'Ender's Game' review: Space film has zero gravity
Asa Butterfield, left, and Harrison Ford in a scene from "Ender's Game." Credit: AP
The people on-screen during the sci-fi behemoth "Ender's Game" are watching other people on other screens with such ridiculous frequency you'll wonder if director Gavin Hood is making a pre-emptive joke about the people who'll be tweeting at his movie, telling other people to stay away.
But no, the movie takes itself far too seriously for that: It even allows its young space commander hero to ask, near the end of what is a very long space trip, "Why are we seeing these images?" Which is the kind of softball that's almost too ripe to take a swing at.
Why are we seeing these images? Because the original 1985 "Ender" novel (revised/reissued in 1991) by Orson Scott Card has already spawned an entire series of books, and now it has birthed the first of what is set up to be a fleet of motion pictures -- a slow-moving-to-the-point-of-narcosis fleet of motion pictures, judging by the first.
It boasts not only unconvincing actors floating dreamily through space, but also a color palette that belongs in a hospital, music that belongs in an elevator and production design that -- like a fireworks display -- is flashy, bright and devoid of either context or intelligence.
Young Asa Butterfield, the cute kid from "Hugo," is now less cute and less than engaging as Ender Wiggin, a Battle School wannabe who comes under the gaze of the austere Col. Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford, fulminating). Graff sees in the boy the kind of talent, and/or sociopathy, that can save mankind from what is sure to be a second attack by the Formics, a race of insectoids that have already wreaked havoc on mankind.
The story of "Ender's Game" involves Ender's adjustment to being a prodigy, a leader of men/women and the savior of his race. It's all setup to a sequel. None of it is convincing in the least.
And even director Hood ("X-Men Origins: Wolverine") seems to let his own attention wander, becoming fixated on the shiny objects that float about the space station, sleepily, dreamily and with no fixed destination.
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