I was actually far more disappointed by the movie keeping so many things from the book despite dropping or radically changing the rest than the things that were actually cut from the movie. I can understand having to condense the story in the movie, but apparently they had to keep the basic course of the story even when it doesn't make sense anymore.
--- Spoilers, stay away if you haven't read the book...or seen the movie, I guess ---
The thing I was easily the most disappointed in (and shows this problem clearly) is how the movie completely removed the hard science fiction aspects of the book. Most notably, the movie seems to display faster-than-light travel so casually that it's not even treated as an issue, while the lack of FTL travel (but not FTL communications) is massively important in the book. This causes the movie's ending to break down completely, since the book's (largely identical) ending relies on the human fleets, launched immediately after the Second Invasion, having had to spend decades at under light speed to reach their targets but not actually needing to have their commander with them. The effects and battle scenes also suffer from this, being generic sci-fi light shows compared to the more realistic descriptions in the book; I'll admit that they're well done, but they annoyed me a lot because of that.
Beyond that, you have a whole bunch of scenes, lines and elements that they apparently had to include because they're famous but not in any way that is meaningful or makes sense. The bit where Ender kills the giant in the fantasy game is pretty pointless here because it happens about three minutes after he starts playing the game and could easily have been cut, for example. The fight between Ender and Bonzo is completely meaningless in the movie, as it just shows Bonzo falling on his head, removing the point that scene was supposed to make about Ender's character in the book (where Ender thoroughly kills Bonzo so he would never threaten him again). Mazer Rackham's character, who in the book is treated as a hero because he defeated the aliens around Saturn eighty years ago and everyone assumes has died since, is pretty much ruined here as all we really see of him is that he was a pilot that apparently killed himself at the start of the battle. Not something I think would make everyone believe he's the saviour of humanity, really, and the only reason he seems to have being in the movie at all is to talk to Ender for a bit and name drop the phrase 'speaker for the dead' (again, without any sort of context).
I could go on for a while. In any case, I think to properly make this movie they either had to be more faithful to the basic elements of the story while more radically changing the structure of the plot (though I suppose I would have also complained about that) or, better yet, made this a (less dumbed down) two-part movie.
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