Too much fat trimmed = poor box office results = No sequels = Morons should be fired

Rating: 6/10 (8 November 2013)

Why, why, why did they trim off so many terrific aspects to the story? annnnd NOW look: The box office is poor compared to what it could have been. There's strong talk of NO sequel and NO follow up TV series. Nothing. At the point they were at, what's another million dollars per minute if the word of mouth and the critical reviews would created a much larger ROI. Seriously? What's another 20 million in production footage to create a more cohesive story, that would have created sooo much more profit and set up for a legitimate sequel that people would actually be very excited to see. See below on plot points.
You morons screwed yourselves out of a lot of money and status as an all time classic. You could have easily added another 25 minutes of run time (not to mention the final 5-8 minutes is credits 99% of people don't watch anyway so why count it?), and no one would have cared b/c the pace of the movie along with the action would have made it felt like 10 minutes had passed. As it was the movie felt like an hour long anyway. Besides, its a WAR MOVIE. Those are typically accepted as being longer movies anyway because of the acceptance of pain, anguish, trenches, never ending battle mindset,etc...all parts of war movies.
I read this book and part of the enjoyment was the satisfaction of overcoming the grueling and hellish experience of the protagonist. Here's where you screwed up.
1. Poorly established relationship of Ender with his elder sibling Peter. It was so brief it might as well not have happened at all and just use the sister. You could have just "talked" about how vicious the brother was (as you did in some scenes).
1a. You could have better explained the big deal with population controls and being a "third". Could have done it in less than 60 more seconds of dialogue or imagery.
2. The battle school progression. Again you could have AND SHOULD HAVE shown more of the improvement in tactics and ability and development of ancillary "toon" characters to show how Ender achieved great heights. Not just 2 fricken battles, an intro, and a private room practice. Stupid, and cheap.
3a. The mind meld with the formics and the online game. TERRIBLY executed. You never established a legitimate connection between Ender and the formics and the game as the medium for their communication. Had I not already known the story in detail I would have struggled mightily to understand that he was being contacted throughout his training.
3b. You had Ender do ALL the talking when he finally came in contact with the formic creature at the end. WHYYYYY? How effin hard is it to create some ghostly / 4th dimension sounding voice (in ender's head that we and he could hear) ACTUALLY speaking to him. It's been done before in other movies...so not difficult people! Complete screw up. Total cool points lost forever.
4. Small gripe but why couldn't you let him fight back against mazor rackham on their initial meeting and show more of the aggression and strategy as was highlighted in the book? You had time, plenty of time.
5. Why did you show sooo few of the battle scenes at command school? Why did you NOT show how Ender was going through hell? and passing out? and losing his mind? etc...and more of the mistakes? you had time.
6. Virtually no explanation of the phelotic / ansible communication that humans and formics used. You could have explained that in conjunction with the formic queen contacting Ender through the game and throughout the movie.. YOU HAD TIME (and plenty of budget)
7. This is really section 3b. Why couldn't you better show how Ender felt immense guilt for his actions. Had you set it up better to begin with, the culmination of his internal struggles, the pain, stress, etc... would have bubbled over nicely during this / these scenes. Total missed opportunity to connect with the audience, and up this movie to all time classic status.
I enjoyed this movie b/c like so many I'm happy it got made but it kills me to know you could have made so much more money on this film, which would have opened doors to future films, and now it's most likely not going to happen.
This movie is a C+/ B- at best. The 6 out of 10 is generous and if it wasn't such an amazing story, the movie adaptation really deserved a D+/C-