Poor Writing, Casting and Character Development

Rating: 1/10 (19 March 2014)

This movie had a lot of disappointing aspects for me. If the viewer has not seen the book, I would describe it as a fast-paced and rather interesting action movie. If the viewer has seen the book, or is a real fan, as I am, then I would describe this movie as a failure. So many things were changed or not taken into account that it is just inexcusable.
As most reviewers have noted, the movie was too short. There is just too much material that needs to be included for this movie to be of any quality. My suggestion would be to present it as a mini-series rather than multiple movies, because the viewers are following a thread that should not be interrupted by great amounts of time.
I agree that certain things can be left out entirely, such as anything about his home life (except for the event with Stilson). It is too time consuming to include. The movie made the characters so shallow, why would one need to know background at all? I will assume that the characters were shallow because they were trying to tell the story too fast, to cram all the plot into an allotted amount of time. This is a reason for producers to wait until they have better terms on which to make a movie, movies or series.
The violent events that involved Ender were all changed or omitted. The whole Bonso thing was a disaster in my opinion. Bonso was supposed to be much larger than Ender...a very threatening bully. In the movie, Bonso is a head shorter than Ender. Ender would seem like a bully to overpower or hurt this little wimp on purpose, so they made it an accident. Why was this violence taken out? Did someone think it would traumatize young viewers?
Size is a very important factor in children's lives. Ender Wiggin was a very small child in the book. This was a very big part of his character. He was younger, much smaller and much smarter, a profile that other children always resent. And it was a victory that he had the charisma to become a good leader that the children would naturally follow. In my opinion, this was half of the story. Asa Butterfield did an adequate job, but I think many other young actors could have performed just as well, and been physically correct for the role.
It was important that several of his close friendships be developed. Without this, the movie is flat. He has basically one-line interactions with the other children, except for Petra, which was turned into a semi- romantic situation, which was not true to the book.
Character development is paramount to a story. If you don't invest interest in the characters, you don't care what happens to them in the end. Scenes should have been put in to do this, so more time to tell the story was essential.
The pilots in the simulation were referred to as "drones," which I assume means they were not human. Nothing was said about a live fleet, that had traveled for a whole generation to meet the Formics in battle, which is what the situation actually was supposed to be.
When it got to the end of the movie, I thought, gee, the situation is interesting, but I don't really care what happens to anyone. I might have been affected if Ender himself had died, but even his character was not developed very well.
The exception in the movie is Ben Kingsley. Ben Kingsley is excellent in everything he does, and he is excellent in his role here. He makes the most of what is given to him, but even that wasn't very much.
My summary as to why I thought this movie was awful: There was not enough time allowed to tell the story the way it needed to be told. If enough time were allowed I can only assume that it would have been used to develop the characters in a way that would make the viewers care about the story. And the casting of the characters including Ender, Bonso and Bean, should have been done more thoughtfully.
I thought that the reason this book was not made into a movie sooner was because the cinematic effects were not developed enough to make things look real. The movie looked great visually, I am just so disappointed that they really botched the rest of it.