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How “Starship Troopers” Aligns with Our Moment of American Defeat
- antidaily 6y agoOr did it just happen to be released a few years before 9/11?
- godelski 6y agoFor those wondering, it is talking about the movie, not the book. For those that are confused about this comment, the book and movie are very different stories though the movie takes place in essentially the same universe. The director, Verhoeven, claimed "the book was too boring to finish." The movie has a lot of Nazi symbolism. As a sci-fi enthusiast I love the book. As a lover of bad movies, I love the movie. I recommend both, but for completely different reasons. Edit: If you're leaving a downvote care to explain? Do you want me to cite that Verhoeven didn't finish the book? (which is in the article here!) That the book and movie aren't different? Or what? I'm very confused. I'm just trying to say that the article is talking about the movie and not the book.
- pram 6y agoStarship Troopers isn’t a bad movie.
- memexy 6y agoWhat's good about it? I don't know much about movies I'm just curious why it's good.
- savanaly 6y agoI haven't seen it but I know it was featured on Red Letter Media's re:View series where they review movies they actually like [0]. Especially at the start they discuss its legacy and why people like/hate it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkEdyq3UE5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkEdyq3UE5M
- godelski 6y agoJust so you know, Red Letter Media has a sub-show called "Best of the Worst." "Bad" is a weird classification. I call it "bad," but I love the movie. People call it bad because it is super campy.
- savanaly 6y agoBy coincidence the Youtube algrorithm landed me on the very first re:View the other day where they explained the distinction between the type of movies they would feature on Best of the Worst vs re:View. Basically, BotW would be for "so bad they're good movies", movies that are truly awful but have redeeming quality in their ability to be laughed at, whereas re:View would be for movies that they think are truly good but are not as well known today, or at least not known as good movies today (as is the case for Starship Troopers).
- godelski 6y agoAs for Starship Troopers, you really could call it a flop. It cost $105m to make and the US box office was $22m. Since then it has made $121m, so barely a profit. I'd put Starship Troopers in the "bad" category because it is really campy. It is so on the nose that it becomes absurd and funny (past the on the nose that is annoying). It reminds me of a scene in Birdemic where they are like "Man, that was a good movie: An Inconvenient Truth." which was thrown in out of nowhere as if the writer only read the summary on the wikipedia entry for "foreshadowing" and said "oh, I need some of that in my story." In Starship Troopers it is undeniably clear that they are drawing parallels to Nazis, they even make fun of this in this article where they talk about the identical flag. Everything about this movie is extremely over the top. But this is also what makes it so funny. Enjoyable and a lot of fun, but definitely in the bad movie category.
- chongli 6y agoThe movie is a brilliant, satire of an over-the-top fascistic, militaristic society. It takes a similar tack to Huxley’s Brave New World but puts the focus on glorifying strength and violence against the enemy instead. It illustrates a society completely saturated in war propaganda, with all of the negatives of war being instantly dismissed. The pace at which the fictional society switches its media-directed gaze is frenetic. It’s like orgy-porgy meets Triumph of the Will.
- memexy 6y agoThat's a pretty good analysis.
- godelski 6y agoWhat do you mean by "bad" though? "Bad movie" is a genre. Starship Troopers is SUPER campy. Entertaining? Yes. Campy? Also yes.
- boznz 6y agoWatch it at the movies after a few beers with some mates and you will see its not as bad as all that, watched it twice since on the small screen and like everything it looses something. Yes camp acting and dodgy physics but that about sums up SciFi for the masses.
- kthxbye123 6y agoThere are plenty of people who (correctly, I think) consider the movie to be superior to the book (as both entertainment and as a genuine artistic accomplishment). You may be catching flak from them.
- godelski 6y agoThe movie is great. But it falls into the "bad movie" category because it is campy. "Bad movie" is more a genre. And it is hard to argue otherwise with Starship Troopers because it did poorly on release and got popular during the same time bad movies became popular (there's also a strong overlap between lovers of bad movies and Starship Troopers). "Bad" here doesn't mean unenjoyable, really the opposite.
- kthxbye123 6y agoI guess we have different definitions of “bad” (which you seem to be defining more as “not appreciated in its own time”), because I think it is a genuinely good movie with a successfully realized artistic vision, rather than a piece of empty but entertaining schlock. It’s campy because the aesthetics of fascism that it’s satirizing are campy.
- hindsightbias 6y agoIMO, a lot of people read the book when young and when the movie came out, their view of it was colored by faint memories. When bringing up all the symbolism and themes in the movie, I always get a lot of quizzical looks and disagreement. It's very weird/disturbing.
- rdxm 6y agoyou pretty much nailed it.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> As a sci-fi enthusiast I love the book. As a lover of bad movies, I love the movie. I recommend both, but for completely different reasons. Thought the book was interesting science fiction with (in retrospect) bad politics mixed in. I don't remotely understand the movie, the bits which were supposed to be satirical were lost in whatever slim excuse for a plot the movie had. It basically stripped away all the interesting science fiction bits and devolved into a bunch of people running around with guns shouting randomly at giant bugs.
