I read the Orson Scott Card book this movie is based on when I was a teenager, but the only thing I remembered clearly was the arc of the boy becoming a Nietzschean superman soldier, and how he ended up shrugging off that training in the face of his encounters with the supposed enemy bug race.
The movie pays short shrift to that transformative end, and is basically a bunch of Harry Potter kid soldiers in kamikaze training school, who spend most of the flick playing zero g quidditch laser tag. It's a bombastic pro-military recruitment flick, and its fascist, or would that be speciest?? mentality was way to ugh for me. I found it specious for sure, and even though the effects are great, it's actually pretty boring. I liked the portrayals of bullying and social engineering, but the best part for me was seeing all the tough little guys in the movie. Ben Kingsley has a small role as a Maori with honorific facial tattooing and he looks awesome.
On the way home from the movie, I passed by a launch party for the latest release of Call Of Duty Ghosts. And it struck me that this is exactly the crowd the movie was made for - it's bound to appeal to the kids and other folk with childish black and white morality toolsets, who are into playing war games. It's a natural fit, since I think they buy into the horrible idea of killing being honourable, especially when that murder has been justified through the idea of othering the enemy to be inhuman. Also, through the emphasis on "national defence", which too often is doublespeak for aggressive offense, of course. Unfortunately, it's a sad truth that a majority of people have been indoctrinated in these terrible beliefs worldwide, and this movie does more to reinforce that mentality than plant the seeds of peace and redress briefly referenced in the coda.
In any case, Orson Scott Card is a raging homophobe so I'm glad he's not getting ANY money from the proceeds of the movie.
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