Ender's Game Movie Review

For years people have told me to read Ender's Game. The book was released when I was two years old and the book has been on my "to read" list for ages, though was a pretty low priority. Well, along came the movie version of Ender's Game (2013). I had no idea what I was getting into, but it was pretty cool.

In the near future, a hostile alien race called the Formics have attacked Earth. If not for the legendary heroics of International Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), all would have been lost. In preparation for the next attack, the highly esteemed Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford), Major Gwen Anderson (Viola Davis) and the International Miliary are training only the best young children to find the future Mazer. Ender Wiggins (Asa Butterfield), a shy, but strategically brilliant boy is pulled out of his school to join the elite. Arriving at Battle School, Ender quickly and easily masters increasingly difficult war games, distinguishing himself and winning respect amongst his peers. Ender is soon ordained by Graff as the military's next great hope, resulting in his promotion to Command School. Once there, he is trained to lead his fellow soldiers into an epic battle that will determine the future of Earth and save the human race.

For being a product of the 1980's, Ender's Game has a whole lot of components that are popular trends among contemporary young adult literature. This movie is what would result if the Harry Potter series and the  Star Wars series had a baby. There's that "I'm a what?" moment where the seemingly unassuming and bullied kid ends up being special and superior to his peers. The character is whisked off to a school where they learn a super special power. There is the intelligent token female friend character, the goofy male friend character, and the bully at the new school. The character learns they are the chosen one, etc. They did this in Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and X-Men just to name a few off the top of my head. Except Ender's Game has the protagonist go to a sci-fi school to learn about commanding battleships by playing video games and zero-gravity laser tag, which makes it very different from the other stories.

We've got some pretty good actors in this movie. Harrison Ford is amazing and plays the tough mentor and military leader  very well. I love Asa Butterfield; he was amazing in Hugo and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He's pretty good here, too. There are moments that he, like the other young child actors, are hard to take seriously. The kid actors are usually in their mid-teens, but many look younger than twelve. When these kids try to look hardcore and serious, they just end up looking funny. I actually laughed out loud at how ridiculous these prepubescent kids looked when they tried to act like hardened tough military soldiers. But when Butterfield has a meltdown, he plays it well. When he is horrorstruck, he means it. All the actors who played major characters were exceptional. The few minor character kids were less skilled and were harder to take seriously.

The special effects are phenomenal. That space battle toward the end is really a sight to behold. You get a broad scope of the fight scenes and a feel for how everything flows. It was neat seeing how Ender was a strategist; he was thinking several steps ahead of everyone and while not physically superior, he managed to get the upper hand by thinking the situation through. The only part of the story that confused me is how playing zero-gravity laser tag is supposed to prepare the kids for commanding fleets of spaceships. It would have made more sense if they were being trained as zero-gravity foot soldiers, not for the command seat in a battleship.

I have no idea how the movie compares to the book, I still haven't read it. Offhand, I didn't feel inspired to run off and pick up a book after seeing the movie. I've heard lots of bad things about Orson Scott Card (the book's author), none of which I have bothered to verify. I've read other books by Card, and if Ender's Game is like his other works, it could probably be half as long and still get the whole story across. I understand that Card's stance against gay marriage has caused a lot of people to boycott the movie. To me this sounds exactly like the religious groups boycotting The Golden Compass movie back in 2007; a group of people doesn't like the opinion of the author, therefore the movie based on the book written by the person they don't like should be refused by all. Ender's Game is pretty good on its own. While The Golden Compass did have some anti-organized religion themes in it, Ender's Game makes no commentary about homosexuality, antisemitism, or any of the other views I've heard the author has. Think what you want about Orson Scott Card, but the movie isn't bad.

Ender's Game is a decent movie. The acting is good, the story isn't bad, the special effects are great, and the complex theme of children's natural compassion clashing with the adult-mandated need for decisive power-plays is interesting. Story gaps aside, the action sequences tend to take center stage. If I was eleven, I'd probably think this is the best movie I'd ever seen. It's a much better space opera than the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy was. Regardless of your views of Orson Scott Card, I think this is worth seeing. The movie didn't endear me enough to buy a copy, or read the book for that matter. It's a decent science fiction fantasy that will be a crowd pleaser.

What is your favorite movie adaptation of a book? Comment below and tell me why!

Life of Pi Movie Review

I had a copy of the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel a couple of years back. As soon as I saw the trailer for Ang Lee's movie (2012) based on the book I regretted parting with the book before taking the chance to read it. The movie was a beautiful spectacle to behold, and had many layers left to personal interpretation.

In Canada, a writer (Rafe Spall) visits the Indian storyteller Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan) and asks him to tell his life story. Pi tells the story of his childhood in Pondicherry, India, and the origins of his peculiar nickname. One day, his father, a zoo owner, explains that the municipality is no longer supporting the zoo and he has hence decided to move to Canada, where the animals the family owns would be sold. They board a Japanese cargo ship with the animals and out of the blue, there is a storm, following by a shipwrecking. 16-year-old Pi (Suraj Sharma) survives in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a male Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. They are adrift in the Pacific Ocean, with the aggressive hyena and Richard Parker getting hungry. Pi needs to find a way to survive.

Life of Pi is, without question, a work of art. The colors are so vivid, the CGI work is remarkable, the art direction is fantastic, and the locations where the film was shot are beautiful. A lot of the movie takes place at sea and to get many of these shots blue screens were probably used, but it's so well integrated that you would hardly guess they were anywhere near land. There's some exceptional artistic photography where the camera is looking up through some very still water, and we don't realize it until a person swims by, causing some ripples in the water surface which distort the picturesque architecture shot we are viewing. Life of Pi is absolutely gorgeous to behold. Normally, I don't care for 3D movies, but similar to Hugo, I imagine this would be extraordinary to see in 3D since it was filmed in 3D by a master film maker.

