Battlestar Galactica meets Lord of the Flies as absurd premise of kid space cadets fighting aliens sinks this flick from the get-go

Rating: 3/10 (5 May 2014)

After watching 'Ender's Game' for the first five minutes and understanding the film's premise, my immediate reaction was 'Yikes!— look's like I'm in for a long ride.' Yes I must confess that my initial impression that the premise was ludicrous, was borne out by the rest of the plot and attendant hokey character machinations. Why exactly does humanity choose to employ children to battle insect-like aliens (aka Formics) who attacked and almost successfully destroyed earth fifty years earlier? That's a good question for Orson Scott Card, the author of the original source material, who wrote the book (of the same title) which the movie is based on. It's an easier question for profit-hungry producers, who speculated that allowing prepubescent kids to act out their fantasies in what essentially is one monotonous video game on screen, would translate into mega-profits at the box office. At the end of the day, 'Ender's Game', only made a very small profit due to its reliance on a slew of computer generated effects.
As for the Ender's plot, it revolves around a kid who has the same apocalyptic sounding name (does it mean he 'ends' the threat of the alien invasion or earth is at an end?) Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin (played by an overly intense Asa Butterfield), is a cadet who catches the eye of Commander Graff, who sees potential in the reserved and thoughtful twelve or thirteen year old. Graff is played by Harrison Ford who manages to be unpleasant throughout, barking orders at Ender and generally conforming to the script's call to play the boss as a boorish martinet.
While in a regular training school, Ender gets into his first physical confrontation with classmate Stilson, after defeating him in a space ship simulation. He also impresses Graff's subordinate, Gwen Anderson, when he figures out how to defeat a giant troll-like creature in a 'mind game' program designed as a no-win scenario (the CGI-effects here, along with a later scene involving one of Ender's visions, are perhaps the best parts of the film).
Ender then graduates to the much more fancy battle school where students fire laser guns at each other in a giant sphere dubbed the 'Battle Room' in a zero gravity atmosphere. Kids who love video games will probably find all of this endearing but for me, most of it reminded me of the typical dated paeans to military school cadet culture (here now with the students dressed up in spacesuits). When Ender is appointed the 'commander' of his own band of 'misfits' and defeats his former commander, Bonzo Madrid (no, not Bonzo the chimp!) in one of those battles inside the sphere, the second clichéd fight occurs between the two afterward, inside a shower room. Ender decides it's 'Bedtime for Bonzo' after he puts Madrid into a coma (again Commander Braff is impressed by Ender channeling his hardly utilized inner Rambo).
Ender ends up being promoted to Commander of all forces and is transferred to a base of a former Formic colony. There he meets Rackham, the legendary commander who found the key to defeating the Formics in the epic battle fifty years ago. Ben Kingsley manages to out growl Harrison Ford, as another over aggressive mentor assisting the heralded lap dog, Ender (and yes, Kingsley's atrocious tattoos all over his face, are certainly not endearing at all). I have no guilt feelings about revealing the film's deus ex machina, so SUPER SPOILERS are ahead: the simulation that Ender (along with all of his pals from Battle School) engage in, which annihilates the Formic planet, was for real.
Thus Graff turns out to be a true martinet, a stand-in for over-aggressive, right wing, American military types. Ender, however, feels horribly guilty about being duped into wiping out the Formics. He realizes that the earlier mind game scene he involves himself in, is right outside the base and after encountering a dying Formic Queen, he vows to take the Queen's egg and colonize a new world with it. Ender justifies his actions by claiming that the Formics attempted to communicate with him, before Graff and his minions did their 'dirty work'. The problem is the Formics did indeed try to destroy the earth's population but the film's scenarists provide no explanation as to the original reason for the invasion. Therefore, Ender's assumption that their attempt to communicate is not justification enough for him to save the Formic species. Ender is unable to refute Graff, who implicitly argues that any attempt to communicate could very well have been a ruse.
Unfortunately, the idea of kids being put in charge of a fighting team in place of adults, seems to be an absurd conceit. And at a certain point, it isn't difficult to figure out that the filmmakers intentionally allowed Ender to take the moral high ground after he gets oh so 'touchy feely' with the that one last Formic egg (damning Graff for encouraging the kids' aggression, deceiving them but not explaining why he was wrong in the first place about the danger of another Formic invasion).
There were a few moments here and there which were nicely done, particularly Ender's mind game where he encounters the Formics for the first time inside the castle that was destroyed during the initial invasion. But watching juveniles beat each other up or blast one another in simulated war games, was not my cup of tea. This despite the films' scenarists wishful thinking that killing is bad if you don't give a dangerous, former adversary, a chance to redeem themselves, in the face of the flimsiest of evidence. Others might dub all this 'liberalism run amok'; as for me I'll simply return this disc to Netflix as fast as possible and move on to something more worthwhile!