play war games as part of their very grown-up military training. As he furiously moves spaceships and troops across computer screens, he looks, by turns, like a superexcited kid, an orchestra conductor, Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and even a Christ figure. Childhood can be tough in movies, but rarely do screen children suffer for our sins as they do here.

Based on the 1985 science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, the movie envisions a future world ruled by a monolithic militaristic government that trains children to fight large insectlike extraterrestrials called Formics or buggers. When the story opens, Ender (Asa Butterfield) thinks he’s just another runt with a monitor jammed in his neck that allows the authorities, personified by Colonel Graff who, because he’s played by Harrison Ford, should have been called Gruff, and a psychologist, Major Anderson (Viola Davis), to observe each potential warrior’s words, moods and tears. Graff believes that Ender may be the child to lead them all, a sermon he preaches as Ender is tested first on Earth and then in the outer space battle school where the movie gets its game on.

It’s no surprise that Mr. Card’s novel, which he followed with several sequels, has sold a zillion copies. The charismatic leader, the divine child, the possible Christ figure or potential Hitler stand-in (according to one notorious, widely circulated reading): Ender Wiggin is an expediently malleable figure. In the novel, he is also, shades of the Spartans, 6 when he ships off to battle school, which puts a distinctly ugly spin on a scene in the book in which he methodically brutalizes a bully, kicking the other boy repeatedly, including in the face. Ender has logically decided that by crushing the other boy, he will prevent future attacks, a prophylactic philosophy that mirrors the authorities’ attitude toward the buggers. He’s 12 in the movie, which doesn’t make that beating any better.

It’s taken decades for “Ender’s Game” to reach the screen, and it’s hard not to think that it had to wait for the right anxious moment. In the 1950s, adolescent alienation meant Sal Mineo’s Christ figure dying in the embrace of his surrogate parents in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Many years and sad stories later, the kids are still not all right, and while much remains the same, much has changed, including the familiar reality of the child who kills. Like the kids in the “Harry Potter” franchise and in “The Hunger Games,” Ender and his schoolmates do have childish moments. Yet what’s striking about the children in these pop culture behemoths is that, unlike in “Rebel,” they aren’t allowed to pretend to be adults, because the world compels them to assume those roles.

The adults in “Ender’s Game” come off as exceedingly creepy, despite Mr. Ford’s strained avuncularity and Ms. Davis’s flooding eyes. Ender is singled out because he seems to be a natural leader, which in the logic of both the book and the movie means someone who imposes his will on enemy and friend alike. He’s rational and brutal, which is a harder sell on the screen, where every punch carries an unsettling intensity that the director, Gavin Hood, has trouble managing. Mr. Butterfield is one of those young performers whose seriousness feels as if it sprang from deep within. And while he’s an appealing presence, little Ender can’t help feeling like a pint-size psycho.

Mr. Hood, whose script winnows the novel into two hours of mostly action and a fair amount of talk, does better once the story shifts to space. (Ender’s home, where crammed bookshelves line one wall and his mother bustles alone in the kitchen like a 1950s housewife, has a pointless antediluvian quality.) Among the dividends are a barking sergeant, Dap (Nonso Anozie), and a giant geodesic-dome-like room in which trainees practice in zero gravity. It’s pleasant to watch these tiny untethered bodies float like cosmic motes and to follow Ender into an appealingly detailed animated computer game, in which he tumbles down a rabbit hole and discovers a mystery that will presumably only be fully solved in the sequels. His tribulations are likely not over.

“Ender’s Game” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Genocidal violence and extreme fighting among children.

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