An adaptation completely botches the original theme and message

[u/Morr4Seiya]

Mulan(2020)-They give Mulan superpowers which is not only lame it goes against the message of the original about equality and struggle,plus they removes Shang because apparently having Mulan date her superior was "problematic" even though Shang genuienely respected Mulan and their rank was never brought up

I am Legend(2007)-You know why the story is called "I am legend"? SPOILER ALERT the protagonist is the actual monster,humanity is gone and the vampires have a actual society and the protagonist kills and terrorize them

Animal Farm(2026)-On the very slim chance that Andy Serkis ever sees this,here's the thing Andy,Animal Farm was not a children work it was not supposed to have a happy ending,you never heard of cautionary tales before?

[u/SomeKindofTreeWizard]

I'd make the case that it's not PRO fascist, since Heinlein was ... kind of an iconoclastic libertarian nutjob. But the book is demonstrably fascist. The marines are psychologically and hypnotically conditioned to do unquestioning genocide.

If you can program them to do atrocities while they sleep, I don't think they're going to be a bunch of independent thinkers when they run for office...

[u/OneCatch → u/SomeKindofTreeWizard]

The marines are psychologically and hypnotically conditioned to do unquestioning genocide.

That's the Forever War (written as a critique to Starship Troopers and a better book).

In Starship Troopers there is battle hypnosis, but it's mainly for mental clarity and calm - the troopers aren't berserkers and are shown to be clinically obeying their ROE in the fights against the humanoid aliens (ROE which is explicitly non-genocidal, though the justification of the overall war is unknown). Against the bugs it doesn't matter how they behave given that no quarter is asked nor given by the bugs either.

[u/Wonderful_Discount59 → u/OneCatch]

The fights against the Skinnies do involve a lot of acts that (by modern standards) would be explicit war crimes (e.g. destroying water-treatment plants in order to render a city uninhabitable and force the population to leave).

[u/OneCatch → u/Wonderful_Discount59]

By modern standards, yes. It's also the type of thing that even every major western power was engaging in when the book was written, either overtly or by proxy. Even in relatively clean wars today, often the first act is knocking out the power grid.

But the point I'm making is that if their intent was straightforwardly genocidal then they'd just drop a hydrogen bomb on the city and be done with it. The employment of the MI is definitionally a more nuanced approach. And, even within the use of infantry, there are degrees. Rico isn't yoloing a-bombs into high density housing or killing every skinny he sees, he's hitting specific targets of military or strategic value and only fighting individual adversaries when strictly necessary.

Even if the strategic decision-making is questionable by modern standards, the execution is scrupulously clean - cleaner than modern combat is in practice.