Terrible adaptation of the book

Rating: 3/10 (20 January 2014)

I'm a big fan of the book and I know it is often disappointing when they turn great books into terrible movies (thinking of I am Legend as another example) but come on!! It is clear that the person who wrote the screen play for this has either never read the book or has totally failed to understand the key points of it. It has a real bubblegum feel to it.
The story is only true to the book at a superficial level. They made some very strange casting choices. Couple of examples, Firstly, Ender is supposed to start off being a little boy (age 6) and end up age 12/13 at the end. They clearly decided to drop the idea that Ender stays at the battle school for a long time. Secondly, Bonzo Madrid is depicted as this sniveling runt with clear "small man's syndrome"! He is a foot shorter than Ender and that is quite comical. Following the book, it should be the other way around and this an important plot point to the psychology between the "boys" (a sort of Lord of the Flies situation). I could go on!
Why are the "aliens" not called "The Buggers" as they are in the book? Would "bugger" offend the yanks or something?? It is a slang derogatory derivation of "bug" as the aliens are insect/ant like creatures. Then there is Command School and that it is near the Bugger's home world????? When I saw that I thought "ok, they have decided to drop the Ansible device" but no, it is still mentioned so the change to this planet makes no sense. Incidentally the Command School is on Eros (huge asteroid in our solar system) in the book.
The M.D. device has also been completely misrepresented from it's description in the book but by that time I had lost most of my energy to be disappointed further and had left the "anger" phase of my "grief" and reached the "acceptance" phase. Acceptance that it wasn't going to get any better!
I could rant on for hours but basically you get the idea. If you are a fan of the book(s) then you will likely hate this movie.