Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
I caught the totalitarian aspect of the book, but I just took it in stride. I wasn't sure if Heinlein was advocating for that sort of government, or whether he was saying "yeah, this could happen," but when I read scifi I'm usually of the frame of mind "alright, this is the world the story is playing out in, lets see what happens." When I saw the film, the best aspects of the book were left out, with a whole lot of immature/ over the top obnoxiousness in its place. I was looking for something totally different, so didn't really give it the satirical benefit of the doubt. I just thought the film-makers were super dumbing-down the material/ being lazy. So I hated it.
I don't think I could claim it was a great movie. The fact that so many people missed the point and the movie was unenjoyable if you did is proof that it's not a great movie. I think the ending where a narrator suddenly appears was supposed to be the final reveal for anyone who hadn't caught on yet that the whole movie was just propaganda from the future, but even that was ambiguous since it's just as easy to interpret it as an homage to the WWII era films it had been mimicking.

And it takes WAY too many shots to kill a bug. Give the guys some better firepower FFS. These guys can travel from star to star but they don't have explosive rounds to use against giant bugs with thick carapaces? Come on, man!
Their tactics were also absurdly bad. The irresponsibly inadequate military was by design.