What was the morale of this movie? I mean it's a great film but what was the deeper message?

He explored the weird parts and people of the world and came out of it as appreciative. In the end, dude had cancer and knew, from all of his experiences with other people and from traveling around the world, that he was better off dying then rather than dragging it all out. He didn't wait until his life was ending to start living it, and maybe that isn't his ultimate message, but that's what I got from his work and have happily applied it. Live life so that if you were to be given a terminal diagnosis, you could say you've already filled out that bucket list and then end it on your own terms.

Plus, he didn't get to live long enough to see Johnny Depp get cucked

this, the movie explicitly discusses it

>What was the morale of this movie?
Never forget to put on your golf shoes. Impossible to walk in this muck, no footing at all.

they literally said it in the film

youtube.com/watch?v=VmyZ850bDpc

>he was better off dying then rather than dragging it all out.
His friend Ralph Steadman also explained it as not not liking being trapped - no matter the situation, he'd also give himself a way out of a situation he didn't like even if that was suicide. Which probably comes from Thompson's interest in existentialism

refusing to believe this

The counter-culture movement of the 60's and early 70's (as well as all the smaller, shorter lived university-aged and based ones that have come since) meant nothing because they're all too self-absorbed and always end up striking bargains for survival on purely personal terms (jobs, careers, houses, marriage - everything they once rejected). The freaks of every generation are always left behind. The forces of old and evil will always win because we crave stability and sanity and clarity, which Hunter S. Thompson always rejected even after the high-water mark of San Francisco in '75.

Long answer
Short answer

The book was a critique of the counter culture of the time. The movie was about getting fucked up in Las Vegas.

He was pretty much the poster child for high functioning.