'Ender's Game' has slipped under the radar, landing a nice box-office haul and above average reviews.
Remember when The Butler somehow raked in about $3 trillion at the box-office despite, well, not being very good? I think at the time we called it the box-office success story of the year, but it now has competition in the form of Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield's Ender's Game.
Harrison Ford [Center] and Asa Butterfield [R] in Ender's Game
Firstly, we assumed this movie was going to be horrible. Most people did. The trailer wasn't overly convincing and, well, sci-fi flicks are often quite bad. Writer Orson Scott-Card's homophobic views left many apparently committed to boycotting the movie. But it wasn't horrible. For a family sci-fi flick, the reviews were extremely favourable and Ender's Game was hailed as one of the better space in recent years. Our own Rich Cline said the movie actually adresses some "punchy subjects" in his review.
"There's been considerable debate about the conflicted themes and messages of 'Ender's Game' over the years," wrote Andrew O'Hehir at Salon. "At its core, Card's book is about the psychic connection between war and child abuse, two of the worst things that happen in human society. That whole aspect of the story is not half as memorable as the tormented Christ-like ego of Ender, an abused child who is simultaneously victim, villain and saint - history's greatest war criminal and the shamanic conduit to a vanished race."
Watch the Ender's Game trailer:
With Thor 2: The Dark World not opening in the U.S. for another week, Ender's Game was given a huge opportunity at the box-office and duly took it with a $28 million opening. It was higher than expectations and probably down to Harrison Ford's exhaustive promotion of the movie. Who said he'd had his time in Hollywood?
Though $28 million is by no means extraordinary with the likes of Gravity around and Thor 2 and The Hunger Games to come, though it may be enough to push Ender's into franchise territory.
Ben Kingsley in Ender's Game
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