> Now the movie, that was definitely meant to be satire. Which is why so many fans of the book hate it.
Ironically, many people hated the movie because they didn't recognize that it was satirizing the (apparently) pro-military book.
Ironically, many people hated the movie because they didn't recognize that it was satirizing the (apparently) pro-military book.
It wasn't satirizing anything. It was just capitalizing on name recognition.
But if they didn't do that, fewer people would have watched it, and we would not now be discussing movie vs. book, because they would have always been two separate things. They still are, really.
When I read the book, I didn't see it as either pro-military or anti-military. It was a fictionalization of actual contemporary military experiences into a future sci-fi setting. The reaction should be in the eye of the beholder. The book may have seemed to glorify the military, because the entire premise of the book was that the military had essentially staged a coup against every human government, this making it the keystone of all human society. The rest is just how Heinlein thought things would work if the military were in charge of everything. Some things would work better; some would be worse.
I must admit that I haven't made much of an attempt to evaluate the movie on its own merits, as it already started off on the wrong footing with me, due to the attempt to trick people into watching it by pretending to be something it was not. It might have been just fine as Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine. But they chose to wallpaper a licensed property over the facade instead.
As a film adaptation of a book, it is the least faithful interpretation I have ever seen. It wasn't even sci-fi. It was more like a World War II movie, except I couldn't actually tell if the humans were supposed to be the Axis, or the Allies, or a little of both.
It was actually intended as (per Verhoeven) a satire of right-wing, fascists elements perceived in modern American culture that directly associated them with Nazi propaganda; the movie was largely written independently of the book, with rights to the book secured later after superficial similarity between some elements of the movie and the book were pointed out, at which point names, etc., from the book were added. Verhoeven says he only read two chapters of the book.
The film was a satire, but not of the book.