- The Paul Verhoeven film is generally considered to be the biggest middle finger the novel will ever receive, and that is no accident. It’s a satire of militarism, the Cold War, dehumanization of the enemy, war movies, propaganda and military sci-fi in general. It originally started out as an unrelated script called Bug Hunt, before the studio acquired the rights to the novel and rewrote the script to accommodate it. The film was intentionally designed as the polar opposite of the book in terms of message, characterization, and theme—an attack on the “pro-war fascist dogma” detractors of the novel attribute to it. A fairly detailed exploration of the film’s themes can be found on The AV Club.
Composers want people to listen to their music, they don’t want them doing something else while their music is on. I’d like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights.
Aaron Copland, quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music