Alien ant invaders!

A scrawny, bullied boy with a brilliant tactical mind is recruited to lead a resistance army against an ant army invasion from outer space. This incredibly unlikely leader is the penultimate outsider to lead an unwinnable war against an undefeatable alien foe.

That’s the premise behind Orson Scott Card’s book and the movie based on it: Ender’s Game. It’s the year 2086, and Earth is readying for impending attack by a strange bug-like armada from many, many space miles away. The popular story that spawned a series has all of the elements for compelling science fiction and it’s pulled right out of popular technology and some of the first generations of gaming culture.

Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is a slight young man with an astute ability to fight any foe. He says that he has always understood how his enemies think. That’s a good ability to have when you’re preparing to go into battle. This talent is seemingly enhanced when his military trainers offer him video games that simulate interactions with the Formics, the space invaders previously spoken of. They swarm in space much like you would expect ants bred on a Starship Troopers planet would.

His entry into the world of the art of war is precipitated by Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford), the gruffest of the gruff military recruiters. His subjects are one-sixth his age unto which he must impart the wisest tutelage that he can offer. He admits to being the kind of guy who “knows a thoroughbred when he sees one.” But horses only jump over hurdles and don’t generally have power over vast armies and immense starships going into celestial scrums.

A lot of his training entails how to do personal battle in zero gravity. This is important only to show how clever Ender can be in strategic situations that never have any kind of real life fruition in the movie. Most of the time, his work takes place in a cockpit. He might as well have a joystick with a shiny red button to elaborate how far removed he can be from actual life or death situations.

And here is why Ender’s Game is smart enough to let your kids watch it. Yes, there’s too much gaming culture to be ignored here. It’s probably no small coincidence that Card published his first novel in this series in the year immediately after the release of the movie The Last Starfighter. That film was about a young man who played a video game so well that he was recruited into an intergalactic army in a battle royale the likes of which the Milky Way has never seen.

That was nearly 30 years ago now.

Here, our protagonist is in a kind of Hunger Games situation where the brutality of combat, for some reason, is left up to the kids. Thankfully, these kids have oodles of humanity and composure to prove that they are infinitely better than adults. Ender is smart and savvy enough to stand up to his brutish superiors and spurt out poignant truths like “winning doesn’t matter; what matters is how you win” and “stay calm; shoot straight.”

Ender’s Game is a movie that is practically genetically designed for young people who are disgruntled and naturally rail against adults and authority figures. Ender progresses in his military career – and therefore his self-esteem – every time he stands in opposition to Graff or anyone else for that matter.

This wise child is already well on his way to seeing past the superficial garbage of existence and moving on to the meat of what matters in life. He’s a misfit because he sees into the hearts and minds of creatures that lurk beyond the computer screen. “What happens when it’s no longer a game?” he ponders aloud in the movie. Perhaps that’s the bigger question that every audience member should ask too.