A Surprisingly Deeply Emotive and Substantive Sci Fi Action Thriller

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2019)

31 October 2013. Curiously enough Starship Troopers (1997) and Star Trek (2009) have similar parallels in plot outline and action sequences, yet with a huge difference. The dichotomy between even younger cadet students, the focus on younger, more pliable, but creative, out of the box minds and the older, aging generation of warriors offers a fascinating psychological and moralistic interplay. The emotive and deeper substantive emotive and philosophical, humanistic issues at play here provide a much more solid and meaningful foundation making this movie pertinent and relevant to a mass audience.
Three minor weaknesses appear in this movie that don't really diminish the overall impact of the quality of this movie: Below average set designs and special effects especially at the beginning of the movie, the less than convincing training of the Dragon Team, and less than emotionally compelling and appealing huge change of Ender's mind in the movie. However, there is a wonderfully interesting and strangely emotionally riveting shot of a world in transformation at the end of the movie that speaks powerfully, much more than a transformative planet scene from an earlier Star Trek movie.
Ender's persona is one of the most fascinating to be presented on screen and depending one's perspective this maudlin and politically correct movie or perceptively astute middle way movie that contains an especially sharp edge to both its violence and compassion, usually lacking in most action, adventure movies and reserved for theatrical dramas for the screen. When Orson Scott Card wrote the original novel upon which this movie was based in 1985, it was among the leading edge of sci fi and the fusion of creative ideas of space warfare and alien communication (or perhaps the "apparent" lack of it) taken from this book and incorporated into this movie remain fresh and excitingly potent.
There is a unique sci fi bench mark set in this movie in terms of sci fi psychology and the human psyche as The Matrix (1999) set in terms of virtual reality and Avatar (2009) and Inception (2010) in terms of visual effects or even Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) in terms of a revealing hard core sci fi alien plot element. Ender's Game might be compared to the youthful version of Gerard Butler's Gamers (2009), a hard-edged futuristic, high-tech, new wave sci fi movie, some resemblance to a less hard-hitting 2002 sci fi movie adapted from the classic juvenile book A Wrinkle In Time or a sci fi version of the parallel fantasy movies The Chronicles of Naria: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005) and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) which is also based on C.S. Lewis books which focus on deeper humanistic issues.