4 ms·

I'd like to like Starship Troopers more but I can't. Starship Troopers had a couple smart things to say but said it through a shit movie. Turgid dialog, horrib

I'd like to like Starship Troopers more but I can't. Starship Troopers had a couple smart things to say but said it through a shit movie. Turgid dialog, horrible acting, repugnant characters and general cheesiness. I know the writers wanted to say all these people are idiots but society doesn't go astray because everyone is an idiot – you have to show how smart characters are caught in situations that constrain them to be idiots or at least a have few characters that realise the ridiculousness but are overridden or sidelined. You can't just write a bad movie and blame the characters for being stupid. My standard rule is that to properly satirise or ridicule something, a story must simultaneously be a good example of target being parodied as well as having a strong parody element. Starship Troopers tries to parody the military machine but it fails because its a terrible military action movie. To be a good parody of the military (and the political and social machine around it), it must also be a good military action film – both levels must work for the film to be good. I like to give Galaxy Quest as a good example of a film that's both excellent parody and an exemplar of the genre being parodied. It absolutely pillories Star Trek, bad sci-fi writing, unbelievable monsters, magic science, red-shirts, ridiculous sets with no purpose and humanoid aliens-of-the-week but at the same time it has likeable characters, excellent acting, a properly scary villain and has a real sense of "earning" the ultimate victory at the end. Starship Troopers has none of this and tries to use cheesiness and parody as an excuse for failing to make the movie better. Sorry, I have to evaluate a film based on more than its satirical message.

justin66 13y ago
> My standard rule is that to properly satirise or ridicule something, a story must simultaneously be a good example of target being parodied as well as having a strong parody element. The obvious counterexample that leaps to mind is Catch-22, which isn't a good war novel at all but is a brilliant antiwar satire.
- pavlov 13y ago
  I agree. The grandparent's rule seems to exclude many of the classics of satire. Consider Voltaire's Candide. Taken at face value, its genre is somewhere between "young man's growth story" and "colony-era adventure novel". Is it a good example of high-quality writing in those genres? Certainly not.
venus 13y ago
I don't understand this comment. What's "bad" about the movie? I think it works very well. Of course the characters say cheesy things sometimes, they're brainwashed kids acting macho. I always found the action compelling and the acting is good - it's a very well made movie, as you'd expect. I think you're missing some sort of point here. None of the points in your comment hit home for me at all. Galaxy Quest is a baffling comparison to make and is not in the same league at all. Edit: You do realise there's a difference between parody and satire, right? GQ is the former, ST is the latter.
kjsingh 13y ago
I think they purposely show the protagonists serving in forces and promotional videos as too cheesy. That's the whole idea. We are over-glorifying violence. In the movies, they dumb down the bugs. In real life we dumb down human beings. There is a scene where kids are squashing roaches commenting 'everyone is doing their bit'. Ah hate hate everywhere?
informatimago 13y ago
Well it has the brainy colonel Carl Jenkins, to show how smart people are can be oblivious of their society failings and participate to the "massacre". Also, there is little point insisting on this part given the recent history (nazism, war agains terrorism, etc).
fit2rule 13y ago
>Turgid dialog, horrible acting, repugnant characters and general cheesiness. Sorry, but this is American politics today. In that sense, the movie scored big.
astrobe_ 13y ago
As long as you don't evaluate the satirical message by the qualities of the film, that's ok.
VladRussian2 13y ago
>Star Trek, bad sci-fi writing, unbelievable monsters, magic science, red-shirts, ridiculous sets with no purpose and humanoid aliens-of-the-week as they say, can't see a forest for the trees :) Relax, man, you don't like it, obviously. Tastes are different. Galaxy Quest is a nice funny movie, Starship Troopers is a brilliant masterpiece. Kandinsky's black square is just a square a child can paint (i think i drew a lot of black squares among everything else while dreaming at classes in school).

justin66 13y ago

> My standard rule is that to properly satirise or ridicule something, a story must simultaneously be a good example of target being parodied as well as having a strong parody element. The obvious counterexample that leaps to mind is Catch-22, which isn't a good war novel at all but is a brilliant antiwar satire.

pavlov 13y ago
I agree. The grandparent's rule seems to exclude many of the classics of satire. Consider Voltaire's Candide. Taken at face value, its genre is somewhere between "young man's growth story" and "colony-era adventure novel". Is it a good example of high-quality writing in those genres? Certainly not.

venus 13y ago

I don't understand this comment. What's "bad" about the movie? I think it works very well. Of course the characters say cheesy things sometimes, they're brainwashed kids acting macho. I always found the action compelling and the acting is good - it's a very well made movie, as you'd expect. I think you're missing some sort of point here. None of the points in your comment hit home for me at all. Galaxy Quest is a baffling comparison to make and is not in the same league at all. Edit: You do realise there's a difference between parody and satire, right? GQ is the former, ST is the latter.

kjsingh 13y ago

I think they purposely show the protagonists serving in forces and promotional videos as too cheesy. That's the whole idea. We are over-glorifying violence. In the movies, they dumb down the bugs. In real life we dumb down human beings. There is a scene where kids are squashing roaches commenting 'everyone is doing their bit'. Ah hate hate everywhere?

informatimago 13y ago

Well it has the brainy colonel Carl Jenkins, to show how smart people are can be oblivious of their society failings and participate to the "massacre". Also, there is little point insisting on this part given the recent history (nazism, war agains terrorism, etc).

fit2rule 13y ago

>Turgid dialog, horrible acting, repugnant characters and general cheesiness. Sorry, but this is American politics today. In that sense, the movie scored big.

astrobe_ 13y ago

As long as you don't evaluate the satirical message by the qualities of the film, that's ok.

VladRussian2 13y ago

>Star Trek, bad sci-fi writing, unbelievable monsters, magic science, red-shirts, ridiculous sets with no purpose and humanoid aliens-of-the-week as they say, can't see a forest for the trees :) Relax, man, you don't like it, obviously. Tastes are different. Galaxy Quest is a nice funny movie, Starship Troopers is a brilliant masterpiece. Kandinsky's black square is just a square a child can paint (i think i drew a lot of black squares among everything else while dreaming at classes in school).