Ender's Game

This adventure based on the bestselling science-fiction novel takes place in a future where Earth is under threat from alien attacks, and the military grooms genius children with exceptional computer gaming skills to man interplanetary weapons. The most talented wunderkind discovered by recruiting colonel Harrison Ford is Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), but do his clashes with authority and fellow cadets mean he's too sensitive and emotionally conflicted to lead a team of his peers into life-or-death battle? The premise of a gifted boy thrown into a world of cliques and hierarchies may have the ring of Harry Potter in space (although the original novel pre-dates those books by more than a decade), but director and screenwriter Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) imbues the tale with deeper moral dilemmas. The special effects dazzle throughout, Ford and veteran soldier Ben Kingsley add gravitas, but the assured Butterfield is the true star, as the reluctant teen who carries the survival of humankind on his shoulders.