"Independence Day" Filmed With Kids, From A Distance

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2017)

"Ender's Game" has some similarities to other films we have seen, with its use of the young-gun-learning-from-the-grizzled-gun-slinger motif (iike "The Karate Kid") and the use of games to develop or recruit warriors (like "The Last Starfighter"). And there are definite similarities to "War Games". But the protagonist (Ender) in this film is younger, making it harder to film convincingly.
There was one scene where it felt silly to me that such young people were playing adult (military) roles, but otherwise I had no trouble accepting that premise.
The film includes wonderful visuals, which could easily have been its downfall; but the real problem is the lack of exposition, which feels like the result of excessive editing. We need believable action based upon the psychology of the characters. "Ender's Game" comes up short in this area. The viewer can, in his mind, stitch the scenes of the film together to make a decent whole, but the story is short-changed and it fails to achieve the level of quality it could have had.
Despite its visuals, the story is essentially a morality piece, asking the viewer to process the choices that the protagonist makes on his quest to achieve his goal. It can be difficult to put the audience in the mind of the hero, but that is especially true when they are not given enough clues to his thought processes.
This is a film worth seeing, but it could have been much more.