Repetitive but enjoyable

Rating: 8/10 (21 December 2014)

Plot: Young Eminem (played by Asa Butterfield) is bullied, but he is awesome and bullies the bullies and that is why he is training to become a military commander and kill the alien threat! Look at these cool graphics! I haven't read the book, but I think I understand most of the concepts presented in the film, perhaps because the film doesn't hesitate to repeat itself over and over again. Throughout the film you will clearly see several themes that seem to be repeated for the same number of times, you notice a clear pattern in the bully scenes, and it becomes kinda redundant to show what is essentially the same scene twice. My main problem is that I don't feel any real character development in Ender: It's not like Ender learns something mid-film to help him repel the bullies - he is already fairly adept at strategizing and defending himself and gaining respect, the film doesn't show him really learning anything except in the end when he becomes a hippie, but that was a twist you could spot a mile away. At one point in the film, a bunch of kids band together to form a rag tag instant success story - again, under Ender's perfect command, these supposed losers just win their first battle effortlessly. I mean, I suppose Ender was more or less the "perfect" character, and at the end of the film he gets a whole armada to play with as a reward for his perfectness, but again an example of a lack of character development. If there's one thing I could change about the film, it's more "bling" and less preaching. Harrison Ford's lack of humanity is made super obvious, some scenes were not only boring but also unnecessary such as the explanation of face-paint guy's face-paint, nobody cares! That said, the special effects are decent, the initial earth defense scene was cool because I like fighter jets, spaceship physics are somewhat "realistic" and there's some really intriguing zero-G scenes, so despite all the film's flaws I think that this film ranks right up there with the classics, and all their flaws.