Misses the best parts

Rating: 6/10 (2 November 2013)

I find it very hard to review this movie after seeing. First of all, I'm not a person to say a movie is bad because it takes shortcuts through the book. The only condition I ask of a book-based movie is to keep its consistence in the universe it describes. That's it.
First things first: the visuals are stunning. All the digital work that went in the movie paid off by creating a beautiful rendition of space, of lack of gravity, of aliens and their worlds as well as of Earth.
The soundtrack complements the visuals nicely. It's not perfect, some tracks (especially those before battles) feel cheap and pushy towards forcing a certain state of mind that doesn't necessarily go together with the ways battles are depicted.
Then, we have the cast. The young actors (more or less known) do their job nicely, while Harrison Ford is the perfect colonel Graff. My only (mild) objections are Kingsley as Rackham and Pinchak as Peter. Pinchak only gets a minute to convey Peter to the audience and what we see is not particularly convincing. Kingsley starts of well but falls short towards the end and never conveys the character: a man who was kept mostly isolated in space, kept alive by relativity, something that took a toll on sanity.
With the good things out of the way, let's see what's not so right. In this category, what we have is the story. ALthough I would have never expected that the script would include everything in the book, the way the story was rushed left me with a bitter feeling. Peter merely hints at being a bully, so far from the psycho prone to violence that he is said to be. Ender's ascension is given absolutely no justification. When did he turn from a shy kid into a commander? Exactly how does he become a leader? We see him as a rookie getting introduced to the two games (the battles and the Mind Game), then he learns to shoot and based on one initiative in a solitary battle he gets his command in which he wins one battle. How come even Bernard is respecting Ender? Why is Petra, a more experienced fighter, following him? Speaking of Petra, I absolutely dread the way she is somehow pushed as romantic interest while more important characters such as Dink and Alai are barely there.
Due to rushing, Ender's reaction at the end, when he lashes at Graff for being tricked into performing xenocide feel forced and cheap. Yes, we are told that when he understands an enemy well enough to completely defeat it he starts to love them but he's never seen actually spending time studying the Formics, learning about them.
In the book, a major point is that while most students follow Graff's advice and learn from Mazer Rackham's strategy (via battle movies), Ender spends his time studying the strategy of the Formics. This is mentioned specifically as the point where he opens his mind and becomes receptive enough to allow the Queen to communicate via the Mind Game. Thus he understands their civilization and finds them as beautiful creatures which he must eventually protect from extinction.
Also, in school, while Petra does teach him to shoot, he learns strategy from Dink and he expands that strategy with the rookies, gaining their respect.
A particularly annoying scene takes place when Ender returns to Earth and meets Valentine. He mentions that he wins battles in school by understanding his enemy, although he is never shown studying strategy, mentioning something about how his opponents think or winning more than a single battle.
But in the movie these essential points are lost. Other questions that are never answered: What is the Strategos? What/who is the Hegemon? What the hell is an Asible?
Overall, the movie does follow the story but misses the substance almost entirely. As such, it is definitely entertaining and worth watching but as there is nothing of substance to the story, I don't see myself watching it more than once.