You Need To Watch Harrison Ford’s Forgotten Sci-Fi Movie On Amazon Right Now
Fans of both sci-fi and Harrison Ford should check out Ender’s Game while it’s streaming on Amazon. The 2013 film is based on Orson Scott Card’s novel of the same name, which has won accolades since its original publication in 1985, landing on several lists of the best science fiction novels of the 20th century. It kicked off a series of novels that has expanded into the “Enderverse” and includes the Ender series, the Shadow Saga, the Formic Wars, and the Fleet School novels.
Despite Ender’s Game‘s slow ticket sales, Harrison Ford is still a big reason to stream the film as he turns in the kind of layered, grounded performance audiences have come to expect from him.
Card had long called Ender’s Game an “unfilmable” novel and had been hesitant to sell the screen rights, though he began to write a movie adaptation as early as 1996. Harrison Ford stars in the film as Colonel Hyrum Graff, who is the principal of Battle School, where gifted children are trained over the course of 50 years to become commanders in a counterattack against the Formics, an alien race whose attack on Earth left millions dead.
Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, played by Asa Butterfield, is a remarkably gifted child who is sent to Battle School and trains closely with Colonal Graff.
Along with Harrison Ford, the cast includes Viola Davis, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kinsley, and Abigail Breslin. The film was written and directed by Gavin Hood, best known for writing and directing the 2005 film Tsotsi, which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This was after Card himself had attempted several drafts of the screenplay over the course of more than a decade.
Neither Harrison Ford nor the other big names attached to Ender’s Game could give the film quite the boost it needed
Before his role in Ender’s Game, Harrison Ford already had a place in science fiction as both Han Solo in the Star Wars films and Rick Deckard in Blade Runner. He had also returned to science fiction a couple of years prior in the sci-fi Western Cowboys and Aliens, his first film in the genre since Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi in 1983. His presence in the film, it was hoped, would help draw audiences to theaters to see Ender’s Game finally make its way to the big screen.
After all, Harrison Ford is one of the most bankable stars in cinema history, having headlined some of the biggest films ever made, including the Indiana Jones franchise. At this point in his career, however, he was in something of a slump following that series’ fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which had underwhelmed critics and disappointed at the box office. Still, there was plenty of reason to hope that Ender’s Game could be sold to audiences in part on the star’s enduring fame.
Sadly, neither Harrison Ford nor the other big names attached to Ender’s Game could give the film quite the boost it needed. Premiering on October 24 and 25, 2013, in Germany and the UK, respectively, it hit Canada, the US, and other markets on November 1, 2013, releasing even wider the following January. Over the course of its run, critical response was mostly mild, and the film ended up with a $125.5 million take against an estimated budget of $110-115 million.
Harrison Ford Now
Ender’s Game was another disappointment for Harrison Ford, but it came not long before a career renaissance that started with Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens in 2015 and continues still, despite less than stellar box office returns on the fifth Indy movie. At 80, the star is as busy as ever and garnering praise for performances like his leading role alongside Helen Mirren in the Yellowstone prequel series 1923. He is also currently starring with Jason Segel in the AppleTV+ series Shrinking.
Despite Ender’s Game‘s slow ticket sales, Harrison Ford is still a big reason to stream the film as he turns in the kind of layered, grounded performance audiences have come to expect from him in his storied career. For his part, Card was pleased with the long-gestating adaptation of his work, calling it “the best that good people could do with a story they really cared about and believed in.” He also commented that, although the film deviates somewhat from the book, it is, in his opinion, “damn good.”
So, if you’re interested in lesser-known science fiction films, or if you’re always up for a good Harrison Ford performance, it will be worth it to you to check out Ender’s Game, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
