There are many differences between the film and Heinlein's
1959 novel.
[10] While the novel has
been accused of promoting militarism, fascism, and military rule, the film satirizes these concepts by featuring bombastic displays of nationalism as well as news reports that are intensely
xenophobic and propagandistic.
[11][12][10]
Verhoeven stated in 1997 that the first scene of the film—an advertisement for the Mobile Infantry—was adapted shot-for-shot from a scene in
Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the Will (1935), specifically an outdoor rally for the
Reich Labour Service. Other references to
Nazism in the movie include the
Wehrmacht-inspired uniforms and insignia of field grade officers, M.I. working uniforms reminiscent of Mussolini's
Blackshirts,
Albert Speer's style of architecture and its propagandistic dialogue ("Violence is the supreme authority!").
[13]
In a 2014 interview on
The Adam Carolla Show, the actor
Michael Ironside, who read the novel as a youth, said that he asked Verhoeven, who grew up in the
German-occupied Netherlands, "Why are you doing a right-wing fascist movie?" Verhoeven replied, "If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn't work, no one will listen to me. So I'm going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships but it's only good for killing fucking Bugs!"
[
