Movie Review: Ender's Game

We saw two movies this weekend. We saw Thor: The Dark World and Ender’s Game.

I feel I need to preface this review by saying that I have not read the Ender’s Game book before seeing this movie.  I’m not sure if not having read the book will have any impact over my liking of the movie.

First off, I have to say that I absolutely love Harrison Ford.  So any movie he’s in, I’m generally going to like.  I thought he did a great job in this movie. He actually had a harsh side to him and when he’d get angry, I felt that he was really angry.  I think he did a great job.  Now, again, I don’t know what the actual character in the book is like, so I can’t tell you if he did a good job as him, but he did a great job from the outside.

This is not an action filled movie.  This movie is more about the psychology of the kids.  So this was actually a pretty slow movie. I did find myself dosing off a few times just because of the lack of action and my sleep deprivation.  But it really made you use your brain and it was very interesting to see how the kids all related to each other and how the adults tried to manipulate them.

There were a couple kids I recognized from when they were younger!  To see kids from Disney channel or the girl from Definitely Maybe was a lot of fun.  I think they all did a pretty decent job acting.

We were told that the first book had no actual fighting, so I’m not sure whether this movie actually covered only book one or if it expanded into the second book or not.  But the twist at the end was great. I probably should have seen it coming, but I didn’t figure it out before it happened – which was awesome.  I can’t wait for a second movie to figure out the repercussions of what happened.  I might not be able to wait for a second movie, and I’ll just have to go read the books.

I think people who like sci-fi will enjoy this movie.  And I hope that people who read the book like the movie also.  It thought this movie was going to be more crowded, but there were only a few other people in the theater with us.  I guess they’re competing against Thor now, and then Catching Fire comes out next week – so good luck against that one.  I was very happy with this movie though, and it is probably one that we’ll buy when it comes out on blu-ray.