The Thinking Man’s Alien Invasion.

A boy-genius strategist is recruited by Earth’s military to repel extra-terrestrial alien invaders. And does the job TOO well.

Adapted from Orson Scott Card’s 1985 novel of the same name, ENDER’S GAME is set in a dystopian future where children adept at video games – the currency of future war – are taken from their parents and trained in digital war games, to repel an advancing extra-terrestrial attack. Ender Wiggin (young, cherubic Asa Butterfield) proves so adept at the games, displaying such ferocity and amorality, that the military put him in ultimate command – they adopt HIS “game” – to win the intergalactic war.

Though a war mentality permeates the film, ENDER’S GAME is too nuanced for movie audiences raised on simplistic goodie-versus-baddie storylines, with every commander, every battle tactic and even Ender himself, delving into moral ambiguities and questionable philosophies, much of it resembling Sun Tzu’s infamous The Art Of War: “I’ve always understood the way my enemy thinks – and when I truly understand them, I also love them.” That’s a commendable aspect transferred well from the book. Transferred not so well is the depiction of the antagonists – clichéd bullies within Ender’s military ranks to give him something to struggle against in a B-Movie frenzy.

Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) gives Ender no quarter through cadet school, making it intentionally hard for him – to make Ender even harder. Graff almost drools in lust when Ender attacks bullies with the ruthless efficiency of a sociopath. Ender would kick a bully when he was down, stating clinically to Graff, “Knocking him down won the first war. Now I need to win every other war after that.” And Graf spurts in his pants a little. It’s what they need for the final boss battle – someone unafraid to contravene supposedly “civilized” strictures. Although, when Ender tousles with his big-nosed small-man-syndrome commander Bonzo (Moises Arias), Ender gives Bonzo the choice to withdraw or sustain a broken arm – Bonzo refuses – Ender breaks his arm. This CHOICE is something that Graff either doesn’t comprehend, or refuses to acknowledge, and an aspect of Ender’s personality that will cause him to rebel against the absolutism of Graff’s philosophy.

Already you can sense the thematic departure from most tentpole films – there are many layers to ponder – and thus ENDER’S GAME would be a box office flop (listed in Variety’s “Biggest Box Office Bombs of 2013”). Sadly, this ambitious film would not get a sequel, even though the ending sets it up for a brave new chapter, as Ender confronts the conquered Alien monarch and sets off with one of its eggs for parts unknown. To remain unknown now.

Hailee Steinfeld (TRUE GRIT, 2010) is Petra, Ender’s puppy love interest from a competing team. Abigail Breslin (AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY) is Ender’s sister, with whom he keeps up some kind of futuristic email correspondence, for the purposes of primitive voiceover exposition. And suddenly—

—Ben Kingsley in Maori face-tattoos!

What the–? In hard closeup, Gandhi as bovver boy. When Ender wakes one day, he is confronted with the stoic Kingsley like an hallucination. Kingsley is mythical Mazer Rackham, a fighter pilot who repelled the alien invasion the first time. I don’t remember how Mazer appeared in the book, or what he looked like, but here, we fall out of the movie like a skateboard accident – because it’s Ben Kingsley. If director/co-writer Gavin Hood (X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) had cast an unknown, maybe this stunt might have worked – but it’s Ben Kingsley. Is Ender hallucinating or am *I*?

Another incongruous aspect is the training room. In a spherical zero-g arena, cadets in teams engage in mock battle with each other, with rules that suspiciously resemble the idiotic game Quidditch from HARRY POTTER (although J.K. Rowling’s stories were first published in 1997 – did she steal the stupid game rules from Ender?), where cadets score points by shooting their enemies, but one cadet breaching the other team’s goal line means an absolute win, points be damned. No matter the intriguing tactics, hero angles and ingenious visualization of the sphere, it’s a pointless exercise, as we shall discover when they end up Tom Cruising it in a MINORITY REPORT-style hologram room, commanding fleets of warships virtually.