The layers in Life of Pi will likely spark some interesting philosophical debates. Early on we are presented with the idea of the importance of storytelling. Pi is a religious character who follows three religions; Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Each of these religions have their own set of tales and fables used to spread the teachings and illustrate the beliefs of their respective theology. Pi believes that each of the stories might simply be aspects of a greater, universal story of God and of love. Truth is brought into question in that authentically objective truth isn't  usually possible. There can be different kinds of truth that all hint at a broader understanding of things; things can be factually true, emotionally true, or even spiritually true. Even if you ignore the philosophical and theological implication of Life of Pi and simply take it at face value as a tale about a young man on a lifeboat with a huge tiger, it's still fascinating story.

Pi was a great character. He leads a fascinating life and has interesting experiences that make him the person he is. He's a very believable character. Richard Parker is also an interesting character. Yes, he's a feral tiger and it is not ever suggested that he is anything other than that; but giving the tiger a name makes the tiger more of a character than one would expect. They are not friends by any means, they are in fact nemeses. Their relationship is that of conflict and necessity which is enthralling since one of them is a 480 pound feral predator and the other is a skinny vegetarian. I can't think of another story that has this kind of a relationship in it and not once did this spiral downward into an Old Yeller boy-and-his-tiger sort of cheesy story.

A story about a boy stuck in a lifeboat with a tiger could get really boring, but Life of Pi remains interesting on many levels and has absolutely stunning visuals. This movie shows us that you can have a movie that uses state of the art special effects technology to help tell a good story without being a loud, boisterous CGI action fest. It's darker than you would expect for a PG movie, and I don't imagine many 10-year-olds are going to be all that captivated by it. While not actually a religious movie, I think it touched on spirituality much better than movies which go out of their way to be a religiously based film. Life of Pi has an interesting ending that is left to personal interpretation much like Inception, and will likely spark some interesting discussion afterwards. I think Life of Pi is worth owning on Blu-Ray. I intend to get it in 3D so I can see some outstanding 3D effects done by a masterful director.

What is your favorite special effects-intensive movie? Comment below and tell me all about it!

Hugo Movie Review

I see some movie trailers and think, “Yeah, I’ll catch that on DVD someday.” Once in a while I make that assessment and when I finally see the movie I kick myself for not taking the chance to see it on the big screen. I don’t think I was even 5 minutes into Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011) before I began lamenting that I had missed it in theaters.

In the middle of 1930’s Paris, orphan boy Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives within the walls of a train station. He maintains and repairs the stations many clocks, a skill he learned from his father (Jude Law) and uncle (Ray Winstone). The only thing Hugo has left from his father is an automaton that doesn’t work. Hugo works to repair the automaton but he has to find its heart-shaped key to activate it. While eluding the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), he meets a cranky old man named Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), who works at a toy booth and his god-daughter, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz). Hugo finds that they have a surprising connection to his father and the automaton. As the mystery unfolds, the old man begins to remember his past and his significance to the world of film-making.

The first half of the film centers around Hugo’s escapades as the mystery unfolds. The second half is almost a tribute to Georges Méliès who was a real historical figure and an infamous French magician. He actually did use his magician skills to make some of the first special effects used in the very early days of film. You may have seen his most famous short film, A Trip to the Moon (1902), about travelers in a space capsule which is shot from a cannon to the moon, and their capsule pokes the Man in the Moon in the eye. The backstory depicted in Hugo actually did happen to Méliès. Méliès’s life is depicted in a loving way to show the magic and wonder that films can have, both in making them and viewing them. Therefore, Hugo seems like a love letter from the masterful director, Martin Scorsese, to the art of film.

Hugo seems like a family film on the surface: child protagonists with skills beyond their years, a seemingly slapstick villain, and secrets that only the kids are able to uncover, etc. But each character in this film is deep and complex, far more so than the usual exaggerated kid characters in family films. Hugo is talented for a reason; he was an apprentice under two clockwork masters. Isabelle is knowledgeable because she is so enamored with books. This even comes out in her vocabulary-enriched dialogue. Even the bumbling station inspector is not just a goofy slapstick antagonist; there is a reason for everything he does. Every single character is delightfully deep and complex.

The visuals in Hugo were just astounding; everything was beautifully designed. There was a lot of CGI and other techniques that made up the train station and 1930’s Paris. The opening shot starts with a swooping tour of Paris, through the train station, and ends on Hugo peeking out of a small opening in the clock face high above the station floor. Every shot has so much beautiful detail that it’s almost hard to drink it all in, and yet it’s so masterfully incorporated that it doesn’t seem like it’s a gratuitous display of special effects. Even the automaton looks like a beautiful mechanism that will work if Hugo can just find the key.

Generally, I see 3-D movies as being very gimmicky. Even when watching their 2-D counterparts, you can often tell what scenes were tailor made to have things pop out of the screen at you. I did not see Hugo in 3-D, and I’m regretting it. 3-D shouldn’t be gimmicky, but should enhance the sensory experience of watching a movie. I think that in the hands of a master director like Scorsese, 3-D technology would be beautifully implemented. I want to get a 3-D Blu-Ray copy of this movie and find a 3-D TV I could watch it on. I really felt like I was missing out on Hugo’s full potential.

The pacing was a bit slow for younger children. It will probably bore some kids, but I think this is a fantastic film to introduce children to high quality cinema and wean them off  garbage like Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011). Hugo was so exquisitely done that I could see this being used to teach film students. I highly recommend seeing this movie; it will be especially magical if you are a cinephile like me. I’d also urge you to consider owning a copy. Possibly even a 3-D Blu-Ray copy, just in case.