A warrior without a war, Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meechum, a pilot known as "the Great Santini" to his fellow Marines, sets off with his reluctant family at 3 a.m., moving to the military base town of Beaufort, South Carolina, in peacetime 1962.

Their teenage children, Ben and Mary Anne, are accustomed to his stern discipline and behave accordingly while adapting to their new town and school.

During one-on-one games with Meechum at home, though, his father refuses to let Ben win, using unnecessarily rough physical tactics and humiliating insults and criticizing the rest of the family when they try to interfere.

When Ben finally wins a game, Meechum unleashes a torrent of verbal abuse while bouncing the ball off his head.

Also changed is Meechum's aircraft; in the book, he flies and commands a squadron of F-8 Crusaders, while in the film, the fighters shown are F-4 Phantom IIs.

[9] Warner Bros. executives were concerned that the film's plot and lack of bankable actors would make it challenging to market.

[10] Producer Charles A. Pratt still believed in the film and raised enough money (some from Orion) to release The Great Santini in New York City under its original title.

Orion executive Mike Medavoy blamed the film's box-office failure on a lack of a traditional release: screening it first in New York and expanding markets due to word-of-mouth.

[11] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Like almost all my favorite films, The Great Santini is about people more than it is about a story.

[13] Movies and television have referred to the one-on-one basketball game from The Great Santini during which Bull Meechum repeatedly bounces the ball off Ben's head while asking, "You gonna cry?

The scene is invoked in the father–son tetherball match in Kicking & Screaming, a comedy in which Robert Duvall plays a tough-love father reminiscent of Bull Meechum.