Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley in "Ender's Game" sci-fi TV spot (video)

 October 5, 2013 - 13:18 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - The ad tells us Earth is doomed unless Ender (Asa Butterfield) can stop an alien invasion. Ender asks what he is supposed to do, and his teacher Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) responds: "Destroy them," The Hollywood Reporter said.

The spot reveals new footage from the battle room, the zero-G room in which Ender and his classmates train and play a game akin to a high-stakes version of laser tag.

Summit Entertainment's Ender's Game is directed by Gavin Hood and based off of Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel. It also stars Harrison Ford and Hailee Steinfeld.

The film hits theaters Nov. 1.

Ender's Game (1985) is a military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperilled mankind that has barely survived two conflicts with the Formics or "Buggers", an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet maintains a school to find and train future fleet commanders. The world's most talented children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are taken at a very young age to a training center known as the Battle School. There, teachers train them in the arts of war through increasingly difficult games including ones undertaken in zero gravity in the Battle Room, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed.

The book originated as the short story "Ender's Game", published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Elaborating on characters and plot lines depicted in the novel, Card later wrote additional books to form the Ender's Game series. Card released an updated version of Ender's Game in 1991, changing some political facts to accurately reflect the times; most notably, the book was updated to reflect the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was mentioned several times in the novel, and the end of the Cold War.