This is sad that we’re at this point in history when we have to have the obvious confirmed due to a lack of intelligence in the majority of a first world country.
This is sad that we’re at this point in history when we have to have the obvious confirmed due to a lack of intelligence in the majority of a first world country.
To be fair…
So did Peter Verhoeven.
He ended up in the same place, but he thinks he inserted sarcasm into the story when he just couldn’t see it in what he had removed.
Like, there was an entire third race in the books, a middle ground between bugs and humans, and the novel starts with a soldier massacring a village of civilians while his only concern was making sure he used all his explosive before returning because they got yelled at if they didn’t.
Right from the very first page it’s undeniable that Earth is not the good guys in Heinlens’s version. Then it goes to where the movie starts.
Heinlen just 100% stuck to his characters point of view. They didn’t think any of it was evil, so the book doesn’t. Idiots think that means Heinlen didn’t have an issue with it.
The book was always a warning written with fellow military officers in mind as the audience.
I never knew this, but just from watching the movie alone I even thought it was pretty obvious the humans were the bad guys.
In the movie they blatantly are. In the book it’s less explicit and you have to apply your own conscience. So a lot of people see it as glorifying fascism.
Frank Herbert had the same problem with Dune: he meant it as a warning against following charismatic leaders, but because the dangerous charismatic leader is his sympathetic main character, to a lot of people the book seems to glorify it.
The marketing also distorted any coherent message of the movie. I remember seeing the previews as a kid and it was just a cinematic spectacle of space marines slaughtering the bugs “oh and btw there are tits in it” type of vibe.
The biggest lesson the movie added was quality over quantity…
Carmen: 0
Diz: a million
Peter, brother of Paul Verhoeven??
Cousin of Luke and Matthew Verhoeven
I enjoyed the book so much and I knew that the author had feelings about this. It wasn’t pro war. It was a response to the dropping of the Atomic bomb. It’s satire but an idiot can’t pick up on it. I loved Zim’s character in the book.