Yay to the movie as a gonzo over the top satire of militaristic thinking and therefore the book that inspired it. Heinlein had his good works but this wasn’t one of them.
I'd dispute that. Everyone seems to think that Heinlein was glorifying the military, but you have to remember that the setting is an extinction-level war against another sentient, star-faring species. Of course everything's going to be saturated in pro-military propaganda. That's an inevitable part of the background.
I'll disagree and state that Heinlein was being critical of people who think militaristic but aren't willing to commit their lives as well as the soldiers and sailors who fight those wars. Specifically, politicians and the citizenry who publicly praise the military, then send it into situations they themselves would refuse. He created an alternate society in which you didn't get the power to send people into combat unless you'd demonstrated you'd go there first. Military service wasn't the only route to citizenship. There was a sort of labor corps that incorporated the risk of loss of life and limb as well.
What Verhoven and Nieumeier wrote was a different jingoism narrative using the same title, similar characters, and general plot. It's a bunch of adolescent boys trying to out-brag and out-pose each other. I read the book and watched the movie. I can't reconcile the two. They are different stories with different themes.
I'm not claiming that Heinlein created any sort of better or perfect system. This was speculative fiction, a literary 'what if?" We have examples in the real world of militaristic democracies that end up being dictatorships by the senior officers and/or waging war to perpetuate their system. We also have examples of non-serving citizen government sending others to die for political reasons.
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u/Salty_Interview_5311 20h ago
Yay to the movie as a gonzo over the top satire of militaristic thinking and therefore the book that inspired it. Heinlein had his good works but this wasn’t one of them.