Ender's Game

ENDER’S Game is the latest novel to embrace the cinematic realm and the latest which was much better than I imagined.

I am usually critical of how much of a film’s plot is given away by trailers and how they use up all of their best material trying to hook us in without having anything extra to present.

Ender’s Game was not like this at all; instead it had so much more up its sleeve the trailers did not do it justice.

The film is an adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s 1985 novel of the same name, revolving around an intergalactic war left to child Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) to fight.

Humans repel an invading species called the Formics in 2086, their attack brought to a halt by Mazer Rackham who sacrifices himself in a successful kamikaze run.

Fifty years following that attack, humans are still in search of the weapon that will repel the Formics when they attack again.

Instead of using brute strength, the military (led by Harrison Ford’s Colonel Hyrum Graff) exploit the inquisitive, intelligent minds of only the world’s smartest children.

Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) directs Ender’s Game, and his collaboration with Card and Australian cinematographer Donald McAlpine makes this one of the surprises of 2013.

Wiggin is another recent cinematic character to put up with bullying, and the “Wiggin v the world” motif is repeated throughout the film.

Bullying victims can relate to the way his loneliness is presented, regularly visualised with a lonesome Wiggin against a group – whether they be the first batch of bullies, military personnel, another batch of bullies, more military, or the Formics.

One of the take-home messages from these sequences is Wiggin rises above his opponents every time – but not without consequence.

There are other themes mixed in with the anti-bullying, with the limitless mind (the power to do whatever you set your mind to), and the depletion of natural resources just two.

In this film’s setting – which is about 120 yers from now – most battles are fought using the mind. Instead of manned craft, pilots can be on a completely different planet and control drones in battle.

That freedom, and lack of human loss, allows those in charge to make decisions that push the realms of reality.

Natural resource depletion is a running theme of recent films, with a dry, barren Earth usually the central figure to the story.

In Ender’s Game the shoe is on the other foot, with the Formics invading because they had exhausted their water supply due to overpopulation.