Meanwhile, the alien queen is telepathically trying to contact Ender. Why? Ah, that’s for the sequ—oh shit…

Graff and Mazer are painted as ambiguously evil (but then, Harrison Ford has ALWAYS played ambiguously evil, if you really face the truth; remember, even his most beloved character, Han Solo, was a smuggler, a criminal), and are played against Major Anderson (Viola Davis in an empathetic role), as they promote the coming war as the war to prevent all future wars: contain the aliens attacking Earth, then take the battle to the aliens’ Homeworld. Like William Wallace taking the battle to England; like Napoleon pursuing Wellington to Watergate; like Ender kicking a bully when he’s down…

Which raises issues like: Do you become the bully yourself? Is it more honorable to leave a loser when he’s down, or continue to kick the shit out of him to save your whole civilization the indignity of being conquered? Thus, is it a mark of cowardice to leave him when he’s down, or a mark of cowardice to continue kicking? In the film’s fantastic coda, it explores all these themes of war, and Ender – like Bowie – ends up Loving The Alien.

The ending is surprising for its boldness. And it makes Graff rock hard. He maintains: “We won! That’s all that matters!” Ender counters, “The WAY we win matters!” And the movie makes such a compelling argument for both sides that I don’t know which is truth any more. And ain’t that the two-sided truth about ALL war?

END

Loopy Lupine.

THE WOLFMAN starts as a remake of the classic 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. film THE WOLF MAN, and ends somewhere between BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.

That ain’t so bad, but not what it was aiming for.

Director Joe Johnston (JURASSIC PARK III, HIDALGO) pays homage to the horror pioneers by including all the old conventions in his remake: the classic poem “Even a man who is pure of heart…” (which is not arcane Euro legend, but penned by writer of the original WOLF MAN, Curt Siodmak), old villager’s tales of lycanthropes, the moon appearing preternaturally large and full – at least ten nights in a row, the full-body jump through bay windows, arms and limbs dismembered, and the fiery finale in a lavish mansion.

Benicio Del Toro is Lawrence Talbot, who returns to swampy 1891 England and his ancestral castle to investigate the mysterious death of his brother. He is greeted ambivalently as a prodigal son by his father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins, phoning in some kind of distracted cross between Hannibal Lecter and his butler in REMAINS OF THE DAY).

Lawrence is distracted himself by his brother’s widow Gwen (Emily Blunt), and he is tailed by a detective (Hugo Weaving) creating the template for reporter Jack McGee in THE INCREDIBLE HULK television series – always showing up after the fact.

The Wolfcuke

When he visits a gypsy camp one night, Lawrence is bitten by a werewolf. And we all know what happens then: your body grows long wolfy fingers, your back muscles expand and your shirt rips off, your paws grow massive and your shoes explode – but your pants stay on. Really tight – like the Incredible Hulk.

Rather than take after the CGI wolves in the stillborn TWILIGHT series, or even the rampaging wolves in the UNDERWORLD series, I was glad to see THE WOLFMAN’s wolf-man design emulated the classic Lon Chaney look – a wolf-headed man with barrel-chested human torso, just slightly less hairy than a Middle Eastern teenager. The white ripped shirt and black vest with Elizabethan trousers stretched tight complete the classically Euro lycanthrope ensemble.

There is nothing intrinsically “wrong” with this lush production – the effects are superb and naturally much better than the 1941 version or any of its sequels (I still remember as a kid being dissatisfied with Chaney’s onscreen transformation – the slow dissolves from one makeup point to another – even though it was supposedly “Hollywood magic”); the gore teeters on the cusp of gratuitous and ludicrous, the night forests are eternally backlit by kliegs, and the story is changed minimally to accommodate a wolf-on-wolf deathmatch finale. Danny Elfman’s soundtrack alternates between LORD OF THE RINGS and BATMAN BEGINS. The most uncomfortable aspect is that maybe this production takes itself too seriously. And ends up funny.

The interaction between Hopkins and Del Toro seems forced – they are meant to be estranged father and son, yet they seem like they’ve never ever met before their dress rehearsal. Art Malik as the butler is a strange piece of casting pie. And there is hardly any chemistry between Lawrence Talbot and Gwen, as they share but one kiss, so her distraught chase after the hunters to save him as The Wolf seems a little forced. But Anthony Hopkins as a pudgy, blondish wolf is priceless.

I fear the faults in this movie may be ours – the moviegoing audience. Are we too cool to take in an old-fashioned tale of simple legendary horror without trying to read everything as a homage to arcane movie references or a nod to modern ones; without trying to see irony or cynicism behind everything? Even this production felt it needed to add a “twist” to the original tale to hold our interest. Have we outgrown the old monsters?

And just how many nights of a full moon can the Earth stand anyway?

END