- dragontamer 6y ago> devolved into a bunch of people running around with guns shouting randomly at giant bugs. That was part of the satire actually. When a pro-militaristic society knows nothing but violence, they continuously look at the problem through a violence-only lens. > It basically stripped away all the interesting science fiction bits The propaganda bits and sarcastic take-down of fascism is the big part of the movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijvTiDnWJLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijvTiDnWJLE Its probably easier to see the sarcasm with all of the Federal News Network clips in a row? Or maybe the "Failure of Democracy" speech? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxgrr0wL8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxgrr0wL8M
- ogre_codes 6y ago> Its probably easier to see the sarcasm with all of the Federal News Network clips in a row? Maybe it was a good satire I have no idea. I get enough politics in my life passively without going to a movie to get even more of it. If I'd thought of it as "Political Satire" I'd have never gone to the movie. I was looking for a good/ interesting science fiction movie which it wasn't. I don't agree with Heinlein's weird quasi-militaristic ideals. But I also didn't want to sit though 2 hours of someone skewering it. If they'd made a good movie and skewered Heinlein, I'd have been fine with that.
- dragontamer 6y agoBack in the 90s, making fun of Nazis / fascism / hyper-violence was a safe subject. Its hardly "political" in the context of the time when it was made. Case in point: Star Wars, the beloved Sci-fi space opera, also leans on heavy Nazi / Fascist themes when building up the empire. Its supposed to be the "safe" subject of discussion and biting satire.
- senectus1 6y agoI agree with you so much i could have written your comment myself, word for word.
- nordsieck 6y agoI have a hard time taking an essay that discusses the philosophy of the movie starship trooper seriously when the book of the same name was so much better developed. It's a bit like dunking on libertarian idiots on facebook, but refusing to engage with Richard Epstein[1]. Sure, it's a thing one can do, and it's good for laughs from time to time, but ultimately, engaging with a weaker version of an idea betrays a weakness in the interlocutor, not the subject. ___ 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhqXIc5CEpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhqXIc5CEpU
- free_rms 6y agoHave YOU read the book? It's earnest, non-sarcastic, with an entirely different message. Calling it 'opposite' would be unfair but it's almost that.
- nieve 6y agoIt's not a favorite book and sometimes it's far too heavy-handed, but I wouldn't say that it's completely non-sarcastic. It's mostly pro-military, but there's some definite ambivalence about what that means in execution down to the excessively brutal miltary discipline and the jabs at the way military leaders often waste lives through over-confidence. You can tell it was written in close proximity to the oft-overestimated "Stranger in a Strange Land" if you look a bit more carefully for the cynicism. Large chunks of the first half read as if Heinlein was looking forward to "Full Metal jacket", but couldn't quite pull it together on his own.
- kingnight 6y agoThe article discusses how it’s different, including how the director and screenwriter felt about it. (quite negatively)
- godelski 6y agoThe book and movie are completely different stories. Verhoeven prides himself on that he didn't even finish the book and if you watched the movie it is pretty clear he read less than half and then wanted to write a movie that was a satirical take on the book (which he claims was promoting fascism, but readers are confused by that take).
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoAm I the only one who thinks it is a circular waste of time to try do explicitly draw lessons from movies and books. Of course the universe the author created generally comports with their beliefs or the point they are trying to make. It would be like trying to convert a skeptic to Christianity by citing The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. Lewis's Christianity had a large influence in how he crafted the literary universe, and thus trying to use events from that literary universe to convince people of the truth of Christianity is circular logic at best. But I have seen it done so many times. Writers take a work of fiction such as a book or movie where the author generally has a similar outlook and use that to draw lessons. You see that a lot on the left, as well as on the right with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I don't think it is convincing anyone. Anybody can write a book where the people they admire become heroes and the policy they espouse has a good outcome, or the people they despise become villains and the policy they are against leads to bad outcomes. How close the book universe is to the real universe is a different story.
- rbecker 6y ago> How close the book universe is to the real universe is a different story. The real life Lord of the Flies illustrates this well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123609 TLDR: After being shipwrecked, everyone got along and cooperated, and remained life-long friends.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoExactly. Many times a story tells more about the author than it does about the real world.
- alexandercrohde 6y agoI don't know why you're downvoted, this is a pretty important topic. Well, I do know why you're being downvoted -- you're challenging an a very dear orthodoxy.
- dragontamer 6y agoI agree with you that its circular logic, but I disagree that its a waste of time. Books, movies, and other consumable media (songs, poems, etc. etc.) present perhaps the strongest arguments from various "camps". They are strongly representative of the ideals and ideas of large groups of people.
- js2 6y agoI remember it being a not very good film, mostly because it's way too on the nose. I like my irony with a little subtlety. But since our current POTUS has killed irony[1], maybe it works better now. I haven't seen it in years. I'm willing to give it a rewatch. [1] "We will not allow anyone to divide our citizens by race or background. We will not allow them to foment hate, discord and distrust" as just one recent example.
- godelski 6y agoThis is why people put it in the "bad movie" category. It is very campy. But if you like bad movies, Starship Troopers is great. That said, I also love The Room and Birdemic.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- free_rms 6y agoIf you were told the gag before you watched it, it might seem too on the nose. But check the reviews when it came out -- most of our enlightened, educated cultural critics missed the gag.
- xsmasher 6y agoI'll admit I came in expecting "Aliens" and was deeply disappointed. Even in retrospect, the movie might be good commentary, but it doesn't have good characters or good storytelling.
- free_rms 6y agoThe bad characters are part of the gag. Mindless attractive teens in this horrific society. You even wind up with the two most vapid characters, after having found love elsewhere, winding up together because why not, those other, better people died. It actually works really well as an unconventional character arc that the actors may or may not have been in on.
- jacknews 6y agoI thought it was a parody of the first Iraq war. I seem to remember the irony being completely missed at the time, and it simply being panned as a not-very-good action movie.