Enjoyable

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2013)

Good acting, good special effects (albeit stolen from Independence Day and Starship Troopers) and in all, a science fiction movie I have not seen before. There are interesting themes, on the ethics of preparing kids for battle, and on whether a beautiful victory in war exists at all. What I did not like was the theme we got straight away: once you know or understand your enemy, you love him. That came back in the movie many times, when Ender had to fight his way to the top. But he was fighting humans, not bugs. And even then, yeah right, to take a cliché example, I don't think people in concentration camps would concur on loving the Nazis by understanding they did all that horrible stuff because they loved Goethe and Beethoven and just wanted to force their German culture on the world (as Thomas Mann 'explained' the reason for World War 2). There are always plenty of reasons and explanations to understand some wrong philosophy some population uses as a justification for taking over the world, but it never makes it right. Same for these bugs, they were overpopulated on their own planet, like us, and invaded our earth like we mistreat our own planet, but because they are essentially like us, we would understand and love each other? That is the same crap as Matrix 2, saying the synthesis between man and machine was not so bad after all. The reality is, if something like this would happen, you could never be sure if the bugs would not try again after a century or so (the Germans did after World War 1, to finish my cliché). Nevertheless, in the end Ender felt sorry for these poor bugs and, for some reason, was allowed by his superiors (o no, it was conveniently added in the last seconds he became admiral and could do whatever he wanted) to find a new home for the last alive queen to breed. So at least we can expect a sequel, when that queen decides to take over our planet once again after some years. And, by the way, how did those ants build spaceships?