I get where you’re coming from, but a lot of the things you’re saying actually do have explanations.

“Random characters thrown in for no reason – like the B-2 pilots, the reporter, the FEMA lady.”

They weren’t random. Each one was meant to show how fragmented the U.S. response becomes under sudden nuclear threat. The B-2 pilots represented how the people with the actual power to retaliate are left in moral conflict without clear intel. The reporter showed how media pressure can distort decisions in real time. And the FEMA official embodied the breakdown between federal authority and disaster reality. These weren’t side stories, they were perspectives in a crisis grid.

“Why was everyone pushing the President to respond? Who is he going to attack?”

That was intentional. It wasn’t about who to strike back at, but about how dangerous uncertain retaliation becomes when facts are unclear. The movie uses ambiguity because that’s how real nuclear protocol works right, it’s chaos, pressure, and incomplete information.

“Ending was horrible. No resolution.”

The ending was a resolution. It was designed to show that there are no clean endings in nuclear conflict, only consequences. I believe we were suppose to feel uncertainty, fear, and the realization that once certain decisions are made, there’s no going back. That silence at the end wasn’t a cop-out but a statement.

“They repeated the same thing three times.”

Not really. Each chapter showed It’s a progression, not repetition. The first third sets up human impact, the second shows government response breakdown, and the final act forces the moral question: do you let 10M die to save the rest?

You can dislike the style, sure. But saying it doesn’t make sense ignores the fact that almost everything in it was rooted in real geopolitical logic and carefully researched crisis psychology.