Huge HTTP error responses with malformed queries?

If a user submits a query that is malformed, they get a JSON response. The problem is that we have a LARGE number of boxes so the HTTP 500 response is about 10MB.

Is there a way to make the response smaller? I think we'd be happy with the response from the first shard/host with the error there.

We were thinking of adding a servlet filter in between the client and user but this is extra work...

There's not within ES.